Mark Posey’s paintings are evidence of the obsession that drives his work. Like an endless science experiment, his impetus is to tinker and test the possibilities of the materials at hand. In his Window series, the subject matter is also a vehicle for these explorations. The windowpanes become an illusory veil, distorting the images beyond it, creating an ironic balance between tromp l’oeil and Clement Greenberg’s theories on the flatness of the picture plane. Posey further complicates this relationship by “steaming” the windows and doodling images in the condensation like finger painting. A work entitled Guilty Pleasures, wickedly employs Gothic tracery as a framing device for the contrasting melange of neon signs of vice. In the Brick paintings, chairs, windows and walls are constructed with funky, wobbly brick, while stones are precariously balanced in impossible configurations. Levels, cigarette butts, and band-aids suggest that the work of building a composition is filled with calculation, but also lots of trial and error.

Julian Wasser was the key TIME/LIFE photographer in LA during the 1960s. He documented JFK’s nomination, speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin, the Watts Riots, and the assassination of RFK. His iconic 1963 portrait of Marcel Duchamp playing chess with a nude Eve Babitz was one of the earliest examples of staged performance art for the camera. As a young copy boy at AP, he met and rode around with the legendary and unflinching press photographer, Weegee, and later worked for the noted LA photographer, Leigh Weiner. Amongst his infamous subjects was the Cielo Drive murder scene, and his coverage of Patty Hearst, which earned him a name on the masthead of TIME.