Conceptual

I’ve been so excited about the things going on at the Machine Project these past few weeks that I can’t take it anymore. Many of their events are the kind of kombucha potluck/DIY tabla/Needlecraft-therapy-athons that, despite my deep love for them, are beyond the scope of FineArtsLA, but I knew that in time they’d be putting on something all you discerning aesthetes could enjoy. The time, oh, has it come!

This Saturday at the Hammer, the Machine Project is sponsoring two performances of minimalist composer Tom Johnson’s Rational Melodies played by violinist Andrew McIntosh. The Rational Melodies are 21 miniatures Johnson composed on the premise that “rational” music, or melodies controlled by deductive logic rather than inspiration or intuition, shares in the freedom of abandonment that many experimental or improvisational musics enjoy. Johnson, who was also a critic of new music for the Village Voice from 1971 to 1982, scored them so that the orchestration is indeterminate and the melody easily transposable. In short, the music finds its freedom when the composer relinquishes his/her own individual control to the forces of logic.

Now, if you, rational thinker that you are, smell something a little fishy here, you’re not alone. Musical freedom reaped from the shackles of…math? Order? Freedom in theory is one thing, but in practice it is certainly another. Having listened to Johnson’s scores, I can say that somewhere between the page and the performance something gets lost—the suspense, the anticipation of surprise, that harmony or disharmony that the ear craves just sort of…dissolves. Not to say that this is a completely terrible thing—it definitely makes for an interesting listen. But to claim that freedom lies in pure deductive logic is a stretch. It was John Cage who wrote in his first book, Silence, that “any attempt to exclude the ‘irrational’ is irrational. Any composing strategy which is wholly ‘rational’ is irrational in the extreme.” Right on, man.

So what, then? Well, go and check it out, of course! Irrational or no, the whole pseudo-minimalist/serialist thing that Johnson is doing isn’t merely a practice in academic masturbation; it necessitates that we as an audience open our minds to music that functions not solely as pleasure or release according to our expectations, but as a comprehensive examination into why we even hold these expectations in the first place. Plus, McIntosh is an offensively accomplished musician, having performed around the country both solo and as a member of the Formalist Quartet, whose goal it is to widen the repertoire of experimental music worldwide. His performance will take place twice at the Hammer on Saturday—once at 1:00pm in the Little William Theater (get there early—I hear it’s actually a closet), and again at 3:00pm in various outdoor Hammer locations.

Visit the Machine Project’s website for more information, and to sign up for some of their most excellent classes—Intermediate Welding, what?

- By Helen Kearns

For more information about the Machine Project, please call (213) 483-8761, or visit www.machineproject.com.

Generally, creative innovation in any field is thought to have a kind of narrative. When young, the pull toward radical exploration and experiment is bright, vigorous, and hardly noticed by the establishment; that is until a little bit later when these once controversial methods start to become accepted by the mainstream, tauted as revolutionary, and before you know it, the avant-garde becomes the old guard—wisdom and tradition taking precedence over innovation.

But what if this narrative is in itself a kind of trap? What if the possibility for newness, for regeneration never peters out, even in death?

For the late master, avant-garde choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham, this was essential. From his early 1950’s collaborations with such ground-breaking artists as Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage, up until his death at age 90, Cunningham was constantly striving for the future. As late as last year, he could be found hosting a weekly webcast series called “Mondays with Merce,” where he invited the world to see the inner-workings of his 57-year-old, world-renowned company, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC).

And after his death in July of 2009, his innovation lives on. He, himself, arranged for a post-humous outline for his company called the “Legacy Plan”—a way for his work to continue to grow for future generations. As a part of it, the MCDC has embarked on its final, two-year-long international tour, where they will premiere brand new pieces by Cunningham for the very last time.

This is where FineArtsLA comes in. We have managed to score two tickets to see the Saturday, June 5^th performance of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, where they will be premiering to the world the reconstructed Roaratorio, featuring music by John Cage. And yes, we’re giving them away to you, our loyal followers. This is literally beyond a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: all you have to do is enter your first name, last name, and e-mail address into the form below, and you will be eligible to receive two free tickets to see the 7:30 PM world-premiere performance of Merce Cunningham’s Roaratorio, as performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company on Saturday, June 5^th. Not only that, but you will be automatically entered into the running for our next three ticket giveaways.

Cunningham liked to leave his work up to chance, but if you just want guaranteed tickets, you can buy them here.

