This Week in LA: Oct. 9→15
Resilience, Process, and Creative Lineage...
This week brings explorations of resilience, creative process, and historical lineage across Los Angeles galleries. Featured are deeply personal figurative sculptures exploring marginalization and healing at Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Sam Gilliam’s small-scale constructions charting new territory between painting and sculpture at David Kordansky Gallery, and Pia Ortuño’s first US solo exhibition merging Costa Rican identity with spiritual symbols at Make Room Gallery. Whether you’re drawn to the sweeping survey of modern and contemporary sculptors from Degas to Ruscha at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Pasadena or the intergenerational exhibition of Latinx and Latin American women’s Mail Art at California Museum of Photography in Riverside, early October showcases artists whose work bears witness to struggle, transformation, and the enduring power of creative expression. Time to explore our picks for this week’s compelling exhibitions...
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On View Now
Marc Selwyn Fine Art | Beverly Hills
Leilah Babirye and Reverend Joyce McDonald: Two-Person Exhibition
On view through November 8, 2025
New figurative sculptures by two artists born a generation apart exploring marginalization, survival, and healing – Babirye’s totemic ceramic and bronze works honoring Uganda’s LGBTQ+ community, paired with McDonald’s intimate testimonial sculptures crafted from humble materials that affirm spiritual transcendence.
David Kordansky Gallery | Los Angeles
Sam Gilliam: Constructions in Color, 1978–1981
On view through October 11, 2025
Small-scale works featuring handmade paper, watercolor, and collage that emphasize the sculptural potential of the medium, with creases and wrinkles becoming equal partners with pigments while collage-based techniques create dramatic visual movement and varying degrees of relief.
DMST Atelier | Los Angeles
Kim Garcia & Frannie Hemmelgarn: Tender Material
On view through November 8, 2025
A two-person exhibition exploring memory, grief, and repair through sculpture, works on paper, and mixed-media installation, featuring Garcia’s hazy resin works mirroring memories slipping away and Hemmelgarn’s fragile paper works conveying care and repair through tracing, pressing, tearing, and weaving.
LAUNCH Gallery | Los Angeles
Eve Wood & Andre Yi: Temporary and Corporeal Aviaries
October 11 – November 8, 2025
A two-person exhibition featuring LA-based artists’ fascination with birds—Yi’s meticulous paintings and drawings of various species as a serious observer, paired with Wood’s new series focused on ravens as pranksters and sages commenting on current affairs and political unrest.
Make Room Gallery | Hollywood
Pia Ortuño: Ceremonias
On view through October 18, 2025
The Costa Rican-born, London-based artist’s first US solo exhibition featuring sculptural reliefs and paintings where pigmented marble powder layered on wooden blocks evokes canyons and forests, merging indigenous Central American art with Catholic imagery to explore duality, spirituality, and cultural identity.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA)
Arts District, DTLA
Open House
October 11, 2025, 4 – 8 PM
A members-only walkthrough with featured artists led by curators Amanda Sroka, ICA LA Senior Curator, and Raphael Fonseca, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art at Denver Art Museum.
Baert Gallery | Arts District, DTLA
Ai Makita: Metabolizing Machine
On view through October 18, 2025
The artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery featuring paintings and her first three-dimensional works that visualize the fear of machines spiraling out of control, created through a process volleying between hand and AI generation where photographed engine parts are fed to AI then painted back into physicality.
Sidecar Gallery | Arts District, DTLA
Josh Callaghan & Elizabeth Schwaiger: DRAWING ROOM
On view through November 8, 2025
A two-person exhibition in collaboration with Nicola Vassell Gallery featuring Schwaiger’s emphatic paintings of artist studios with voluminous gestures creating illusory depth, paired with Callaghan’s frenetic steel tube sculptures that delineate negative space like three-dimensional doodles, both tracing marks left by forces come and gone.
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts | Pasadena
SCULPTORS: From Degas to Ruscha!
On view through December 24, 2025
An extraordinary grouping of more than 50 works by major modern and contemporary sculptors including Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Alison Saar, and Ed Ruscha, featuring varied media and scales from small bronzes to monumental works.
California Museum of Photography, UCR ARTS | Riverside
Transgresoras: Mail Art and Messages, 1960s–2020s
On view through February 15, 2026
Fall Reception: Saturday, October 11, 6–8pm
Curatorial Tour: Saturday, October 11, 5pm
An intergenerational survey of artworks made and exchanged by Latinx and Latin American women artists from the 1960s to present, featuring visual poetry, drawings, prints, performance, video, and photography that used the postal system to transgress restrictive systems and evade censorship.
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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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