This Week in LA: Aug. 21→27
Between Reality and Dream in LA's Galleries
Late August in Los Angeles brings a reflective turn to the gallery scene, where artists navigate transformation, resilience, and the blurred boundaries between reality and dream. Whether you're drawn to C Lucy R Whitehead's alien-specimen bodies at Megan Mulrooney, the first scent-based exhibition exploring aromatic mythologies at Craft Contemporary, or Francis Picabia's endless reinventions of painting women at Michael Werner Gallery, there's a rich tapestry of artists who understand that art emerges from both destruction and creation. This week celebrates the transformative moments when boundaries dissolve and new forms emerge. Time to embrace the fever dream of late summer...
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On View Now
Hammer Museum | Westwood
Group Exhibition: HEAD FOR THE HILLS! Selections from the Grunwald Center and Hammer Contemporary Collection
On view through August 24, 2025
Recent acquisitions demonstrating the Hammer's commitment to collecting diverse work by local and international artists, highlighting artworks that use the local, personal, and banal to tap into the universal.
Louis Stern Fine Arts | West Hollywood
Cecilia Z. Miguez: A Thousand Years in One Night
On view through September 6, 2025
Sculptures salvaged and transformed by the January Eaton Fire, showcasing bronze figures that bear the scars of the inferno while telling a powerful story of resilience, reincarnation, and the healing power of creative work.
Megan Mulrooney | Hollywood
C Lucy R Whitehead: Cuckoo Land
On view through August 30, 2025
New paintings rendering the body as soft, tubular, faceless objects that appear as alien specimens pretending to be bodily, placed in shallow landscapes with scientific detachment while flirting with the absurd.
Craft Contemporary | Miracle Mile
Group Exhibition: Ether: Aromatic Mythologies
On view through October 26, 2025
The museum's first scent-based art exhibition featuring thirteen artists exploring mythologies from various parts of the world through olfactory-centric installations that convey personal and cultural histories through the embodied experience of smell.
Michael Werner Gallery | Beverly Hills
Francis Picabia: Femmes
On view through September 13, 2025
Paintings charting the last three decades of the French modern master's career through his singular subject matter of women, including masterpieces from his "Monster" series, "Transparencies," and proto-Pop portraits that defied conventional modern art understanding.
S P O N S O R E D
Nazarian / Curcio | Hollywood
Group Exhibition: This is Not a Toaster
On view through August 23, 2025
Nine artists and designers cleverly embed systems of utility within sculptural forms, challenging conventional expectations and blurring distinctions between fine art and design in a playful nod to Magritte's surrealist spirit.
Bel Ami | DTLA
Group Exhibition: The Sunday of Life
On view through August 30, 2025
An exhibition exploring the dissolution of traditional urban reality into hyperfestive society, examining how the progressive festivization of culture has infiltrated our perceptions and created a post-historical era where the concrete has given way.
Patricia Sweetow Gallery | Arts District, DTLA
Group Exhibition: Considering Summer 2025
On view through August 23, 2025
Twelve artists celebrate the rich language of material abstraction sprinkled with phantasmic figuration, reframing memory, loss, ceremony, and culture through textiles, ceramics, paint, metal, beads, and repurposed materials.
NOON Projects | Chinatown
Hertta Kiiski: Fever Dream
On view through August 30, 2025
Sculptural works, photographic assemblages, and two new films creating an installation that evokes a gentle collapse—moving like a lucid dream through the slow erosion of form and porous boundaries between species with unexpected tenderness.
The Huntington Library | Pasadena
Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight
On view through November 30, 2027
A site-specific installation featuring a 17-foot vintage wooden canoe with found objects and materials harvested from The Huntington's grounds, transforming the gallery into a cocoon-like environment that brings the outside in through shifting lighting and oceanic gradients.
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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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