Author Archives: jolanta

I grew up in Southern California, a place where the car canvassed the land, moved through earthquakes, fires, floods, toxins, and anguished Santa Ana Winds. The romance of the automobile was accompanied by countless films like Rebel Without a Cause, an illusion of freedom, youth, long drives out to the desert or across the border […]

The definition of a “wallflower” in the Oxford Dictionary, is “a girl who has no one to dance with at a party.” In her series, “Wallflower,” Amy Elkins examines the sexist limits of this perception. By placing men in front of floral wallpaper, their torsos generally shirtless and cropped near the waist, she has successfully […]

(10:58:00 AM) Harm van der Dorpel: yesterday i visited the (galerie west) vvork talk show thing (10:58:03 AM) Damon Zucconi: haha (10:58:07 AM) DZ: talk show. how was it (10:59:08 AM) HD: well, often in discussions like these, i have the feeling it’s more about people wanting to say something, and not so much about […]

We named our repertory My Barbarian, founded by Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and me, a film school dropout with dreams of being Fassbinder, or Jack Smith, or Fred Schneider. In my Silver Lake apartment, we’d act out absurd political debates in three-part harmony, enlisting friends to play along. “Be prolific,” was the advice. In seven […]

China is experiencing a new revolution as of late. This one however, doesn’t involve guns and tanks. Instead its weapons of attack are everything from bronze to fiberglass to stainless steel. There are many new voices emerging in Chinese contemporary sculpture, with Qu Guangci sitting at the forefront—and he doesn’t seem to care whether the […]

The American West is a time and place long lost to the depths of the imagination; a history revised so many times that it exists only as a blur of Hollywood icons. Adam Helms strategically marks his territory on this legendary front, waiting for the moment for his fictional militia—the New Frontier Army (NFA)— to […]

Sexy Librarian: Critical Edition of the Original Novel, Julia Weist’s first book, will be published in full this fall by design powerhouse Ellen Lupton. It was originally written as a 60-page prospectus that Weist sent to major publishers: the rejection letters she received in return were re-presented as sculptures incorporated into a larger project about […]