rubine red gallery

Must-See Art

These exhibitions and experiences will open your eyes and feed your soul.

Steven Biller Arts & Entertainment

rubine red gallery

Jacob Semiatin created vibrant watercolor paintings available for viewing at Rubine Red Gallery in Palm Springs.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY RUBINE RED GALLERY

The Estate Collection

Rubine Red Gallery
Ongoing

In addition to contemporary works, Rubine Red Gallery represents the estates of four artists who had ties to the Coachella Valley and whose paintings and works on paper still resonate with local collectors. They include Lynne Mapp Drexler, a New York School abstract expressionist whose effervescent paintings, executed with large, exuberant brush strokes, reference both the landscape and still life; Malcolm H. Myers, a painter and printmaker whose abstract works feature lively animals, jazz musicians, and mythical figures; Reginald Pollack, whose early work consisted of drawings, paintings, and printmaking, while his later work (after 1970) was painted with oil and sometimes pencil or marker to create imaginative, hyper-layered works of faces and swirls; and Jacob Semiatin, who notably worked his abstract expressionist visions into vibrant watercolor paintings (shown). rubineredgallery.com

Yaacov Agam

Sunnylands Center & Gardens
Through June 2022

In Motion: Agam at Sunnylands will play all sorts of tricks on your eyes. In the season-long exhibition, Israeli-born artist Yaacov Agam offers sculpture, lenticular paintings, and a serigraph series showing how combinations of basic shapes, lines, and colors can “evolve.” Agam won the attention of the late Walter and Leonore Annenberg when the artist mounted the first show at the Palm Springs Art Museum’s current location in 1976. The Annenbergs especially liked Square Waves, which they purchased, beginning a long friendship with Agam.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY THE ANNENBERG TRUST AT SUNNYLANDS. PHOTO BY MARK DAVIDSON. ©2020 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK/ADAG, PARIS
3x6 Double Frame Interplay (1976) by Yaacov Agam at Sunnylands.

 The Annenbergs, who famously gifted their collection of impressionist paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, also collected modern and, to a lesser extent, contemporary works. Among living artists, the Annenbergs collected none more than Agam. Exhibition curator Frank Lopez, the former Palm Springs Art Museum librarian and archivist who has held the same role at Sunnylands for 14 years, was a perfect fit to organize the show, which includes works from the collections of both institutions. Among the sculptural works are two gold-plated brass sculptures with elements that rotate rotated to change their spatial composition. There are also three large oil-on-metal pieces that were installed on the patio walls of the Annenberg estate and have been seen only by their guests. sunnylands.org
Helen Frankenthaler

Palm Springs Art Museum
Through Feb. 27, 2022

Helen Frankenthaler, who died in 2011, was the rare woman who not only ran with the “big boys” of abstract expressionism but also charted her own path. She famously introduced a soak-stain technique to achieve a watercolor effect on canvas and was influential in AbEx’s shift toward “color field” painting.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY COLLECTION: HELEN FRANKENTHALER FOUNDATION, NEW YORK ©2021 HELEN FRANKENTHALER FOUNDATION INC. / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
Solar Imp (1995) by Helen Frankenthaler at Palm Springs Art Museum.

The museum has opened an exhibition, Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works 1990–2003, examining the artist’s final crescendo — when she began working on large sheets of paper that she spread onto her studio floor, soaking them with her signature wash and adding spontaneous marks in charcoal, crayon, pastel, pen, and ink. Look for paintings like the bright yellow and orange Solar Imp (1995), an abstraction containing the union of red and green rectangles, a reference to her second marriage, and the moody Contentment Island (2002), named for her Connecticut home and studio. The paintings reflect the sum of Frankenthaler’s six decades of ideas and techniques, a remarkable continuity that makes the show feel familiar even when each visual journey leads to a new and imaginative place. psmuseum.org
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PHOTOGRAPH BY HELEN FRANKENTHALER FOUNDATION, NEW YORK ©2021 HELEN FRANKENTHALER FOUNDATION INC. / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
Helen Frankenthaler's acrylic painting on paper Arie (1995) appears in an exhibition of the artist's late works at Palm Springs Art Museum.

David Černý

Hohmann
Jan. 1–29, 2022

You probably don’t know the name David Černý, but if you’ve been to downtown Palm Springs in the last few years, you’ve likely seen the Czech sculptor’s “babies” — 10 larger-than-life fiberglass sculptures, each one more than 11 feet long and almost 9 feet tall.

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY HOHMANN FINE ART
Resin X-ray work by David Černý at Hohmann.