On a recent Saturday night, nearly a hundred participants slept under Westwood’s stars inside the courtyard of the Hammer Museum. A massive sleepover, just like when you were a kid, only it was one of LA’s most beloved art institutions. People weren’t shouting in the ever-quiet galleries, running amok in the hallways, and getting nose to nose with fine art. But they did get to do acrobatics in the lobby, and burst into song during lectures, as part of the topic of the evening—dreams.

The “Dream-In” event, run in tandem by the Machine Project and artSpa in honor of The Red Book of C.G. Jung exhibit. Dreamers—or guests—were encouraged to log their night visions in journals after a host of experimental dream workshops and a night of camping out in the courtyard.

The mix of mostly 20-to-30-something, bespectacled museum-goers were a quiet group, some even passing out on their makeshift beds for the night before the two workshops of the evening. The seminars, however, operated much like dreams themselves: loosely organized, edging on whimsical and abstract, rather than analytical or didactic. The leaders of the workshops weren’t prophets, professors or psychoanalysts, but rather the kind of artist you’d find decorating the walls of a Silver Lake gallery or making an appearance at The Smell.

Take the spry Marc Herbst, who channeled the Jungian archetype of  “the self” in his workshop “Dream Acrobatics.” Here, he played master of his universe, at once directing participants in an arrangement of four lines to shout “Dream!” with a fist-pump in the air when they crossed one another, while later, ordering museum-all-nighter’s to climb onto one another, two-by-two, with one member taking flight in a superman pose atop their partner’s feet. The superman/superwoman then recited their dream and the person below repeated the tale of the vision. The experience invited smiles and laughter. There was a general spirit of hope that the “Dream-In” was part of something important, expanding knowledge of what we all share in our collective minds.

But then came the prospect of actually sleeping—some hands slick with sweat at the nerves of getting close next to other campers, a cue that there was maybe more disconnect than true shared experience. Camp site neighbors barely exchanged words to one another.

“I almost went home. I had to convince my friend to stay,” a middle-aged UCLA student brushing her teeth in the bathroom said. The student was surprised that there wasn’t more of a connection to Jung, and was disappointed in her workshops of what she called “basic guided meditation.” She would have preferred Jung’s music of choice—Mozart—but admitted to liking the second band of evening, the aptly named Moon, whose ethereal sounds lulled the museum’s residents into slumber.

A recent college graduate getting ready for bed in his al fresco compound, a yoga mat layered with a sleeping bag, smiled widely, reflecting on the “cool” experience of a “Dream-In” staff storyteller nuzzling up next to him to spin some bedtime yarn. “She tucked me in and got so close I thought she was going to kiss me,” he grinned, appearing to have discovered the Hammer as his personal Shangri La for the night.

“This event is really special. The people are really quiet and respectful,” a hiply attired Hammer employee said on her post-midnight work shift. This seemed to be the general consensus of the Hammer staff, elated that the night was going off without a hitch.

“It would have been cool if there were different stations,” a bleary-eyed participant shrugged, blankets in hand the next day. She found it odd that there was only a wake-up concert in the morning led by the melodic, clear voice of Claire Cronin. There were no more dream-related activities, raising the question of what the purpose was of the dream journals and spending the night? Sure, no one wants to sit through hours upon hours of other peoples’ dreams—yawn—but they do want to dive into their own subconscious and come up to air with answers.

In the end, though, it was only questions. Do the cryptic dream images, as Jung so insistently examined, reveal something about our selves? Our relationships with others?  The everyday of our waking lives? Insight to these answers, like the doors of the Hammer Museum, remained locked for the night.

- By Sophia Kercher

The Red Book of C.G. Jung exhibit is up at the Hammer Museum in Westwood until June 6, 2010. For more information about the exhibit, as well as other special events, please call (310) 443-7000, or visit www.hammer.ucla.edu.

I am one of the few lucky Angelenos to live near a metro stop, so I was able to catch the Red Line straight down to Union Station to attend the Watts Village Theater Company’s site-specific performance piece: “Meet Me @ Metro” last Sunday. In the first car I took while going to the performance a crazed woman with a suitcase was dancing and babbling unintelligibly for three fascinated children and their terrified mother. I changed cars and found myself surrounded by a group of long-haired jubilant tourists, cracking jokes at the top of their lungs about Los Angeles to anyone who would listen. Through both of these experiences I avoided all eye contact, set my face in an uninviting frown, and shrank into my chair: tricks I’d learned from four years riding the NYC subway.

