The New Original Works Festival features new dance, theater, music, and multimedia performance works by artists who are known for their often radical and unconventional approaches. While Week One (with work from Maureen Huskey and Killsonic) may have past us by, there’s still time to catch Weeks Two and Three, beginning this Thursday, July 29th.

Three artists make up Week Two of NOW: Christine Marie & Ensemble, in the expressionist theater piece “Ground to Cloud,” uses projections, electric light and shadowplay to unfold a multidimensional mythology of nature and human intervention. Systems of Us, from choreographer Rae Shao-Lan Blum & composer Tashi Wada, explores the disruption and transformation of relationships in a dance collaboration that may call to mind those early experiments of Cage and Cunningham. Finally, master of Breaking and hip-hop dance innovater Raphael Xavier’s “Black Canvas” explores the body of the Breaker in relation to the stage and life.

Week Three, beginning August 5th, features theater, dance, and animation. Alexandro Segade’s “Replicant vs. Separatist” depicts Segade himself calling the shots on a live sci-fi film shoot in which two male couples navigate the murky waters of state-mandated marriage. Hana van der Kolk’s “Once More, Again, One (Solo)” uses familiar pop music as the background for her solo dance adaptation of a work originally conceived for four dancers. To close, animator Miwa Matreyek (of Cloud Eye Control) uses animation with live projection to explore fantastical worlds in “Myth and Infrastructure.”

- By Helen Kearns

Each “week” of NOW is really only a Thurs/Fri/Sat, so budget your time accordingly. If you only attend one more festival this summer, consider the power of NOW. For more information, please visit www.redcat.org, or call 213-237-2800.

At the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, the opening of “Dennis Hopper: Double Standard” felt more like a cinematic tribute to Los Angeles stereotypes than a serious exhibition. Before passing away at the age of 74 due to complications from prostate cancer, Dennis Hopper had an uneven career in art, mostly dedicated to imitating his slightly older artist friends. But at the opening, it didn’t seem to matter.

The opening was much more exciting than the show itself. Curated by Julian Schnabel, the exhibition drew an eclectic crowd from all corners of the city, everyone obsessed with the scene moreso than with Hopper’s art. Wearing gowns of peacock feathers and skintight high-waisted bandage shorts, guests took pictures of people outside, pictures of themselves, and pictures inside the gallery. Waiting by the bar, a woman wearing six-inch red high heels whispered to me, “Just to let you know, Diane Keaton and Liv Tyler and the lady who used to be married to Charlie Sheen are inside. Diane Keaton! I almost peed my pants!”

Inside, Diane Keaton was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she was obscured by the giant fiberglass sculpture of a Mexican waiter looming in the entrance, which might have been a cultural symbol of fear, or stereotypes, or something. Either way, it rang hollow. Hopper began his artistic career with painting in the 1950’s. Some early abstract pieces on small canvases show promise, or at least, the promise of promise, which fades later on. Equally unsuccessful works use found objects and graffiti, including an early drawing of a woman with a mustache scribbled above her upper lip. As commentary on femininity and pop culture, it falls flat and graceless.

Hopper was most renowned as a photographer though, and the black-and-white photographs from the 1960’s are the best part of the exhibition. In one of the loveliest pictures, a young, golden Jane Fonda wears a bikini and aims a bow and arrow into the distance, full of promise. Other subjects include Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ike and Tina Turner cheerfully posing with a giant inflatable Coke bottle.

After the year 2000, however, Hopper reproduced some of these earlier photographs to billboard size, with garish results. “I kind of hate this,” said one woman, standing next to a giant black and white reproduction of Andy Warhol, who is holding a droopy iris flower and oozing self-importance. The piece seems preoccupied with itself, more like a painting in a Hollywood comedy about the L.A. art scene rather than actual art.

And after looking at the umpteenth photo of Warhol, the title of the show begins to make sense. One wonders, did Hopper’s creativity lead to his fame, or was his fame a result of his access to renowned artists and celebrities? Are the two qualities really inseparable from one another? Was Dennis Hopper’s artistic fame a double standard? After all, Hopper starred in everything from Easy Rider and Blue Velvet to “classics” like Speed and Super Mario Bros., and dabbled in all types of art, equally embraced for his creative eccentricity as he was exiled for his drug use. But Hopper’s cinematic career was more interesting than his artistic one, and as a big survey exhibition, the show sells Los Angeles short. The art scene in the city is much more complicated and intriguing than this exhibition gives it credit for, and MOCA must have access to many more talented artists.

But as the night wore on, no one at the opening seemed to care. The guests stood at tables outside, drinking from clear plastic cups, and everyone watched one woman yelling and dancing to DJ tunes by herself. A plump MOCA photographer leaned against the wall, waiting to capture the L.A. moment.

