10 Shows to See in Los Angeles This April

This month, we recommend shows by several artists who provide singular, visionary, and radical ways of viewing the world — and imagining new ones. Madam X’s enigmatic diagrams on view at the Philosophical Research Society draw on myriad spiritual traditions to wrestle with the weight of existence, while Ramekon O’Arwisters’s tangled and knotted constructions reflect the complexities of his lived experience as a queer Black man in America. Carole Caroompas reworks a beloved 19th-century novel as an exuberantly subversive series of paintings. A show of seminal work from Robert Irwin captures the moment he turned away from object-making in favor of the perceptual and experiential. Finally, a Robert Colescott show curated by Umar Rashid sets up a dialogue between the two artists who, in their own ways, reconfigure dense webs of historical and cultural sources in service of alternate versions of reality.

Madam X: The Spiral Universe

The Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard, Los Feliz, Los AngelesThrough April 19

Madam X, “Eternal Culture” (c. 1980), acrylic, graphite, and ink on paper (photo by Carlotta Guerra, courtesy Philosophical Research Society)

For 50 years, the mysterious artist known as Madam X has been exploring and constructing her own spiritual and philosophical universe, made manifest through enigmatic paintings and sculptures. These often take the form of detailed diagrams or charts that draw on a web of esoteric or spiritual sources, including Hinduism, Rosicrucianism, and Kabbalah. The Spiral Universe gathers early wooden sculptures alongside more recent intricate mandala-like works on paper, charting the artist’s career-long investigations into the secrets of existence and transcendence.

The Universe Stops Existing When I Close My Eyes

Spy Projects, 3709 West Jefferson Boulevard, West Adams, Los AngelesThrough April 28

Nehemiah Cisneros, “Poseidon” (2025), acrylic on canvas (photo by Jonah Ifcher, courtesy Spy Projects)

On a Sunday afternoon in early March, a group of 14 artists gathered at Spy Projects for a two-hour life drawing session with Jonathan, an older model with a lanky frame and long, white beard. They then returned to their studios and had two weeks to complete their artworks, which are now on view at Spy in this group show curated by Leslie Fram. From this basic, shared artistic exercise, the final results diverge spectacularly, reflecting a breadth of media, style, and process, ranging from Ever Velasquez’s photo collage, Vita Kari’s woven tapestry, Chris Johst’s 3D-printed sculpture, and a charcoal drawing by Lita Albuquerque, a rare figurative work from an artist best known for her environmental installations.

Nick Taggart: From Camden Town to Tinseltown: 1976 – 1983

Megan Mulrooney, 7313 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, CaliforniaApril 5–May 1

Nick Taggart, “The Largest Drug Store in the World” (1978), watercolor, color pencil, and acyclic on board (© Nick Taggart; photo by Paul Salveson, courtesy the artist and Megan Mulrooney Gallery)

Nick Taggart moved from England to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, and his meticulous paintings and drawings reflect an outsider’s fascination with the twin poles of sunshine and smog that define the city. Curated by Michael Slenske, From Camden Town to Tinseltown features watercolors and pencil drawings created in the years following his arrival, capturing a personal perspective of this messy, dynamic metropolis. From portraits of friends, musicians, and artists to bucolic landscapes and scenes of urban sprawl, Taggart’s work mixes a sense of intimate domesticity with LA’s delirious anxiety located at the nexus of nature and culture.

Ramekon O’Arwisters: HOUSE OF

Craft Contemporary, 5814 Wilshire Boulevard, Miracle Mile, Los AngelesThrough May 4

Ramekon O’Arwisters, “Bitten #8” (2022), ceramic shards, ber, zip ties, and beads (photo by David Schmitz, courtesy the artist and Patricia Sweetow Gallery)

In his knotted and wrapped sculptures, Ramekon O’Arwisters incorporates ceramic shards, zip ties, leather, and clamps, questioning the meanings we project onto specific materials. His practice is grounded in his identity and experience as a Black and queer man, and his artworks reflect a spectrum of intertwined perseverance, resistance, spirituality, and eroticism. House Of encompasses five bodies of work created between 2016 and 2024, each focused on a separate theme from the familial tradition of quilting to the pleasure and pain of BDSM practices, as well as three new, large-scale tapestry-like wall works.

The Anansean World of Robert Colescott

Blum, 2727 South La Cienega Boulevard, Culver City, CaliforniaApril 5–May 17

Robert Colescott, “Untitled” (1970), acrylic on canvas (© The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo by Evan Walsh, courtesy The Trust and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York)

Late painter Robert Colescott remixed and mashed up historical scenes with images from pop culture and art history, excavating unsettling truths about race in America in ways that were “preposterous, slippery, tactless, vulgar, rude, badly behaved, funny, unexpectedly tender” as Hyperallergic critic John Yau notes. Curated by Umar Rashid, whose own paintings conjure fantastical speculative histories, The Anansean World of Robert Colescott spans five decades of the artist’s work, portraying him as a trickster who disrupts the established order to envision an alternate reality.