At Union Station I joined the throng of expectant “Meet me @ Metro” audience members at the west entrance. We were quickly wrangled into a circle by a company of horn-honking cops circling us on tiny red tricycles and handing out yellow sticky-note tickets. With so many characters riding the subway on any normal day, it took me a minute to realize that the faux cops were part of the show and not just a bunch of lunatics. I perked up out of my guarded public transit shell as soon as I knew the show had begun.

At the center of the circle, the Watts Village Theater artistic director, Guillermo Avilés-Rodríguez, explained that the mission of this show was to redefine the Watts community as a welcoming place and to literally bring people there by using theatre. And that is what they did.

Over the next two and a half hours, twenty or so performers lead fifty audience members through the bowels of the metro, on and off of trains, out into neighborhoods, and finally to a field at the feet of the Watts Towers. We were like a mob of Hansel and Gretels following bread crumbs of narrative, history, poetry, and dance, scattered along our route through an unknown wilderness. If theatre is supposed to take you to places you’ve never been, then this show did. Physically.

More than the performances themselves, we were motivated on by the encouraging smiles and sheer effort the performers put into this undertaking. “The most amazing thing about this show is that we’re doing it,” said Mr. Aviles-Rodriguez when we began, and he was right.

The actual performances at each location were confusing, hard to hear, and underwhelming in quality. The 7^th and Metro Center stop just seemed to be an excuse for the MooDoo Puppet Theater to have a man on stilts hand out postcards for their show. In Pershing Square I was struck by the irony that the audience was huddled around a performer ranting like a homeless person about loving ShangriL.A., while we turned our backs to several actual homeless people on the edge of the circle who were asking what was going on.

But whether the performances were ‘Broadway quality’ or not was beside the point. Back at Union Station I had let my guard down and allowed myself to see more than just where I was headed. As we traveled from station to station, I saw more art in the world around me than I had ever noticed before. Los Angeles, and the Metro specifically, is full of murals, statues, and installation art that I had always walked by with indifference. Now each piece was a part of a show, and it was if a spotlight was shining on everything from Joyce Kozloff ‘s film mural at the 7^th & Metro stop to the music of the Watts ice cream truck playing behind the performers song. And maybe I wouldn’t have seen the inhabitants of Pershing square or their plight to participate in the show if I hadn’t been brought there with more open eyes.

There is so much beauty, humor, art and humanity around us every day here in the second largest city in the United States, and it took a troupe of intrepid performers taking their spectacle out of the theater and onto the street to help me see it. I thought back to my experiences on the metro before the show began and wondered how I would have experienced them differently if I had approached them with curiosity rather than fear.

The Watts Village Theater Company and their collaborators hope to make “Meet me @ Metro” an annual performance festival. If they are lucky enough to make this happen, I encourage you to take the trip. Until then, as you make your daily commute around town, imagine a spotlight once in a while showing you art where you least expected it. I promise you it will make for a much more enjoyable ride.

- By Stephanie Carrie

For more information about The Watts Village Theater Company, please visit www.wattsvillagetheatercompany.com.

On an overcast Tuesday afternoon, when the traffic from the nearby 10 and 405 freeways is just starting to pack in, Bergamot Station in Santa Monica looks and feels more like an industrial depot center than one of Los Angeles’s prime gallery  hubbubs, and local art-dealer hot-spot of international acclaim. The parking lot if half-empty. Lonesome employees rumble by with crates full of water-cooler jugs. Sporadic patrons drift in and out of massive gallery spaces. On the whole, the place seems cold, even uninviting.

That is unless you accidentally stumble into the hallway of the Santa Monica Museum of Art—denoted only by a metallic sign that says “Museum”—and find yourself wondering what all the small, clay objects are doing strung up on the wall, as if hanging from massive, marker sketches of keys, backpacks, doorknobs, and necklaces. It’s this quaint collection of colorful figurines which, from first sight, breathes humanity into an otherwise blue atmosphere. For good reason too: every ornament on the wall is made by an artist below the age of 18—mainly ranging from 5-years-old to 10.

