Mat Gleason is my favorite contrarian on the LA art scene: blunt but humane, the proverbial drill sergeant with a heart of gold. Mat knows a whole lot, and cares deeply about what's going on around him, so that even when I disagree with him-roughly 30% of the time-I admire that he's typically seasoned his point with some caustic humor, along with a barb or two at an ample cross-section of the art world's sacred cows. His writing is the antithesis of the jargon-heavy academic theorizing that passes too often for art criticism, and having first read many of these short essays online, I am...