Weekend Gallery Report: From snuggles to tacos, everything I saw

Works made for opera, knitted hashtags, tar paintings, collage, a pyramid loaded with neon and plants, and eerie canvases that glow under blacklight. It seems that every gallery under the blazing 100-degree sun was having an opening this last weekend, so I made some very sweaty rounds in my beat-up Toyota, all while listening to Keith Richards' autobiography. Bonus: I photographed pretty much everything I saw with my phone (which sadly, did not include Keith Richards).

Here's a very informal roundup of what's cooking in all those pristine whiteboxes around El Lay. Images are by me unless otherwise noted.

HOLLY ROBERTS AT CRAIG KRULL

Let's start on the Westside, where the air is cooler, the grass is greener (way to conserve water!) and the cops are totes serious about enforcing every last parking law. In Santa Monica, a pair of small shows at Craig Krull Gallery offer a nice break from hyper-conceptual everything with some well-executed figurative work. This includes the collages of Holly Roberts, above, a New Mexico-based artist whose pieces employ bits of photos, paint and pages from "Gray's Anatomy." I dug the images of horses, such as the image seen here: "Snake Rider III," a piece from 2014, which also includes a demented-looking caballero.

JAMES GRIFFITH, ALSO AT KRULL

Also on view at Craig Krull are a series of works by James Griffith, painted with tar from the La Brea Tar Pits. All of the pieces depict animals, and while they aren't revolutionary in their form, the sympathy with which they are rendered may make you ditch all the freeways for a national park. Seen here: "Grooming Monkeys," from 2014.

GRONK AT LORA SCHLESINGER

In Santa Monica, I also made a stop at Lora Schlesinger, which has a small selection of works on view by L.A. painter, muralist and Facebook stalwart Gronk. (I spoke to him recently about his love of 1950s B-movie sci-fi. Do not miss.) The show at Schlesinger gathers works that have served as studies for the set design he does for operas directed by Peter Sellars. I really enjoyed this one, "Punctuation Marks," from 2013, which features a rich abstract pattern produced by layer upon layer of paint and oil stick. (Since the photo I took of this work was pretty appalling, I've borrowed the version sent to me by the gallery, snapped by Alan Shaffer.)

KOREAN ABSTRACTION AT BLUM & POE

Moving on to Culver City: Blum & Poe has a very chilled-out selection of Korean monochromatic abstract work from the 1960s to the 1980s, a good antidote to the usual art-season bling. Seen here is a piece by Kwon Young-woo from 1980 that is made from Korean paper that has been repeatedly punctured.

The Korean art exhibit has a number of remarkable works. I wasn't familiar with the work of Chung Sang-hwa prior to this exhibition, but I like how the artist evokes textile patterns using the very considered application of paint. This is a detail of an untitled work from 1977.

KAWS AT HONOR FRASER

Continuing in Culver City: the New York-based graffiti artist KAWS has returned to the gallery for his third solo show at Honor Fraser. The show is composed of riffs on various cartoon characters, including Charlie Brown and Snoopy, among others. It's way too slick for my taste, but the kids seem to dig it. (There was a line to get in two hours before the opening.) Shown here: a sculpture that mashes KAWS' poop character Warm Regards with Spongebob Squarepants.

While I was in Culver City I also paid a visit to Luis de Jesus and checked out the photography and video of Zachary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, whose gender-bendy photos made it into the recent Whitney Biennial. The images are of the moody hipster variety, but the story they tell, of bodies and personalities in transition, is frank and beguiling. Definitely worth checking out.

DOUG AITKEN AT REGEN PROJECTS

After Culver City, it was on to Hollywood: Doug Aitken's show at Regen Projects continues his investigation into landscape, both geological and man-made. This includes a weird white stalactite/stalagmite fountain that trickles with water and then echoes with a recording of that same sound. Also on view, his signature light boxes, such as this one, from 2014, which is titled "Native Land."

LISA ANNE AUERBACH AT GAVLAK

In Hollywood, I was also sucked in by artist Lisa Anne Auerbach's "mega-zines" at Gavlak. The artist has long created zines about everything from bicycle riding to her bookshelf. The mega-zines take this homegrown form of publishing to its (il)logical extreme, with 60-inch-tall pages that were flipped, at the opening, by two young women known as the "Mega-girls." One zine was a chronicle of Auerbach's visits to mega-churches. (The un-spiritual nature of mega-church architecture could be a dissertation.) The other zine focused on psychics. Seen above is a view of the L.A. psychic I've always been most curious about: the one that you see tucked behind a freeway wall from the southbound 5 in East L.A.

Also on view at Gavlak were Auerbach's knitted works (which I discussed with her last week). "#HASHINGTOUT," from 2014, gathers all kinds of funny-weird hashtags, such as #sexyselfies and #entitledcareerist onto an over-sized canvas.

LILY SIMONSON AT CB1 GALLERY

Over in downtown, L.A. painter Lily Simonson is currently showing a series of works inspired by a trip she made to Antarctica at CB1 Gallery. Landscapes and abstractions are painted with UV reactive paint and illuminated by blacklight. This one made me feel the chill of polar ice.

RASHID JOHNSON AT DAVID KORDANKSY

And now we backtrack to Mid-Wilshire: specifically to Rashid Johnson's solo at David Kordanksy Gallery, my favorite of the weekend (along with watching "Black Jesus," which he turned me onto). There's a real visceral quality to the altar-like wall-hangings, made from burned-out bits of flooring and adorned with objects that have resonance to the artist: albums, CB radios, books and blobs of Shea butter. This one is titled "Swimming" and it's from 2014.

But the piece de resistance in Johnson's show is this towering pyramid structure, stuffed with palms and dotted with Shea butter, radios and various editions of Richard Wright's "Native Son," along with various other objects. (The gallery has some terrific photos of the installation, so it's worth clicking through.)

Johnson told me last week that palms, with their connotations of the exotic, were a symbol to him of being able to leave a place you are from. (In the artist's case, Chicago, where he was born, a city that doesn't exactly have a climate that is hospitable to the plant.) The structure on which all this rests takes inspiration from the three-dimensional minimalist grids created by Sol LeWitt. Except Johnson turns the whole thing on its head. He offers minimalism a hat-tip. But then he take its chilly form and fills it with boundless exuberance. It feels so wild, I gasped when I entered the gallery.

EN FIN...

How did I maintain the stamina to see so many shows in a single weekend? Two words: Tacos Arabes. Now that is some fine art.

Twitter: @cmonstah