It’s called Wall Works: Project Icons and is the brainchild of clay and found-object artist Anna Sew Hoy. In collaboration with SMMA and six participating schools from around the Los Angeles area, Hoy asked children from kindergarten through 12^th grade to describe their personal wishes, and transform them into pocket-sized “talismans” to help visualize their fulfillment. The wishes themselves, as written in the kids’ own handwriting, and paired with photographs of their corresponding talismans, can be viewed in conjunction with the exhibition. And all it takes is a quick glance at one or two of these wishes to get you digging through them like a treasure chest filled with jewels of innocent brilliance.

“I wish for a talking star to play with me,” writes Karina, who’s  yellow clay star sports sunglasses and a full rack of teeth.

“I had a limen tree so I can have limen juice,” says Megan. And no, this is not simply poor spelling, because Megan’s talisman is neither a lemon nor a lime. Not yellow nor green. It’s in between. It’s a limen. Why no sports drink has come up with this word combination before is beyond me.

It’s interesting: most of the younger kids’ wishes have to deal with fruit, or animals, mice in particular. And the pocket icons they create to represent these wishes are all courageously distorted versions of reality—imperfect, and yet lovely. Only when the children and their respective handwriting grow older, more refined, do the wishes become more realistic and abstract at the same time. Earnestness and anxiety replace playfulness.

“To be good at soccer,” one boy announces. “To be a better basketball player.” “To have a bigger garden.” “To be an architect.” Most all are sports and career related, with the occasional plea for world peace thrown in the mix. The older kids’ clay talismans also become more defined and mimetic, while losing some of the accidental whimsy of of their younger counterparts.

Extrapolating the results—or at least my observations—of Hoy’s project into the greater art-world, I can see how a place like Bergamot Station can seem so cold, the warm humor of its art lost in the jumble of warehouses and parking spaces. It’s the fulfillment of those older childens’ wishes for bigger and better things taking over the goofy vitality of those younger, fruit-and-mouse wishes.

And yet still, when you look at the wall of hanging talismans, they all pretty much look alike, old and young together. Each one the subject of natural distortion—due to the imperfect nature of clay-work—and each one something more than just a good luck charm. They are tactile. You can feel the wishes with your fingers. You can see it. It’s not just an airy idea. It’s a creation.

Anna Sew Hoy’s Wall Works: Project Icons can be viewed at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in Bergamot Station until May 31. For more information, please visit www.smmoa.org, or call (310) 586-6488.

We may be geographically far from, well, everywhere in the world, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep up with all the arts endeavors across every which pond.  So here’s a bit of news (for the very serious and elite readers) and a bonus round of what’s going on in LA that really deserves your attention (for those who care about little outside LA county).

First, a stop in Paris at the Petit Palais.  The Parisian museum brings to the fore the artistic achievements of none other than Yves Saint Laurent.  Curated by Florence Muller and Farid Chenoune, the exhibit, called Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective features gowns, menswear, some of the designer’s treasured personal items used in creative pursuits, and it highlight themes used throughout the many collections in Saint Laurent’s illustrious career.  One ticket to France, please! {Global Post}

Onto Italy.  In Milan, our very own Placido Domingo’s Operalia competition has commenced.  Founded in 1993, Domingo’s opera competition is meant to find the cream of the crop amongst new talent in opera.  The singers represent not only a range of vocal categories (from coloratura soprano to the lowest bass), but also an array of countries around the world.  The competition ends May 2 (this Saturday), so you’ll have a new vocalist’s career to follow starting Sunday, May 3rd.  We have a feeling it will be meteoric.  {Culture Monster}

Not to shower the French with too much attention, though they don’t mind, Sotheby’s has made quite the announcement prior to the upcoming auction season.  The storied (and once thought lost) private collection of legendary Parisian art dealer Amrboise Vollard is set to meet the auction block.  His career was spent promoting such up-and-comers as Picasso, Cezanne, and Renoir and Vollard’s collection includes not only paintings, but such enticing items as prints, drawings, and artist books.  The sale will be held in London on June 22, so brush up on your British colloquialisms.  {ArtInfo}

Back at home, there is much to celebrate.  Dig into your pockets just a bit to buy yourself a ticket to the Architecture and Design Museum’s official Grand Opening!  For $75, you’ll mingle with a veritable who’s who of the architecture and design world in LA at the reception tomorrow night (April 27), (hint: you can also find them anywhere from Father’s Office to Tar Pit on weeknights), check out the first exhibit, and bid on things at the silent auction.  {A+D Museum}  Also, if you haven’t uploaded his schedule into your iCal already, Gustavo Dudamel has returned to the LA Phil – he’s conducting pretty regularly from now through May 8 on a number of concerts all worthy of splurging for tickets.  {LA Phil} This is your last chance to see LACMA’s exhibit Renoir in the 20th Century.  The exhibit closes May 9. {LACMA} Last, but certainly not least, turns out that parodies of Wagner and his Ring Cycle abound.  LA Times’ Culture Monster shows us the best of the best. {Culture Monster}

