Daniel O'Toole Modern Times

Daniel O’Toole’s New Gradient Works Provoke a Distortion of the Senses

"Can an image feel as though it has a sound frequency embedded in it?" That is the question animating Australian artist Daniel O'Toole's latest exhibition at Modern Times, which closed this week in Melbourne. Called Cascade Rumble, and inspired by O'Toole's own experience with synesthesia, the exhibition features works that are intended to fully engulf the viewer and to "hum a frequency of sound that resonates in the mind."
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Jagged, Glacier-Inspired Glass By a California Icon, On View at Hauser + Wirth

Larry Bell's latest exhibition at Hauser + Wirth, on view until April 11, might be the California Light & Space artist's largest presentation of work in New York yet. Called Still Standing, the title refers both to the octogenarian's practice, which shows no signs of slowing, and to what Bell calls his "standing walls" — aka the architecturally-scaled crystalline forms that result from Bell deconstructing his signature colored glass cubes.
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The Mesmerizing Color-Field Paintings — Both Digital and Canvas — of Artist Ana Montiel

Questions about the nature of perception ­— the what, why, and how of consciousness ­— have been driving the work of Mexico-based artist Ana Montiel lately. And while any definitive answers to such age-old puzzles remain elusive, Montiel's work provides a kind of aesthetic response, making those mysteries both visual and material. There’s a mesmeric, meditative quality to her canvas and digitally-created color field paintings, reminiscent of the Light & Space art of the '60s and '70s.
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At 83, Vasa — and His Famed Acrylic Sculptures — Are Still On Top of the LA Art World

When our friend and sometime contributor Robin Stein emailed us to reveal that Los Angeles artist — and longtime SU obsession — Vasa Mihich was an old family friend, and ask if we might be interested in shooting his Los Angeles studio and archives, we jumped at the chance. What Stein's photos reveal is something that we, who often focus on design's newest and youngest practitioners, rarely have access to: a portrait of an octogenarian artist, still producing at a rapid clip, at the height of his career and his potential; a maker clearly in love with both his materials and his process.
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Pink Houses and Ombré Hot Tubs, On View at a Los Angeles Gallery

An ombré hot tub, a bubblegum pink house, gorgeous, multi-colored, woven wall-hangings — Kayne Corcoran Griffin’s current two-person show with Mika Tajima and Jean-Pascal Flavien is chock full of splashy sculptures, paintings, weavings, installations and more that are right up our alley. The two artists are fascinated with the human tendency to gather in groups, and both Tajima and Flavien create playful work that explores what happens at those sites of assembly.
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A New Photographic Series Channels All Our Favorite Trends

When we first met our frequent collaborator Pippa Drummond, it was via a series drawn from her personal portfolio: Using beauty-salon staples, in collaboration with a prop-stylist friend, she created beautiful assemblages with a fair amount of optical trickery. (The fake nails and brushes, disassociated from their typical use, became almost random, abstract shapes.) Her latest work employs an optical-illusion effect as well, but the Barbara Kasten-y aesthetic here is more sophisticated, drawn as it is from a series of high-brow influences.
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Shiny Cubes and Popsicle Sticks in a California Light & Space Artist’s Retrospective

It’s a sweltering hot day in downtown Los Angeles when I visit California Light and Space artist Peter Alexander’s career retrospective at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery, but I feel immediately refreshed upon entering. It isn’t just the effect of the A/C, but also of Alexander’s geometric polyurethane sculptures, their glistening surfaces at once enticingly reflective and mysteriously opaque.
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