art los angeles gallery show guide

Cultured's gallery show guide highlights five exhibitions in Los Angeles. Lee Lozano's "Hard Handshake" at Hauser & Wirth (through January 18, 2026) features drawings from her first nine years, marking the first major LA show devoted to her work. Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo) presents "Forbidden Colors (Free)(Palestine)(Sudan)" and "Transgender Abstraction to Transgender Conceptualism" at Ceradon (through December 6), transforming the gallery into flags referencing Palestine, Sudan, and trans pride. Sabrina Gschwandtner's "Absinthe, Smoke, Sugar, Choice" at Shoshana Wayne Gallery (through January 10, 2026) uses quilt-making with illuminated film strips to explore female bodily autonomy. Kathleen Ryan's "Souvenir" at Karma (through December 20) debuts concrete peaches with Harley Davidson engines. Ben Sakoguchi's "Chin Music" at Marc Selwyn Fine Art (through December 23) uses historic advertisement motifs to animate history.

Epstein files reveal Leon Black as a key collector of Van Gogh works

Newly released documents from the Jeffrey Epstein case reveal that billionaire investor and former Museum of Modern Art chairman Leon Black was a major private collector of works by Vincent van Gogh. The files detail his ownership of at least five significant Van Gogh pieces, including the painting 'Quarry near Saint-Rémy' and the drawing 'Garden with Flowers,' with a combined value exceeding $95 million by 2016.

Body as Device. Guide and Reflection on the Performances of the Venice Biennale

Corpo come dispositivo. Guida e riflessione sulle performance della Biennale di Venezia

The article analyzes the role of performance art at the 2026 Venice Biennale, arguing that performance is no longer a rediscovered genre but a structurally institutionalized primary form of experience production. It examines how the body reemerges not as an alternative to image-based works but as an internal interruption of the artwork system, preventing closure and reintroducing instability. Key pavilions are discussed: Austria's Florentina Holzinger with "Sancta" draws on 1970s radical performance and feminist body art, creating an immersive environment of continuous movement; Belgium's Miet Warlop with "IT NEVER SSST" engages post-dramatic theater and postmodern dance repetition; Japan's Ei Arakawa-Nash with "Grass Babies, Moon Babies" activates Gutai avant-garde legacies through viewer interaction with soft dolls.

Why Does Italy No Longer Qualify for the World Cup or the Biennials?

Perché l’Italia non si qualifica più né ai Mondiali né alle Biennali?

Artist Oscar Giaconia draws a provocative parallel between the decline of Italian football and the diminishing presence of Italian contemporary artists in major international forums like the Venice Biennale and Manifesta. He argues that both sectors suffer from a systemic failure to nurture young talent, characterized by a lack of strategic scouting, a preference for foreign trends, and a bureaucratic deafness that stifles growth.

Spectral Nomenclature. Anastasia Pavlou  by Arnisa Zeqo

Artist Anastasia Pavlou’s practice is explored through her engagement with literature, memory, and the materialization of language. Her large-scale paintings, which draw formal comparisons to Art Informel and Abstract Expressionism, function as conceptual lexicons where titles—often direct citations from writers like Dionne Brand and Virginia Woolf—carry as much weight as the paint itself. Works such as "The Reader Interrogates Narrative, but Poetry Interrogates the Reader" demonstrate her interest in the "spectral" side of nomenclature, where naming serves to summon ghosts of the past while acknowledging the failures of language to capture emotion.