Last week I had a skunk-off in my driveway. There I was, just trying to make it home, the Los Feliz Blvd traffic behind me and a night curled up with X-Files reruns and a glass of two-buck waiting, when I met my match. Two skunks caught in a deadlock in the middle of the driveway. A fence to my left. A house to my right. Nowhere to go but straight down. I stopped. They stopped. One ran. The other looked my way. She raised her tail into the air, where it plumed above her like a hot curl of smoke from a flame.

“Hey, little girl,” I said, trying to sound friendly.

She was silent. She waited.

“Ummm?” I backed down the driveway. I walked into the street. “I’m over here, now, see? You can go over to the bushes, where it’s safe. Where I’m safe…”

She stared.

Some neighbors walked by, watching my awkward hesitation. I was carrying an armload of groceries, by the way. “Heh, skunks,” I told them.

They stared.

I approached her again. Her tail stretched higher. I retreated. It went on this way for another five minutes, until I decided to just go ahead and put the groceries down and have a cigarette on the curb. Admit defeat.

It worked! She left. Moments later the sound of a cat howling and a streak of white light across the lawn, but I was already shimmying to the door to that well-deserved two-buck.

If you’re looking for a moral here, sorry, there isn’t one. Except maybe try not to happen upon two skunks when they’re in the throes of some weird mating ritual in the middle of your driveway? I mean, obviously, circumstance can’t be avoided. What I’m trying to say, y’all, is it’s Spring!

Alright, so you already know how much I love spring, but let me give you another reason: It’s music season. After spending winter months hunkered down in dark studios recording new LPs, bands across the country are dusting off their tour vans and hitting the road in the name of that glorious American tradition: the Summer Tour.

LA will have no shortage of music to see this summer, and let this weekend stand testament to that. In the span of five days, you’ll have options at almost every venue in the city.

Wednesday, 4/21: Megafaun, Breathe Owl Breath, and Hi Ho Silver Oh! at the Echo.

If you don’t know Megafaun, find out quick. Bedroom folk-rock that rattles so hard but jangles so pretty that it’ll get you drunk before you can even think of saddling up. The night starts off with LA’s own Hi Ho Silver Oh! (there’s North Carolina blood in those boys, to be sure) and Michigan’s banjo-wielding-folksters Breathe Owl Breathe.

Thursday, 4/22: Grouper, John Wiese, Infinite Body, and Ilyas Ahmed at The Smell.

Even though you can’t drink in there anymore, The Smell is still, hands-down, one of LA’s best spaces to experience art in its rawest, all-ages form. Ilyas Ahmed opens with his spectral guitar workings, followed by the yearning drone of Infinite Body. John Weise will then bludgeon it all with his most excellent noise-scaping, leaving the hazy and healing ambiance of Grouper to dry your tears.

Friday, 4/23: +DOG+, Actuary, Bavab Bavab, Drum Jester Devotional, The New Brutalists, and Oscillator at Synchronicity Space.

Get yourself over to Sync Space. Right now. Art gallery by day, venue by night, this place has an event calendar that would put LACMA to shame. Friday night: Noise! Sadists and masochists alike: put your dancing shoes on.

Saturday, 4/24: Yoshitake Expe, matthewdavid, Samuel Partal, and Dead Western at Echo Curio.

The Echo Curio’s doing it just like Sync Space, the whole two sides, one coin thing, and they’re doing a darned good job. Seems a week doesn’t go by that I’m not over there, knee-deep in something good. Dead Western’s baritone psych-folk may seem weird, but it’ll only get weirder—and better—with the crunchy charm of matthewdavid and the delightful neuroverb of Samuel Partal. Yoshitake Expe, whose experimental guitar-noodlings can be found alongside the Boredoms and Keiji Haino, will finish with [insert many expletives here]. Period.

Sunday, 4/25: Aaron Dilloway + John Wiese, Damion Romero, Cleanse, Darksmith and Rale at Synchronicity Space.

