Befitting the season, this month brings exhibitions that enable the barriers between art and life, and life and death, to fade away. A retrospective of the work of master altarista Ofelia Esparza showcases her iconic altars that helped popularize Día de los Muertos in the United States. A slideshow of radical nun Corita Kent’s photographs highlights her creative process, while Claire Chambless’s gothic dollhouses take on an otherworldly life of their own. An exhibition of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica’s early work shows him moving off the wall into the gallery space, the border-hopping venture Tacto brings artists from Baja California to LA for a cultural exchange that resists xenophobic authoritarianism, and more.Cameron Harvey: GatheringOfficial Welcome, 672 South La Fayette Park Place, Suite 46, Westlake, Los AngelesThrough October 25Cameron Harvey, “Ancestor 50” (2025) (photo by David Daigle, courtesy the artist and Official Welcome, Los Angeles)Cameron Harvey collects plants and flowers during daily walks around LA, grounding her paintings in her own experience of nature. Drawing inspiration from the colors and forms of the items she accumulates, she lays unstretched, shaped canvases on the floor and moves wet paint around with her body. The resulting biomorphic abstractions straddle painting and sculpture, hinting at new forms of organic life just beginning to take root.Frank Romero: California DreamingLuis De Jesus Los Angeles, 1110 Mateo Street, Downtown, Los AngelesThrough October 25Frank Romero, “Saucers Seen Over Hollywood” (2025) (image courtesy the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles)California Dreaming presents new work by pioneering Chicano artist Frank Romero alongside a selection of iconic older works from his six-decade career. The exhibition includes paintings as well as wood and neon sculptures that portray quintessentially LA elements he returns to again and again: freeways and landmarks, palm trees, cacti and other desert flora and fauna, and the ubiquitous automobile. Into these scenes, he has added a new motif: flying saucers, which signify both a Hollywood nostalgia and an allusion to rising xenophobia. These works are accompanied by new still-lifes of objects Romero has gathered on his travels, highlighting the rich cultural nexus he pulls from.Claire Chambless: SpleenMorán Morán, 641 North Western Avenue, East Hollywood, Los AngelesThrough October 25Claire Chambless, “Ghost Complex IV” (2025) (photo courtesy the artist and Morán Morán)Claire Chambless’s haunting dollhouses eschew youthful innocence, instead conveying psychological complexity and bodily decay. Composed of wood, resin, latex, and synthetic hydroxyapatite — a material that mimics bone — her gothic dwellings seem to take on a life of their own, as their organic forms bulge, slump, and branch off into new appendages. Incorporating found objects into her built environments, Chambless conjures up worlds of dark fantasy, even as the interior spaces of her abodes harbor opaque secrets.Hélio OiticicaLisson Gallery, 1037 North Sycamore Avenue, Hollywood, Los AngelesThrough November 1Hélio Oiticica, “Spatial Relief Amarelo 22” (1959/2012) (© César and Claudio Oiticica; photo courtesy Lisson Gallery)Hélio Oiticica was one of the most influential Brazilian artists of the 1960s and ’70s, a key figure in both Neo-Concretism and Tropicália, a movement that takes its name from his 1967 installation. This exhibition focuses on his work from the late 1950s, formative years that prefigured his immersive environments that marked a dissolution of the distinction between art and life. Featured work includes gouaches, one rare oil painting from his geometric Metaesquemas series (1957–58), and examples of his Revelos Espaciais or Spatial Reliefs, constructions of painted wooden planes suspended from the ceiling that mark his first experimentations with space.Karl Benjamin: A Centennial ExhibitionLouis Stern Fine Arts, 9002 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, CaliforniaThrough November 1Karl Benjamin, “Sailboat” (1956), oil on canvas (© Estate of Karl Benjamin; photo by Christian Nguyen, courtesy Louis Stern Fine Arts)Karl Benjamin was among the founders of the Hard Edge Painting movement, a West Coast variant of post-painterly abstraction that also included Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin. Timed with the 100th anniversary of his birth, this exhibition brings together Benjamin’s work from the 1950s, produced before the seminal 1959 show Four Abstract Classicists, curated by critic Jules Langsner, that