The faceless figures with barcodes where their mouth should be were installed in 2018 by Hohmann, the Palm Desert-based gallery that represents Černý and will feature his work at its new space — near the Babies — at the Kimpton Rowan hotel. The artist, who’ll also install a 30-foot sculpture in Santa Monica in January, recently designed the controversial Top Tower, an almost 450-foot-tall skyscraper with what appears to be an upended oil tanker leaning against it. It will become the tallest building in Prague. In addition to Babies, the Hohmann exhibition includes Černý’s series of resin and mixed-media X-ray works. hohmann.art
Southern California All-Stars

Melissa Morgan Fine Art
Feb. 10–March 4, 2022

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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY MELISSA MORGAN FINE ART
Andy Moses

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Nellie King Solomon
Southern California has a long tradition of distinctively expressing itself in art, often in new and innovate ways. Each February, Melissa Morgan Fine Art celebrates this spirit with an exhibition of works by contemporary artists who trade in the region’s bright, colorful euphoria.Opening with an artist reception Feb. 10, from 4 to 7 p.m., Southern California All-Stars features new works by Andy Moses, Nellie King Solomon, Jimi Gleason, Alex Couwenberg, Ned Evans, and Shana Mabari that have roots to the region’s light and space and finish fetish movements of the late 1960s and early ’70s, as well as paintings exploring natural phenomena and landscape by Kelly Berg and animal form sculpture by Gwynn Murrill. melissamorganfineart.com
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Ned Evans
C. Dutch

Coda Gallery
February 18–28, 2022

C. Dutch presents works using materials such as handmade optics, polymer films, acrylics, and resin to explore the formal qualities of light and color. “Inside each Lucite box composition,” says gallery director Sam Heaton, “light is shaped and sculptured as if a solid, then blended, merged, and projected to create a stunning illusion of three dimensionality.”

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY CODA GALLERY
C. Dutch at Coda Gallery.

The works appear powered by a light box, but they actually use available light that reflects back into the environment. The artist, a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and product developer with more than a dozen patented lighting devices, draws inspiration from photographic techniques and optics as well as the light and space and finish fetish art movements. His work hovers somewhere between the realms of painting and sculpture. codagallery.com
Intersect Palm Springs

Feb. 10–13, 2022

The Intersect Palm Springs art fair at Palm Springs Convention Center features about 60 galleries and their selections of post-war and contemporary art. Perrotin (Paris, Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai) is among the top exhibitors, offering works by Gabriel Rico, Leslie Hewitt, and Desert X alum Iván Argote. Others include Edward Cella Art & Architecture (Los Angeles), Galerie Gmurzynska (Zurich, New York), PDX Contemporary Art (Portland), Marc Straus (New York), Andrew Rafacz (Chicago), Nancy Hoffman Gallery (New York), and Peter Blake Gallery (Laguna Beach). Hohmann and Melissa Morgan Fine Art represent.

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY INTERSECT PALM SPRINGS
Nathalia Edenmont at Intersect Palm Springs.

The program includes an opening-night preview and reception, artist talks, panel discussions, and in-fair exhibitions focusing on design, Southern California artists, and migration to the desert. intersectpalmsprings.com
High Desert Test Sites

April 16–May 29, 2022

The 12th edition of High Desert Test Sites features nine new site-specific works in Pioneertown, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, and Wonder Valley. Curated by Iwona Blazwick, director of London’s famous Whitechapel Gallery, HDTS 2022: The Searchers shines light on “regenerative ruin,” a concept that follows 21st-century human intervention in our desert region. “As a historically nomadic environment,” she notes, “the desert has played host to waves of different existences — transitory settlements, sanctuaries, and living experiments.

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY HIGH DESERT TEST SITES
High Desert Test Sites features site-specific artworks.

This particular desert, at the bottom of the dense Mojave, occupies a fringe space between the western apexes of Los Angeles and Las Vegas where these experiments flourish. Its uniqueness lies in the many ungoverned moments, layered visions, and transposed uses of space that comprise a landscape full of attempted solutions to the basic question of how to live?” Artists include Dineo Seshee Bopape, Alice Channer, Gerald Clarke, Erkan Ozgen, Jack Pierson, Dana Sherwood, Kate Lee Short, Paloma Varga Weisz, and Rachel Whiteread. highdeserttestsites.com
Desert Open Studios

March 12–13 and 19–20, 2022

The free, self-guided tour is an invitation into the creative spaces of about 70 artists working throughout the Coachella Valley. “We created a mission of uniting the east and west valley and giving visitors a sneak peek into the inner world of the artists,” says Kim Manfredi, who along with fellow artists Lynda Keeler and Anne Bedrick organized the inaugural tour last year.

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY DESERT OPEN STUDIOS
October Rains by Kim Manfredi, organizer of Desert Open Studios.

Visiting a studio, she says, “allows the artists to share their tools, their materials, their personal narrative” with visitors, who can ask questions and even purchase the art. The Coachella Valley Art Center in Indio hosts a group preview exhibition March 4–13, with an opening-night party on March 4.
desertopenstudios.com