They just don’t stop over there at Sync. Rale: newage (rhymes with sewage. I’m just quoting their Myspace). Darksmith: comedy-hop (universal appeal, in my opinion). Cleanse: Either trip-hop from Detroit or something else (If there’s this little info on him on the world wide web, you know it’ll be fresh). Damion Romero: Minnesota minimalism? (Ditto). John Wiese: need I repeat myself? (Yes. This man may be a god.) Aaron Dilloway: No better way to spend a Sunday (except, maybe, this).

I think the Dodgers season may have started, too. Hey! There’s the moral! Keep your eye on the ball, kid.

- By Helen Kearns

It’s been quite some time since we ran a roundup of arts news and we think it’s high time for a roundup reprise.  The art world has been abuzz lately with a forthcoming auction that hopes to bring in some of the most ambitious numbers we’ve seen in a while and news of the Getty Research Institute’s ongoing court case regarding the bronze Fano Athlete statue.

• Speaking of that bronze statue, ArtInfo reports that the Getty Trust has appealed the ruling of an Italian judge that stated the statue should be returned to Italy as stolen property.  The Getty has countered by stating that the work was not stolen and was in fact found outside of Italy “in good faith.” {ArtInfo}
• This weekend saw events held for LACMA’s Collectors Committee Weekend, during which time high-rollers are ‘courted,’ so to speak, by curators and executives from LACMA to give money to a particular sector of the museum for future purchases.  The LA Times’ Culture Monster quotes Michael Govan as saying it’s “the American Idol of the museum world.” {LA Times Culture Monster}
• San Francisco’s Legion of Honor Museum has extended the run of its Cartier in America exhibit through May 9, showcasing bejeweled works and pieces of art from the private collector of Mr. Cartier, the “King of Jewelers,” himself.  {Legion of Honor}
• The Hollywood Bowl season has been updated to include some seriously enticing performers for KCRW’s annual World Festival, including The Bird and the Bee, Baaba Maal, and The Chemical Brothers.  Check out the calendar here and check back on Fine Arts LA later this week for a full write-up of what to expect.  {LA Phil}
• Simon de Pury, nicknamed the Man with the Golden Gavel, has got a lot riding on a collection of urinals.  According to The Guardian, de Pury is set to host an auction that will fall in line with his latest idea for auctions to have themes. Last month’s theme was Sex and the upcoming theme is BRIC (for Brazil, Russia, India, and China).  The auction, a huge risk on de Pury’s part, will include the sale of nine urinals that make up an installation piece called Russian Revolutionary Porcelain by Alexander Kosolapov.  {The Guardian)
• No time to run through the MoMA yourself? Let Youtube do it for you.  Check out the “Two-Minute MoMA,” a video that shows you every painting from the private collection shown on the fourth and fifth floors of the museum.  {CultureGrrl}
• And, just for fun, one of the funniest typos we’ve witnessed in a while hails all the way from Australia.

Lastly, if anyone went to Coachella we’d love to hear about any new discoveries or anything that went particularly sour.  Give us some scoop!

If you’ve never heard of Banksy, chances are you still know who he is—especially if you’ve ever traveled west on Melrose. His art has appeared all over the world, from Bristol, UK, where he got his start, to the Palestinian segregation wall in the West Bank. His striking and humorous images and slogans with their subversive flair is immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with his work. Despite his popularity, Banksy has managed to remain anonymous in order to protect himself from legal persecution—his identity is known to only a small handful of chosen trustees. This Monday, Banksy’s excursion out of the night and into the world of film will prove Banksy to be more than just a cleverly-tongued and craftily-handed stenciler.

The film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, is not just a retrospective of the birth of the underground graffiti-art scene in the 80s. It also follows the story of Thierry Guetta, the LA-transplant from France who serendipitously stumbled upon the graffiti-art scene in the late 80’s and captured hundreds of hours of video footage of the artists in action. Guetta, an obsessive-compulsive character who was compelled to video tape every moment of his daily life, discovered at a family reunion that his distant cousin was the graffiti artist Space Invader, and turned his camera towards the movement. What began as a mild curiosity quickly turned into a new obsession for Guetta. Under the auspices that he was making a documentary on the movement, he managed to befriend and document every big graffiti artist working at the time, accompanying them on their nighttime forays and neglecting his family and life in LA for the span of a decade. Finally, he met and gained the trust of the notorious Banksy, whose reputation for his shocking and dexterous work was by then world-wide. In a grand gesture of faith, Banksy allowed Guetta into a world that few had ever entered—Guetta was the first and only person that Banksy ever permitted to film his secretive exploits in an effort to permanently preserve on film his artwork which was usually destroyed by authorities upon its discovery.

