Chris Burden "Skyscraper" @ One Colorado (Armory Center for the Arts)

Anthony McCall from "Landscape for White Squares," 1972, 16mm transfer to DVD in "Ends of the Earth" @ MOCA

Maria Nordman in "Ends of the Earth:Land Art to 1974" @ MOCA LA, Geffen

"Mash Up" @ L&M

Sterling Ruby, "BC (3786)," 2012,
Collage, paint, bleach, glue, fabric, on wood

Paul McCarthy, "Carpet (D)," 2009-2011,
Clay, plastic, and gloves on carpet.

Aaron Curry, "Bag of Sags," 2012,
Collage and gouache on board

Mark Bradford, "Untitled (series of seven unique sculptures)," 2009,
Mixed media, paper mache and collage

David Hammons, "Untitled," 2009, Mixed Media

Modern Optic (Leslie Ross-Robertson) @ Fifth Floor

My photos do not do justice to the surface beauty---paper quality, debossing and subtle range of color--- of these prints.  Regardless, I share them here anyway. Find others at www.modern-optic.com

"Standard Operating Procedures" Curated by Piper Marshall @ Blum & Poe

Alan Uglow, Portrait of a Standard-Blue, 2000,
Screenprint on canvas, 84 1/4 x 72 x 6 inches installed

Sean Paul, Arrangement 15, Front/Top/Bottom/Right/Left/Back/Front-Right/Top2, 2012
Oil and acrylic on extra fine linen, 40 x 60 x 1 1/8 inches

Yngve Holen, Parasagittal Brain, 2012,
Left half of water cut garden hose with spray nozzle, left contact lense,
4 x 293 1/2 x 2 inches
62 3/4 x 293 1/2 x 2 inches installed

Parasagittal Brain (alternate installation view)

Parasagittal Brain (detail), 2012,
Right half of water cut garden hose with multi purpose spray gun, right contact lense,
7 1/2 x 293 x 2 inches
63 1/2 x 293 x 2 inches installed

Parasagittal Brain (detail), 2012,
Left half of water cut garden hose with spray nozzle, left contact lense,
4 x 293 1/2 x 2 inches
63 1/2 x 293 x 2 inches installed

Parasagittal Brain (right nozzle detail)

Parasagittal Brain (left detail)

Parasagittal Brain (detail)

Parasagittal Brain (detail)

Parasagittal Brain (detail)

Helen Marten, Dust and Piranhas, 2011,
Animations video, sound
Format variable; TRT: 25 minutes 25 seconds

Aside from the "standard" disclaimer about over-crowded group shows, perhaps especially of the summer variety, there were a few artworks in this show worth considering discretely despite the difficulties in viewing them as such.  Regarding such challenges in particular, Sean Paul's paintings with a speaker from another piece inserted in between the work and the slightness of Yngve Holen's sculptural installation---muddled by other works in the room---were not served well by such dense installations, unless, of course, we were to consider the show as such and assumer a larger narrative where "standard operating procedures" equals chaos. I certainly hope not; I wouldn't think so.  We've seen enough attempts at "standardizing" in this region as of late.  That said, the images of the four artist's I include here represent what I think are nice moments and positions within viewing them.  Questions about presentation and re-presentation, systematic actions, bodily currents, and reflexivity all make for what I would propose could be "standard" (read: perpetual) human concerns for less uniform purposes in another show, just these four.

Kevin Appel @ Susanne Vielmetter

My first time with an Appel painting was as a Preparator at LACMA in the late 90's. A spare white surface with subtle indications of space barely allowed visibility let ability to handle, practically, as was my task at the time. As I recall the pristine surface now, I am thinking this voyage into landscape, photography, and painting---all confrontation and representation---has not led the artist that far in 15 years toward substantially richer surfaces. Though it may sound like a negative as I have stated it, I now appreciate the brushwork in relation to the dissolution of photographic image.

My own act of looking, aided by camera and notes reminded me of the tenuous space of representation between media as well as place, in this instance "displace" as I am asked to seek artifacts of a distant landscape though all I end up thinking about is the painting facture, which indeed should be thought about as artifact. Occasionally I find grain or perhaps surface injury via nails, but mostly I think of surface layers and movements from a middle toward an edge and back where any quest for image is supplanted by another technical move (save the one that appears with a photographic horizon where I begin to think, concretely, about a ground, not a painted one just a memory of a distant space.  Pictorial of other artists were as follows (as they came to mind): Gerhard Richter, Nate Hylden, John McCallister, Richard Aldrich, Roy Lichtenstein, Adolph Gottlieb, and John Divola.