Fabulous Fall

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Doug Aitken, "Now (Blue Mirror)," 2014
Wood, mirror, glass; 48 ¼ x 108 ½ x 18 inches
Photo by Brian Forrest; courtesy of MOCA

This fall, the galleries of MOCA's Geffen Contemporary are sure to be overrun by fans of multimedia artist Doug Aitken, whose retrospective Electric Earth opens on September 11. Working with museum director Philippe Vergne, Aitken is transforming the enormous Little Tokyo warehouse as an immersive experience of his work rather than a traditional chronological exhibition.

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Still from Marnie Weber's "The Day of Forevermore," 2016
Courtesy of the artist and GAVLAK Los Angeles
Photo by LeeAnn Nickel

Also downtown at the Ace Hotel this Sunday, September 11, artist Marnie Weber presents her first full-length feature film The Day of Forevermore at 7:30pm. Weber is widely admired for her use of human and animal hybrids, fantastical detailed costumes and rock-based music that she often writes herself. On September 17, a substantial exhibition of her work, Chapel of the Moon, with photo-collages and gilded trees with stained glass fragments continues the narrative of the film at Gavlak Gallery in Hollywood.

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Roy Lichtenstein, "Reclining Nude," 1980
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Dorothy Lichtenstein
© 1980 Estate of Roy Lichtenstein / Gemini G.E.L.
Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

It is also the season of prints. The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L., a survey of ground breaking works by contemporary artists Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra and others made at the LA studio between 1966 to 2014 also opens September 11 at LACMA. At Gemini G.E.L.'s own Frank Gehry-designed gallery on Melrose Avenue, on September 21, there opens a show of new prints of blue skies and white clouds, L.A. Enthusiasm, by Tacita Dean, the English artist best known for her films. Mixografia, another experimental publisher of limited edition prints has established a new gallery downtown opening on September 10 with Paper or Plastic?, works by the LA-based Argentinian Analia Saban, who has a museum show opening later this month at the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston.

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Henry Taylor, "Untitled," 2016
Acrylic on canvas; 36 x 36 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo

The afternoon and evening of September 10 there are multiple openings of shows at galleries all over the city, especially in Culver City. Highlights include Henry Taylor's most recent paintings set in unique environments, a show that between 6 and 8pm features Taylor's performance with Kahlil Joseph at Blum and Poe. Across La Cienega Boulevard, Jun Kaneko's grand architectural ceramics are featured at Edward Cella Art + Architecture. On September 17, Astrolabe, the fantastical figurative drawings and paintings of Tom Knechtel, opens at Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

This Saturday, September 10, is the evening of Sexy Beast at the Ace Hotel, the live and online auction and party organized to rather money for important cause of Planned Parenthood. In part because of the involvement of Night Gallery, the event brings out great work donated by great artists. Get tickets.

On the topic of women who paint: In Beverly Hills, Gagosian Gallery offers a lush survey of painting by a founder of 1960s color field painting, Helen Frankenthaler from September 16. On September 25, LACMA opens a 22-year survey of the reductive but grandly realist paintings of Toba Khedoori, from her monumental works on waxed paper to her more recent, intimate oils on canvas. Sharon Ellis, known for taking a year to complete a single one of her transcendental landscape paintings, will show smaller but equally vibrant works on paper from November 12 at Christopher Grimes Gallery.

At the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, there is the intriguing Radio Imagination: Artists in the Archives of Octavia E. Butler, works inspired by the papers of the influential African American science fiction writer, which are housed at the Huntington Library. It opens on October 1. At the Huntington's own Scott Galleries, Lari Pittman: Mood Books includes six monumental illustrated books in an installation by architect Michael Maltzan from September 3.

That's all for now. Gotta run!