After it became apparent that Guetta’s obsession with the graffiti movement was not actually a passion for filmmaking (he had never made a film in his life, but was the owner of a vintage boutique in Hollywood), Banksy convinced Guetta to hand over his footage and take it easy. He advised him to go back to LA, maybe do some graffiti art of his own, have a little show, have fun. Little did he know what monster his friendly suggestion would birth. Guetta returned to LA, named himself Mr. Brainwash, and in an explosion of self-promotion that would impress even Octo-Mom, launched the biggest solo exhibition of graffiti art the city had ever seen.

At this point, Banksy takes a breath. The movie is no longer about graffiti art, or this crazy guy Guetta—but about the nature of trust, of art itself, and of hype—and how Guetta managed to exploit and violate all three in his manic drive for affirmation. Guetta, in his crazed attempt either to please Banksy, or inflate his own ego, or get rich—it’s unclear—created a humongous body of work practically overnight. He managed to cut through all the channels that most artists have to navigate to become successful. He never developed a craft—he hired real artists to actualize the ideas in his head, most of which were cheap rip-offs of the artists he had followed for so long. He refinanced his house in order to afford the warehouse space where the exhibition took place, filled it with pretty things in a matter of days, and with a shrewd knack for publicity (perhaps where his true artistry lies), got the press—and the art world—on board. The result was a wild success commercially, but it resulted in the loss of all those friendships with artists he had befriended as their accomplice in graffiti for so many years.

The real clincher is that it’s not clear that Guetta has any clue that he may have breached some kind trust in his creation of Mr. Brainwash and subsequent pillaging of graffiti culture and imagery. Operating under the same oblivious self-congratulation that fuels so many of the taste-maker types in the LA bubble, Guetta actually believes his own hype. He maintains an attitude of pleased insouciance—“Life is Beautiful,” he sprays in pink paint on a brick wall moments before it is bulldozed—after all, he is well-known, much adored, and rich. And Banksy? His relationship with Guetta wasn’t a complete disappointment. He proves that his ability for turning a wall into a window reach far beyond his stenciling skills—let Exit Through The Gift Shop be a lasting reminder of that fact.

By Helen Kearns

Exit Through The Gift Shop opens this Friday, April 16th in selected theaters in the US. Check out the website for more information.

Unless you work in advertising, or unless we’re talking about the genius of the new Old Spice ads, it’s safe to say that art and advertising are rarely synonymous.  We’re generalizing here, but oftentimes some people believe that ads are where the arts go to die; we’ve all heard of “selling out.” The MAK Center for Arts and Architecture and MOCA agree and are sick of seeing the twelfth billboard for Calvin Klein perfume with no respite or cultural buffer.

Their project, How Many Billboards: Art in Stead, is based at the Schindler House in West Hollywood and features 21 commissioned works displayed on billboards all around town.  These aren’t hidden in off-the-grid sites, either.  You can find them from east to west near Sunset and Vine, near Melrose and Fairfax, and on Venice Blvd in Culver City.  Artists include John Knight, Christina Fernandez, Martha Rosler, and Eilieen Cowin with such messages on display as a bold “Astonish” on Beverly and Pico or a frame of simple, slightly menacing gray clouds on La Brea just north of Venice.

To get a better idea of this genius, rogue project, MOCA is hosting a film screening on Thursday evening (during the Downtown Art Walk) at 6:30pm.  The free screening will feature videos chronicling How Many Billboard’s insights into the worlds of pop culture, media, and advertising.  You’ll see Phantom Limb by Jennifer Bornstein, Endless Dreams and Water Between by Renee Green, and Lottery of the Sea by Allan Sekula.

All in all, the project is not one of these petulant-child-artist-who-complains-for-no-reason types.  It is a new and semi-revolutionary way of high-jacking those pieces of visual information we see all too often: billboards.  Sometimes we do enjoy glancing up to see Jake Gylenhaal’s face promoting his latest film and sometimes we need a little cultural sustenance.  It’s all about balance.

How Many Billboards screening at MOCA will be held Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 6:30pm.  It’s FREE!  Please call (213) 621-1745 or click here, for more information.