LOS ANGELES, CA.- LAXART has named Malik Gaines as its new curator. Malik Gaines has worked as an independent curator in Los Angeles for several years, and has worked previously on a several projects at LAXART, and he is curating a major project in the upcoming Pacific Standard Time public arts festival in January 2012. He is also an art critic, contributing to several publications in the past including Artforum, ArtReview and Frieze, and works as an artist with the collective My Barbarian.Malik Gaines is a curator, writer, and artist based in Los Angeles. At LAXART, he has organized exhibitions and projects including “Kalup Linzy: All My Churen” (2006), “Talks About Acts” (2007), “Anna Sew Hoy: Pow” (2008), and “Colter Jacobsen: Searchin’ Vs. Buildin’” (2010). Gaines has worked as an independent curator of exhibitions including “Fade: african american Artists in Los Angeles” (2004) for the City of Los Angeles; “Effacé” (2006) at Steve Turner Gallery, Beverly Hills; “Read Me! Text in Art” (2007) at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; and the upcoming “Quadruple Consciousness” at Vox Populi, Philadelphia. He will be working on a major program for the Pacific Standard Time public art and performance festival in January of 2012.
Gaines has contributed art criticism and journalism to publications including Artforum, ArtReview, Frieze, The Advocate, ArtUS and Art Papers. He has written catalogue essays for the Studio Museum in Harlem, the 1st Moscow Biennial, the Hammer Museum, among others, and has provided monograph texts for artists including Andrea Bowers, Mark Bradford, Glenn Ligon and Wangechi Mutu. In 2003, Gaines received a Penny McCall Foundation Award for his work as a critic and curator.
With collaborators Alexandro Segade and Jade Gordon, Gaines is a member of the collective My Barbarian, which has shown performance and video work internationally. The group was included in the 2005 and 2007 Performa Biennials, the 2006 and 2008 California Biennials, the 2007 Montreal Biennial, and the 2009 Baltic Triennial. Their video project “The Night Epi$ode” will open at the Hammer Museum in October 2010.
Gaines received a B.A. in History from UCLA (1996) and an MFA in Writing from Cal Arts’ School of Critical Studies (1999). He is currently working on a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at UCLA, which he expects to complete in late 2010. Gaines teaches performance history and theory in Cal Arts’ School of Theater, and has taught at Bard College, UCLA, USC, UC Irvine, Otis College, California College of the Arts, and San Francisco Art Institute.
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