Step and Repeat

Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, Los AngelesThrough May 18

Linda Besemer, “Swoop Wavy Bulge” (2013), acrylic on canvas (photo by Brica Wilcox, courtesy the artist)

In Step and Repeat, 46 contemporary Southern California artists engage in dialogue with the 1970s Pattern and Decoration movement, which sought to reclaim elements of non-Western art and craft (often dismissed as “feminine”) that were widely marginalized by the fine art establishment. Like their predecessors, the artists in this group show draw on countless sources of decoration and ornament, while extending their aesthetic and material explorations in several new directions. Highlights include Zach Harris’s intricately carved and painted wooden reliefs, Mark Dean Veca’s unsettlingly corporeal transom painting, Raghvi Bhatia’s dazzling ceramic and glass “Stigmatic Fountain” (2023), and Ishi Glinsky’s (Tohono O’odham) oversized, woven wire basket, reinterpreting the original movement’s knotty appropriations through an Indigenous lens.

Robert Irwin in Los Angeles

Pace, 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Mid-Wilshire, Los AngelesApril 5–June 7

Robert Irwin, “Untitled” (1967), sprayed lacquer on aluminum disc (© Robert Irwin/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York; image courtesy Pace)

Robert Irwin in Los Angeles brings together work created between 1960 and 1971 — a crucial era for this late, seminal figure in the Light and Space movement when he was moving from object-based art toward work centered around perception. The exhibition showcases early minimal paintings of lines and dots that played with optics, and his Discs series of the late 1960s, consisting of painted aluminum forms whose edges blurred into the shadows cast on the wall. Also on view will be a 12-foot-tall acrylic column, one of the last physical works Irwin created before turning to installation and experiential art.

L.A. Louver Celebrates 50 Years

L.A. Louver, 45 North Venice Boulevard, Venice, CaliforniaThrough June 14

Tony Berlant, “The Journey” (1985), found metal collage on board (image courtesy L.A. Louver)

When L.A. Louver opened in bohemian Venice Beach in 1975, it was one of only a handful of galleries in the city’s much smaller art world. Half a century later, the local art scene has grown exponentially, and L.A. Louver has cemented its legacy as one of the longest-running galleries on the West Coast, one that continues to mount engaging shows from established and emerging artists, from LA and beyond. This 50-year retrospective features a diverse selection of over 50 artists whom the gallery has worked with, from late legends like Ed Moses, Joe Goode, and Edward and Nancy Kienholz, to those from subsequent generations such as Gajin Fujita, Enrique Martínez Celaya, and Alison Saar.

Carole Caroompas: Heathcliff and the Femme Fatale Go on Tour

Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach, CaliforniaThrough July 13

Carole Caroompas, “Heathcliff and The Femme Fatale Go on Tour: The Honeysuckle Embraces The Thorn” (1999), acrylic and found embroidery on canvas over panel (photo by Eric Stoner, courtesy Laguna Art Museum)

Carole Caroompas (who died in 2022) pulled liberally from literature, pop culture, mass media, and history in her exuberant, layered canvases, delightfully subverting gender, power, and aesthetic hierarchies. For her series Heathcliff and the Femme Fatale Go on Tour, created between 1997 and 2001, she recast the main character from Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights as a rock star who joins with the titular “Femme Fatale” for an explosive anti-hero’s journey. Characterized by deep research, technical mastery, and an abrasive punk sensibility, Caroompas’s work did not fit neatly into art historical categories, and she is only now receiving deserved recognition.

Don Bachardy: A Life in Portraits

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CaliforniaApril 12–August 4

Don Bachardy, “Self-portrait 08-08-18” (2018), acrylic on paper (© Don Bachardy; image courtesy The Huntington)

A Life in Portraits presents over 100 graphite and acrylic works on paper by Don Bachardy spanning the nonagenarian artist’s 70-year (and counting) career. The Santa Monica home that Bachardy shared with his longtime partner, writer Christopher Isherwood, who died in 1986, was a social hub. Bachardy documented their circle through 17,000 portraits, including those of Truman Capote, Bette Davis, David Hockney, and other luminaries, capturing his sitters’ essences in two-to-three-hour sessions. The exhibition will also feature photographs, letters, and documents from Bachardy’s and Isherwood’s archives, both of which are housed at the Huntington, chronicling their creative partnership that lasted over three decades.