This Week in LA: April 30→May 6
In this Edition: Radical Mixtapes, Resurrected Film, and Figures That Merge with the Land — New Exhibitions from Westwood to Pasadena
Three of LA’s major institutions anchor this week’s lineup with film, archive, and retrospective — while Hollywood galleries stage encounters with absence, landscape, and the sacred. The Hammer Museum presents Arthur Jafa’s The White Album, a 30-minute experimental film that collages digital media into a radical critique of whiteness and the historical co-option of Black American cultural output. At LACMA, SUEÑO PERRO marks the 25th anniversary of Amores Perros as Alejandro G. Iñárritu excavates over a million feet of never-before-seen footage from the cutting room floor — presented through 35mm projectors and decades of Mexico City sound as film stripped of narrative and resurrected as living material. CAAM opens Stories to Tell, Willie Birch’s first career retrospective, tracing the artist’s singular vision of Black American life from 1968 to the present through papier-mâché sculpture, large-scale charcoal drawings, and the cultural retentions that connect African traditions to contemporary American experience.
Ken Taylor Reynaga’s Beneath the Avocado Tree at Simchowitz Hill House renders the landscape as something physically carried — saturated fields where workers and caretakers merge with terrain until figure and ground dissolve. At Regen Projects, planchette marks the first time Rachel Harrison, Liz Larner, and Rebecca Morris have exhibited together — an exhibition full of absent forms, buried content, and ghostly traces where drop cloths summon past canvases and porcelain retains impressions of objects now gone. And at Jeffrey Deitch, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s Burning in the Eyes of the Maker turns fully toward painting as a site of meaning — where myth, religion, and the sacred arrive not as symbols but as figures that interrupt, demand translation, and refuse to be aestheticized.
Ten shows to explore this week — see the full lineup below.
This week's edition of LA Insider is presented by Curatorial — your partners dedicated to preserving, preparing, and connecting fine art with people around the world. Learn more at curatorial.com
On View Now
Hammer Museum | Westwood
Arthur Jafa: The White Album
On view through August 30, 2026
@hammer_museum
Following his critically acclaimed Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death, Arthur Jafa’s 30-minute experimental film The White Album collages found and produced footage into a radical visual mixtape — a social critique of whiteness that examines how the vitality and survival of Black American people are historically co-opted through coercion and violence.
LACMA | Miracle Mile
Alejandro G. Iñárritu: SUEÑO PERRO
On view through July 26, 2026
@lacma
Marking the 25th anniversary of Amores Perros, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s SUEÑO PERRO excavates never-before-seen footage from over a million feet of film left on the cutting room floor — illuminated by an assemblage of 35mm projectors and layered with sound bites of Mexico City, presenting film as living material composed of time, light, and space.
California African American Museum (CAAM) | Exposition Park
Willie Birch: Stories to Tell
May 5 – October 21, 2026
@caaminla
The first-ever career retrospective of Willie Birch, Stories to Tell brings together groundbreaking works from 1968 to the present — spanning papier-mâché sculptures and large-scale charcoal drawings — chronicling his unique vision of Black American life and how African traditions have been retained in music, art, and culture as part of the Black experience and beyond.
Simchowitz: Hill House | Pasadena
Ken Taylor Reynaga: Beneath the Avocado Tree
May 3 – July 25, 2026
@simchowitzgallery
Ken Taylor Reynaga’s Beneath the Avocado Tree approaches the landscape not as distant scenery but as something inhabited, labored in, and carried physically — with cowboys, workers, and caretakers moving through saturated fields where bodies bend toward the terrain, merging with it, until the boundary between figure and ground dissolves and a hat becomes a hill.
Nonaka-Hill | Hollywood
Kimiyo Mishima: FRAGILE
On view through June 6, 2026
@nonakahillgallery
Spanning over seventy years of practice, FRAGILE presents Kimiyo Mishima’s delicately formed ceramic reproductions of trash — newspapers, vending machine cans, and discarded ephemera silk-screened and hand-painted onto thin sheets of clay rolled out with an udon noodle roller, each piece capturing a moment when public attention was trained on people, things, or events that inspired, attracted, or terrified.
Regen Projects | Hollywood
Rachel Harrison, Liz Larner, Rebecca Morris: planchette
On view through May 23, 2026
@regenprojects
Marking the first time these three influential artists have shown together, planchette is full of things no longer present — Rebecca Morris stretches drop cloths that once lay beneath paintings on her studio floor, Rachel Harrison digitally manipulates and collages Velázquez’s portraits of the Spanish Infanta, and Liz Larner’s porcelain sculptures retain the impressions of objects now gone.
Jeffrey Deitch | Hollywood
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer: Burning in the Eyes of the Maker
On view through May 30, 2026
@jeffreydeitchgallery
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s Burning in the Eyes of the Maker marks a decisive turn toward painting and away from Art — religious and mythological figures arrive not as symbols but as interruptions that demand translation, with painting becoming a conversation rather than a construction, a functional technology guiding toward something older and quieter than personality or intention.
La Luz de Jesus Gallery | Hollywood
Glazed and Confused: Ceramic Group Exhibition
On view through May 31, 2026
@laluzdejesus
Glazed and Confused packs the walls and pedestals of La Luz de Jesus with over fifty artists pushing the boundaries of what ceramics can do for the figurative and narrative scene — from wacky to wonderful, a sprawling group show that celebrates the medium’s range and irreverence.
Track 16 | DTLA
Lane Barden: This Was the Landscape of Our Innocence
May 2 – June 28, 2026
@track16gallery
Lane Barden’s 58-piece photo-based conceptual work explores the poetic resonance between the mythic democratic American landscape, colonial aggression, and the commitment to endless war — presented in two symmetrical installations pairing the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation with ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and the displacement of Paiute Indians from Yosemite with the invasion of Iraq, all in hand-crafted hardwood frames milled by the artist.
Royale Projects | DTLA
Lynn Aldrich: Romance and Reality Will Kiss One Another
On view through June 6, 2026
@royaleprojects
In an unusual pairing of new works with older, less-seen pieces borrowed from private collections, Lynn Aldrich’s Romance and Reality Will Kiss One Another walks a conceptual tightrope between empirical knowledge and interior longing — transforming garden hoses, velvet, tar, sandpaper, and bird swings into sculpture and wall constructions that examine the tension between nature and culture as one collapses into the other.
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LA Insider is the weekly newsletter that connects you to LA's vibrant art and culture scene. From the Hollywood Hills to downtown, Malibu and beyond, we uncover a curated selection of standout exhibitions, cultural events, and creative experiences that define the City of Angels.
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