marked the birth of the Hard Edge movement. The paintings on view trace the artist’s experimentation with various styles such as expressionism and cubism — developmental steps leading to the crisp, cool style that eventually became his hallmark.TACTO: Dialogues of Separation and UnionSocial and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), 685 North Venice Boulevard, Venice, CaliforniaThrough November 1Valentina Sepúlveda, “Losing My Mind en las Calles del Norte” (2022) (image courtesy SPARC)Tacto is a binational project focused on resistance, resilience, and cultural dialogue between SPARC’s Durón Gallery in Los Angeles and Centro Estatal de las Artes (CEART) Tecate in Baja California, Mexico. SPARC’s portion features 10 artists from Baja California whose work across painting, video, photography, textile, and performance explores land and identity. Participating artists include Mely Barragán, celeste hernández, Raúl Rodríguez Valenzuela, Valentina Sepúlveda, and others.Luis Jiménez: American DreamMatthew Marks Gallery, 1062 North Orange Grove Avenue and 7818 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, CaliforniaThrough November 8Luis Jiménez, “Rodeo Queen” (1972), fiberglass (image courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles)The late artist Luis Jiménez is best known for his fiberglass sculptures that draw on Pop Art, car culture, and his Mexican-American heritage. With sensuous curves, bright colors, and gleaming surfaces, Jiménez explored and subverted the mythologies of the American West by depicting women’s bodies, muscular automobiles, cowboys, horses, and weapons of war, sometimes in the same work. American Dream, the first solo presentation of his work in LA in over four decades, features 14 sculptures, paintings, and drawings made between 1968 and 1997.Suchitra Mattai: Fables, Guineps and the Sweetness of UnknowingRoberts Projects, 442 South La Brea Avenue, Hancock Park, Los AngelesThrough November 15Suchitra Mattai, “a full heart” (2023–25) (photo by Paul Salveson, courtesy the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles)Suchitra Mattai plucks elements from various art historical references — from European portraiture to South Asian miniatures — and transforms them to explore how culture is shared and constructed through migration and colonialism. At Roberts Projects, she incorporates embroidery, needlepoint, and beading, all craft techniques drawn from her Indo-Caribbean heritage. Using the narrative structure of the fable as a conceptual framework, Mattai unites these disparate elements through a new form of storytelling.Corita Kent: The Sorcery of ImagesMarciano Art Foundation, 4357 Wilshire Boulevard, Mid-City, Los AngelesThrough January 24, 2026Corita Kent, “Corita (Sister Mary Corita, IHM) and Sister Magdalen Mary, IHM, Paris, France” (1959), 35 mm slide (image courtesy Corita Art Center)Radical nun Corita Kent is best known for her vibrant screenprints that combined aspects of popular culture, spirituality, and social justice with experimental typography and graphic immediacy. As an avid photographer, she used her camera to record source material and design inspiration, document the signs and streetscapes of LA, and chronicle life at Immaculate Heart College, where she taught art. The Sorcery of Images culls work from an archive of over 15,000 35mm slides taken by Kent and her colleagues between 1955 and 1968, from which curators Hanneke Skerath and Douglas Fogle selected 1,100 images. Presented as a three-screen digital projection, the exhibition offers insights into Kent’s practice, juxtaposing images in ways that extend her legacy of tireless curiosity.Ofelia Esparza: A Retrospective Vincent Price Art Museum, 1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park, CaliforniaOctober 18–April 18, 2026Ofelia Esparza in front of “Mictlan Sur” (2000), an altar at Self Help Graphics & Art (image courtesy the artist)Master altarista Ofelia Esparza has helped popularize the Mexican tradition of altar-making — honoring deceased loved ones through temporary memorials composed of photographs, flowers, food, and other symbolic offerings — in the United States over the past several decades. A native of East Los Angeles, Esparza is a sixth-generation altar-maker and began crafting public altars in 1979 at the community art center Self-Help Graphics, where she also took up printmaking. This retrospective recreates some of her most memorable altars alongside other artwork and archival material, tracing a seven-decade career that has intersected with major movements for social justice and civil rights.