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| Vincent Valdez, Nothin' to See Here, 2008. MOCA, promised gift of Arlene, Aleah, Adiana, and Andy Hurwitz |
The poster image for MOCA's "In These Times: Recent Acquisitions at MOCA" is an anodyne Alex Israel painting of Westwood movie theaters. Don't let that throw you. There's a better neon nocturne just feet away—Vincent Valdez's Nothin' to See Here—and spectacular pieces in the galleries that follow. "In These Times" focuses on works purchased or donated in the past five years. They are shown in context of related works from the MOCA collection.
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| Alex Israel, Movie Theaters, 2024 |
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| Installation view. At right is Andrea Bowers' Abolish ICE, 2018 |
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| Kathleen Ryan, Screwdriver, 2023 |
Kathleen Ryan's
Screwdriver is a rotten garnish for somebody's fancy drink, crafted from semi-precious stones and consumerist detritus. The label lists the media as "'68 AMC Javelin trunk, aluminum umbrella, and coated polystyrene with onyx, citrine, rhodonite, garnet, agate, tektite, lava rock, turquoise, aquamarine, serpentine, magnesite, amazonite, black tourmaline, jasper, prehnite, ruby in zoisite, marble, amber, labradorite, smoky quartz, quartz, acrylic, and steel pins."
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| Charles Gaines, Numbers and Trees: Tanzania Series 1, Baobab, Tree #8, Ogiek, 2024 |
This large Charles Gaines, purchased this year, becomes MOCA's only painting/photograph by the artist.
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| Small detail of Jill Mulleady's Swan Lake on the Radio, 2022 |
Jill Mulleady's 14-ft oil-on-linen Swan Lake on the Radio is part of a series of large paintings whose dimensions match those of Goya's
Black Paintings. |
| Louise Bonnet, Projection 2, 2022 |
Swiss-born L.A. artist Louise Bonnet's visions of body dysmorphia have roots in R. Crumb, Philip Guston, and Surrealism. LACMA has also acquired one of her recent works, a 2023
Couple with Lemons.
MOCA's gallery text mentions "an uptick in fairy-tale, mythological, and cartoon aesthetics." Another example, also from a Swiss/L.A. artist, is Christina Forrer's cotton and wool hanging, The Ogre's Wife.
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| Christina Forrer, The Ogre's Wife, 2022 |
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| Works by Liz Larner and Larry Johnson |
One room pairs work by Larry Johnson and Liz Larner. MOCA has been collecting both artists' work since the 1980s.
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| Center: Julie Mehretu (painting) and Nairy Baghramian (frame), TRANSpaintings (green ecstatic), 2023-4. Right: Kenneth Noland's Untitled (Target), 1963 |
The installation pairs Julie Mehretu and Nairy Bagramian's modish
TRANSpainting with a dowdy Kenneth Noland target from 1963. Both are paintings that aspire to be worlds, and the Noland can be read as a memento mori of artistic fashion (Clement Greenberg thought Noland's targets were the culmination of modern painting).
Bagramian's aluminum frame and support finds an echo in MOCA's suspension bondage installation for Bob Mizer's 1950s "physique" photography.
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| Bob Mizer, Catalog Board for XT, about 1958, and Catalog Board for SW, about 1965 |
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| Henry Taylor, Untitled, 1985, and Client, 1988 |
Last year MOCA acquired a group of Henry Taylor's "Camarillo drawings," created in the late 1980s, while the artist was juggling CalArts classes with a night shift at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital. Taylor's sketches of patients and staff are among his earliest portraits.
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