Art Review: One Fine Exhibition: “Memorials” at MOCA and Bricks

Welcome to One Fine Showwhen the Observer highlights an exhibit that just opened at a museum outside of New York City, a place we know and love is already getting a lot of attention.

Sometime after 2017, many journalists and other people on social media decided that museum exhibitions should deal with the events of the day. The problem with this idea was that institutional shows take years to develop, while the average news cycle is shortened to just a few hours. Now even ambitious and enduring exhibitions, such as “MONUMENTS” which recently opened at Geffen Contemporary at MOCA and The Brick, feel tied to an issue that could have been resolved in society at large.

But “MONUMENTS” shows that a good topic can be considered far from the topics, especially with the right list of artists. The exhibit includes decommissioned monuments, many of them Confederate, with recently commissioned works by Bethany Collins, Abigail DeVille, Karon Davis, Stan Douglas, Kahlil Robert Irving, Cauleen Smith, Kevin Jerome Everson, Walter Price, Monument Lab, Davóne Tines and Kall Walker who spent time thinking about Dash’s story—many voices were loud on this topic.

Walker certainly knows the reminders—remember A Subtlety (2014) at the Domino Sugar Factory—also listed as a participant in this exhibition. He The Unmanned Drone (2023) summarizes its thesis: it was created from an earlier equestrian sculpture of “Stonewall Jackson” dedicated in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1921, and decommissioned in 2021. Walker’s version is amazing, combining Jackson with Little Sorrel, his horse, so that his horse comes out between the horse’s four horns. In A drone,Jackson feels like he’s disappearing, hand down, his bare pants looking where they shouldn’t open to see how bent he is. In the interview, Walker says his “violent remix” is fitting for a man who was trying to do the same in the country. I would extend the argument to the medium level, too. The statue of a loser was already something that should not exist.

Collins engraved the Jackson plinth with Carolina rose petals for his offering, a reference to the flowers used by former slaves to commemorate the Union Army prison camp on the first Memorial Day in 1865. Other works address these ideas indirectly, such as Everson’s film. Practice, Practice, Practice (2024), a portrait of activist Richard Bradley, who in 1984 climbed a 40-foot pole dressed as a Union soldier to tear down the Confederate flag outside the San Francisco Civic Center. Irving’s New Nation (States) Battle of Manassas – 2014 (2024-25) presents three bronze table sculptures taken from the thousands of images of St. Louis County to commemorate places where Black people have faced violence and led protests, the title refers to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Their methods vary, but each artist offers a new way of how the very concept of monumental architecture should be approached moving forward. Few propose large, monolithic statues, instead opting for smaller works that do a better job of conveying ideas than old monuments ever did.

“Monuments“ on view at Geffen Contemporary at MOCA and The Brick in Los Angeles through May 3, 2026.