PST ART Review, Part 3:

At Morán Morán in East Hollywood, Oscar Tuazon presents mementos from the site of the Los Angeles Water School (LAWS), a public art workshop that Tuazon established in an empty lot near the Los Angeles River to educate the public about water protection and water activism. The works on view include six stolid totemic sculptures; one is made from a found water pump while the other five are made from Douglas firs, evergreens native to western North America. On the gallery walls, enchantingly inscrutable paintings – composed of marbling ink and enamel spray on canvases, industrial tarps and topographical maps – attest to the unpredictability of water as an artistic material and collaborator. In works like Water Laws (2024), Fun Addiction (2024) and Agua Caliente (2024) one can see how water moved on the paintings’ surfaces, creating various translucencies and opacities, striations and smudges, pooling pigment into some areas and leaving others untouched.

Oscar Tuazon, Cedar Spring Water School Window, 2018/2023, enamel on glass, plywood, steel, aluminium and Douglas fir, 192 × 59 × 32 cm. Courtesy the artist and Morán Morán, Los Angeles

PST ART: Art and Science Collides at various venues, Los Angeles, through 16 February