This Week in LA: April 9→15
In this Edition: Textile Armor, Medieval Combat, and 200 Wax Rubbings of a Disappearing Home — New Exhibitions Across LA
This week stretches from textile armor to medieval combat, wax rubbings to herbal prescriptions cast in resin — ten exhibitions that test the boundaries between what is seen and what can be trusted. Nazarian/Curcio opens Siluetas Simultáneas, where Maria A. Guzmán Capron’s abstracted textile figures wrap around and shield more legible forms, creating conditions in which concealment enables revelation. At Moskowitz Bayse, Doubting Thomas choreographs skepticism across painting, sculpture, and illusion — with Aaron Elvis Jupin, Mike Kelley, and Tony Matelli each staging a different kind of slippage between recognition and certainty.
Liu Xiaodong brings his first Los Angeles exhibition to Lisson Gallery with Host, training his brush on a single Detroit-based tattoo artist and medieval fighter — variously depicted in full armor mid-battle, inking clients’ bodies, and lounging in a backyard hot tub. Raven Sanchez’s Así Sea / So Be It at ICA LA presents over 200 wax rubbings of her grandparents’ hand-stuccoed East Los Angeles home, made with her mother and aunts before the family was forced to sell after fifty years in a gentrifying neighborhood. At Baert Gallery, The Space Between Skins pairs Yesiyu Zhao’s excavated paintings inspired by Chinese opera with Wen Liu’s sculptures embedded with herbal prescriptions that document her health over time. Julia Couzens’s B E S P O K E O L O G Y at Patricia Sweetow Gallery transforms tulle, fabric remnants, and discarded notions into improvisational abstractions that shimmer with charged ambiguity. And the Vincent Price Art Museum presents rare and unpublished photographs by Luis J. Rodriguez, marking thirty years since Always Running with images of the people and neighborhoods that shaped his early life.
The full lineup is waiting for you below.
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On View Now
Nazarian/Curcio | North La Brea Ave
Maria A. Guzmán Capron: Siluetas Simultáneas
April 11 – May 16, 2026
@nazariancurcio
In Siluetas Simultáneas, Maria A. Guzmán Capron introduces abstracted figures that function as anthropomorphic dressing screens — wrapping around and shielding more legible forms in richly patterned textiles the artist now dyes and hand-paints herself, creating conditions in which concealment enables revelation and identity remains plural, contingent, and continuously unfolding.
Moskowitz Bayse | North La Brea Ave
Aaron Elvis Jupin, Mike Kelley, Tony Matelli: Doubting Thomas
April 11 – May 16, 2026
@moskowitzbayse
Doubting Thomas stages doubt not as negation but as a mode of attention — Mike Kelley destabilizes image-reading with mischievous wit, Aaron Elvis Jupin suspends perception through paintings of masks and webs that grow less certain the longer you look, and Tony Matelli’s sculptures produce an almost tactile skepticism that begs to be touched to verify what the eyes cannot believe.
Lisson Gallery | Hollywood
Liu Xiaodong: Host
April 15 – June 13, 2026
@lisson_gallery
For his first exhibition in Los Angeles, renowned figurative painter Liu Xiaodong focuses an entire painting project on a single subject for the first time in his career — John Mcintyre, a Detroit-based tattoo artist and medieval combat fighter, variously depicted in full armor mid-battle in a snowy forest, inking tattoos across clients’ bodies, and lounging in a backyard hot tub.
Wilding Cran Gallery | Hollywood
Fran Siegel: Arrábida
April 11 – May 16, 2026
@wildingcrangallery
Developed during a Fulbright fellowship in Portugal, Fran Siegel’s Arrábida explores the botanical motifs of azulejo tiles through layered processes of drawing, cyanotype, painting, and collage — positioning these painted ceramic surfaces as sites of inquiry that reveal the dense interrelations between cultural exchange, geographic identity, and imperial taxonomies of the natural world.
Track 16 Gallery | East Hollywood
Alicia Piller: Lost in Space
On view through May 9, 2026
@track16gallery
Alicia Piller’s Lost in Space constructs a material cosmology where history, identity, and erasure orbit one another — assembling celestial images from a 1982 astronomy book alongside abalone shell, salvaged factory-floor paint, and recycled 3D-printed components, with figures from Dred Scott to Octavia Butler anchoring the cosmos to lived experience and resisting historical erasure.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) | Arts District, DTLA
Raven Sanchez: Así Sea / So Be It
On view through August 23, 2026
@theicala
At the core of Raven Sanchez’s first institutional exhibition is a series of over 200 wax rubbings produced in multigenerational collaboration with her mother and aunts, documenting the hand-stuccoed exterior, interior details, and garden of her grandparents’ East Los Angeles home — sold after fifty years due to a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood — reimagining archival practice as a tool for care, grief, and reclamation.
Baert Gallery | Arts District, DTLA
Wen Liu & Yesiyu Zhao: The Space Between Skins
April 9 – May 16, 2026
@baertgallery
Inspired by the Zhuangzi fable of a man who dreams he is a butterfly, The Space Between Skins pairs Yesiyu Zhao’s carved paintings — mapping stages of metamorphosis through Chinese opera and excavated pigment — with Wen Liu’s bone-like mixed-media sculptures cast in resin embedded with Chinese herbal prescriptions that document her ongoing health, tracing a shared threshold between one form and the next.
Patricia Sweetow Gallery | Arts District, DTLA
Julia Couzens: B E S P O K E O L O G Y
April 11 – May 16, 2026
@patriciasweetowgallery
Working intuitively from the mundane heap of life, Julia Couzens fashions abstract works from fabric remnants, paper, wood scrap, thread, and discarded notions — stitching, bundling, cutting, and layering with tulle as a foundational material whose transparency and nuanced palette deliberately undermine Date Night notions of femininity while beckoning states of charged ambiguity.
Vincent Price Art Museum | Monterey Park
Always Running: Photography by Luis J. Rodriguez
April 14 – June 13, 2026
@vpam_arts
Marking the 30th anniversary of his memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA, this exhibition presents rare and unpublished photographs by Chicano poet and community leader Luis J. Rodriguez — documenting the people, murals, and historic neighborhoods of East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley that touched his early life from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Serious Topics Gallery | Inglewood
Michael Arata: Culture, Borderline, Layered Time
April 11 – May 16, 2026
@serioustopics
Michael Arata’s figurative and still-life paintings in Culture, Borderline, Layered Time exude the joy of being alive even when the subject is war and destruction — diagramming human interaction where past and present blur into an unknown future, informed by growing up in 1960s San Francisco and holding the idealism of that era as a working proposition rather than a memory.
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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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