A refusal to adhere to distinct categories, a breakdown of hierarchies, and an embrace of hybridity are a few common threads among this month’s exhibitions. At Karma, Mungo Thomson plumbs the depths of mundane visual culture to create entrancing stop-motion videos. A Llyn Foulkes survey at The Pit celebrates this LA legend, a master of shaping the saccharine symbols of Americana into complex, razor-sharp satire. And Sarah Rosalena’s solo show at Blum fuses traditional Indigenous techniques with high-tech fabrication, dissolving the artificial barrier between craft and fine art.
Mungo Thomson: Time Life
Karma, 7351 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, California
Through July 18
In his ongoing Time Life video series, Mungo Thomson confronts contemporary information overload, transforming mundane analog media into entrancing stop-motion compositions. On view at Karma are nine new videos that draw on wide-ranging sources including a seashell collection, the art of mime, a hummingbird in flight, a burning candle, and a guitar manual. Thomson pairs these with soundtracks by John McEntire, Eiko Ishibashi, Lee Ranaldo, and others, creating resonant cinematic experiences that heighten, rather than overload, our attention.
Waning Crescent: a meztli projects group show
Oxy Arts, 4757 York Boulevard, Highland Park, Los Angeles
Through July 19
Waning Crescent showcases the work of Meztli Projects, an Indigenous arts and culture collaborative based in Apachianga (East Los Angeles) in Tovaangar (Los Angeles County). The exhibition features recent work by artists linked to the collective, highlighting their individual creative journeys as well as Meztli Projects’s broader mission of advocating for Native and Indigenous artists and youth impacted by criminal justice systems. Standouts include River Garza’s sculptures that investigate the co-optation of Indigenous identity; Kimberly Robertson’s beaded wall works that memorialize journalists and aid workers killed in Gaza; and Kenneth Lopez’s woven photographs that recall traditional craft techniques.
Francisco Masó: Documentary Abstraction
Luis de Jesus Los Angeles, 1110 Mateo Street, Downtown, Los Angeles
Through July 19
On the surface, Francisco Masó’s painted bands of color share a kinship with works by Josef Albers, Agnes Martin, and other practitioners of geometric abstraction; however, Masó’s compositions are rooted in systems of political surveillance and repression. Part of his Aesthetic Register of Covert Forces series, these paintings reproduce the striped patterns of polo shirts worn by the Cuban secret police. In doing so, the Cuban-born, Miami-based artist turns these prosaic designs into symbols of state authority and domination. Masó pairs some of these works with photographs of polo-clad government agents taken by protestors, making clear the link between the political and the aesthetic.
Made to Last: Sachi Moskowitz and Louie Moskowitz
Arcane Space, 324 Sunset Avenue, Unit G, Venice, California
Through July 29
Made to Last pairs the work of siblings Sachi and Louie Moskowitz, complimentary offerings from the latest generation in this storied creative family, which also includes their late father, the airbrush painter Stewart Moskowitz, and their grandfather, ceramicist Michael Frimkess, who passed away earlier this year. Sachi paints evocative scenes on her handmade stoneware vessels based on her upbringing in Topanga and life in LA, rendered in classical blue glaze on white background. Louie’s black-and-white photographs similarly draw on autobiography, portraying the foggy solitude of Humboldt County in Northern California, where he lives and works, with intimate candor.
Alan Lynch: Infinitely on the surfaces of this teardrop world
Château Shatto, 540 Western Avenue, East Hollywood, Los Angeles
Through August 2
Alan Lynch was a vital participant in California’s postwar art scene when, in 1969, he largely stopped exhibiting his work, a withdrawal that would last until his death in 1994. This exhibition brings together two bodies of work: oil paintings from 1963 to 1965 and watercolors from 1975 to 1977. In the earlier works, Lynch fused a hard-edged vocabulary with organic forms found in nature, while the intimate works on paper from a decade later reflect his dedication to the practice of meditation. Taken together, they offer rarely seen perspectives on this enigmatic artist.
Llyn Foulkes: Time’s Witness
The Pit, 3015 Dolores Street, Glassell Park, Los Angeles
Through August 9
Llyn Foulkes is unquestionably one of LA’s most influential, confounding, and mercurial living artists. Time’s Witness is a career-spanning survey, assembling more than 75 years of work, spanning 1949 to 2025. The exhibition includes sculpture, painting, collage, and more, from his early ink drawings to his iconic Bloody Head paintings and mixed-media assemblages of the 21st century. It highlights the artist’s ability to pull from the iconography of American culture to create work suffused with tension, emotion, and humor.
Sarah Rosalena: Unending Spiral
Blum, 2727 South La Cienega Boulevard, Culver City, California
Through August 16
Sarah Rosalena mixes traditional Wixárika weaving practices with 3D printing and digital fabrication, creating hybrid forms that combine Indigenous knowledge with computer-aided design. For the works in Unending Spiral, she looks to the spiral both formally and conceptually, drawing links between forms in nature, such as celestial galaxies, and handmade construction processes. The show includes woven textiles, 3D-printed ceramic vessels, and handwoven pine needle basketry, which Rosalena often combines in the same artworks, challenging outdated notions that isolate craft, fine art, and technology.
Li Ran: The Signs Are Present
Lisson Gallery, 1037 North Sycamore Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles
Through August 23
Li Ran’s multifaceted practice encompasses performance, video, installation, and writing. However, his current exhibition at Lisson showcases his paintings, featuring nine new, large-scale canvases. Straddling representation and abstraction, and full of cryptic signifiers, these works depict various characters embedded in ambiguous narratives, rife with angst, malaise, and theatrical drama. Accompanied by a poetic text and informed by his research into cultural histories, Li’s paintings offer a personal, contemplative approach to his cross-disciplinary conceptual inquiries.
Esiri Erheriene-Essi: Reflections
Night Gallery, 2276 East 16th Street, Downtown, Los Angeles
Through August 23
Esiri Erheriene-Essi’s vibrant paintings depict ordinary moments of Black life, imbuing them with a sense of timeless grandeur. She begins with photographs from her archive of snapshots found in North America, Europe, and Africa, and then translates these images onto linen, enhancing the colors and patterns, and adding references from different eras, such as images of Beyoncé and Angela Davis, or an anti-Apartheid pin. The finished paintings portray events such as family reunions, friends playing cards, a child’s birthday party, and a group of women gathered in an airport — specific, if prosaic, scenes that take on a wider significance as diverse representations of diasporic Black identities.
Reading Room
MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, 835 North Kings Road, West Hollywood, California
Through September 14
Reading Room transforms the historical modernist residence the Schindler House into a welcoming salon celebrating publications and printed matter on architecture, design, and art. LA-based artist and designer Ryan Preciado has created several pieces of furniture in dialogue with Schindler’s work, including a reading table that will serve as the site of residencies with Inventory Press; critic, editor, and curator Mimi Zeiger; and Deem Journal. The space will also showcase books from LA-based art and design publishers, as well as a selection of artists’ books from the collection of Johanna Drucker and Brad Freeman.