This month’s picks are about art’s ability to tell stories, and how those stories can reveal larger collective narratives. At Nazarian / Curcio, Widline Cadet reflects on her family’s immigration from Haiti through photo-based works. Akinsanya Kambon’s ceramic vessels draw on the vast Black diaspora, informed by his own life experience as a Black Panther and travels to Africa. At the Brand, Opulent Mobility gathers the work of artists who foreground issues related to disability, while Orange Curtain brings together three artists with roots in Orange County to broaden narrow notions about the region. A two-person show pairing Brian Sharp with his teacher, the late Denzil Hurley, highlights the importance of mentorship, and a recreation of Diane Arbus’s 1972 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York showcases the psychological intensity behind her revealing portraits, laying bare the complexities beneath the placid facade of American postwar society.
Carolee Schneemann
Lisson Gallery, 1037 North Sycamore Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles
Through June 7
Lisson’s current Carolee Schneeman exhibition, the late artist’s first solo show in LA, includes work the artist produced during the 1980s, highlighting her materially adventurous multidisciplinary practice. The centerpiece is “Video Rocks” (1987), a field of 180 hand-cast “rocks” accompanied by five monitors playing scenes of people and animals walking across it. Several brightly colored, impressionistic sketches related to the installation hang nearby. Also on view are selections from her Lebanon Series (1981–99) that mix abstraction and photography to confront the nation’s violent civil war. Part of this series, the Dust Paintings (1983–86), incorporates circuit boards, glass, ash, and vegetable dye on rag paper to create surfaces whose material complexity is both alluring and challenging.