Mat Gleason

Suddenly the essays decrying art fairs appeared out of nowhere, a tsunami of scolding. Every time the term "art fair" was mentioned in an online or print essay, some embittered art critic was picking apart the art fair establishment in mock horror. Art critics reflexively hate art fairs. Art critics...

When artist Chris Silva got an invite to participate in an art show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), he wanted to make sure he brought his best work. The "Transmission LA" show carried the outsider street credibility of its curator,...

I made the leap from critic to curator, but not from writer to non-writer. My decision to open a contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles was as much a case of cabin fever as it was a love of putting art shows together. There is plenty to write about on...

The Art World has a long tradition of holding juried art shows to fund independent, alternative and non-profit galleries. Juried shows are the gateway to many an art career, but carry the stigma of leaving many artists high and dry, paying for the privilege of being rejected.

I was invited...

By now Los Angeles is awakening to a Pacific Standard Time hangover and if we never see another black and white photo of a wannabe beatnik sucking up to Walter Hopps we might make it through the decade ahead in one piece. It took me a while but I finally...

I went out with a camera and avoided any copyright infractions by running outside onto public property to discuss the work of artists and art on display at Los Angeles area galleries. This was all recorded on the brisk but sunny Southern California afternoon of March 15, 2012.

All of...

Every once in a while there is an art exhibit that is so perfect it serves as a litmus of each viewer who takes it in. Years later you can bring up such a show and gage many things about a person based on their response. Someone who loved it...

Los Angeles Artist Gronk appeared on the Coagula Webisode released Tuesday. He discussed painting the sets for the Peter Sellers opera Griselda with Coagula's Mat Gleason.

Fresh off the Pacific Standard Time survey of ASCO (the Chicano artist collective he co-founded in the early 1970s) at the Los Angeles County...

Happy Birthday, Jackson Pollock. The most controversial artist of the 20th century was born one hundred years ago on January 28 in Cody, Wyoming.

Pollock remains a polarizing figure in art and culture, for all the right reasons.

He is roundly derided on each plateau of society for his poured...

It is 2012, but in the art world it is often still 1966. Some of the "traditions" underlying the business side of the gallery and museum world date back decades. Don't let 'em fool you that they are hip. The art world is a bunch of stubborn ninnies who learn...

As December wound down... an arsonist or plural set over 40 fires in a hellish night of "street art" vandalism in and around Hollywood -- starting many of the fires by igniting cars.

Weird... on December 18 I was out in my front yard shooting moonrise pictures, an eerie red...

Forget the institutions. Most of the Southern California museum exhibits in 2011 were bookish and boring. Walking through the hallowed halls felt like turning the pages of a poorly designed catalogue. The art world wants to pretend it is an amalgamation of rule-breakers; but tell someone that one of L.A.'s...

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) gypped the one percent out of some hoarded cash at a dinner theater fundraiser featuring Marina "Stare-Down" Abramovic extending her eyeball brand imagery (read an on-scene coverage by Susan Michals here). I skipped digging deep on the big ticket when...

A friend sent me her Bank of America ATM receipt with its upbeat encouragement to explore the Pacific Standard Time website. Could there be a crueler indictment of an art world that is convinced of its moral superiority to mainstream culture than to be subsidized by one of...

The giant Art Platform fair took Los Angeles by storm at the beginning of October. With almost a hundred galleries and exhibition spaces from around the world participating, this was a high water mark in L.A.'s ascendancy on the international art world. There was no shortage of space for exhibitors...

This is the 9th Autumn that has seen major league gallery exhibitions in Culver City. Actually the Gallery district is at the border of Los Angeles and Culver City, with the Los Angeles galleries on La Cienega, North of Washington, enjoying a far less restrictive city code apparatus than their...

On Saturday I was at a reception for an art exhibit at a local cultural institution. A big show for a good artist who deserved it. A great crowd. Festive, exciting. In my mind I thought of some ideas for an article about the artist, the venue and the show....

Anna Stump is a Los Angeles based artist who has delved into painting portraits of actors as Jesus Christ from popular movies. The series was recently exhibited as an exhibition entitled Sexy Jesus at her pop-up gallery in a storefront at the Los Angeles Downtown Art Walk and seemed equal...

I spent a few Saturdays this summer taking art enthusiasts to artist studios in and around Los Angeles. Some artists live in their studios, others drive to their studios just like a day job. Lots of artists have their studios in their garage.

Los Angeles is a paradise when it...

I never gave two seconds of thought to Lucian Freud before 2003. He was always an antiquated backward figurative oil painter in my mind, something to whisk by in a museum on the way to the toilet, the exit or something trendy. I didn't care about his auction records, that...