- By Cassandra McGrath

“Dennis Hopper: Double Standard” is on view at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA until September 26. For more information, please visit www.moca.org, or call 213-626-6222.

This one task—obviously essential to the success of Bon’s operation on its opening night—was actually just a small tributary within the vastly ambitious constellation of works now going on at LACMA under the title of EATLACMA. In a sentence, this one-year-long, multi-faceted commitment from the Museum sets out to delve into the social, artistic, cultural, environmental, and humanitarian meanings behind natural food growth. In fact, this undertaking is so large, it’s hard to do it justice in a simple blog post, so I’ll just focus on the garden installations for now:

Along with “Bldg. 209: Garden Folly (Indexical of Strawberry Flag)”—which itself is indexical of a much larger work entitled “Strawberry Flag,” located three miles west of LACMA at the Veterans Administration of West Los Angeles (a bus will soon be available to take visitors in between the two sites)—there are also five other installation gardens on or around the LACMA campus.

One is called “Promiscuous Production: Breeding is Bittersweet” by the National Bitter Melon Council (yes, it exists). This tunnel-shaped, bamboo structure doubles as an experimental breeding ground for the hybrid, never-before-seen, BitterSweet melon. Through the age-old process of cross-pollination, visiting participants can actually partake in the experiment themselves by attending a series of day-long events intended to promote community, generate discussion, and—don’t forget—make melons.

A little bit further east is “Food Pyramid”—conceived by Didier Hess—which is a solar-powered, aquaponic garden that simultaneously questions the traditional food pyramid most Americans grew up on; presents an eco-friendly, soil-free alternative to gardening; and cultivates all the necessary ingredients for a delicious fish taco—including the Tilapia. It’s also aesthetically pleasing, peaceful to be around, and fun to contemplate with friends.

Just off the southeast border of the LACMA complex, on the corner of Wilshire and Curson, sits your typical traffic circle, the median point between pedestrian walk signs, the border between east-bound and west-bound traffic. But now there is also a garden of radishes, as planned and planted by Islands of LA in a project they call “The Roots of Compromise.” The traffic island itself is controlled by a variety of bureaucracies, and together, they agreed upon the root vegetable of the radish as the appropriate plant for their shared circle of land. The resulting food is representative of this small, but successful compromise.

Way over on the west end of LACMA, a crooked, polygonal potato garden lays flat and almost unnoticeable between the Ahmanson and the Art of the Americas buildings. But, according to the little placard placed in the soil, amidst at least 12 types of potato plants, “The varieties [of potato] exist as a result of coincidences, accidents, planning, violence, and careful custody over thousands of years. Through tracing their different backgrounds, a history of human desire appears.” The placard also directs viewers to a website, allowing them to cellularly interact with the incredible stories behind each strain of potato. The website is www.potatoperspective.org, the project is titled “The Way Potatoes Go 8000-BCE-Present: A Potato Perspective on an American Matter,” and was developed by sa Sonjasdotter in collaboration with the communities of the Potato Park (yes, it too exists).

Finally, on the north end of the LACMA campus, just below 6^th street, there stands a small, Roman theater of sorts, not unlike a miniature version of the restored Theater of Caesaria. Beginning November 7^th, this is the site of what shall be known as the “Public Fruit Theater,” a magical little installation concocted by the people of Fallen Fruit. In this theater, there will be only one performer (depending on how you look at it, that is), and that performer is a tree. Visitors are invited to come watch the growth process of this concrete-locked tree as if they were witnessing the slow arc of a character’s development on stage. In this way, the episodic relationship between the tree, the viewer, and also the other audience members creates a story, much like the ones we look for in theatre.

But back to Guy, and his aeroponic generator. Come 4:30 PM, he’s able to make it back to LACMA, and set up the device just in time for the first waves of curious onlookers. I observe the fragile configuration of hanging strawberry plants he helped set up, each interconnected by small life-lines of dripping nutrients, each literally holding on by a thread of survival, completely dependent upon one pump. I know it’s supposed to be representative of the plight of the Veterans in Los Angeles, but it’s also symbolic of the six gardens themselves, and beyond that, EATLACMA as a whole, and beyond that, the city of Los Angeles. I could go on and on, but you should probably just visit for yourself, and that way, become part of the garden.

For more information on EATLACMA, please visit http://eatlacma.org/about/, or call (323) 857-6000.

In a town where change is omnipresent and the increase of day-to-day expenses make us feel we are in New York, there are less and less opportunities to experience the arts on a budget (did I mention the yellow plastic sunglasses in a 3-D film that will cost you your Popcorn and Diet Coke?) However, there is a beacon of hope nestled in the heart of Century City beneath the towering buildings that won’t cost you a penny and is sure to blow your socks off without wearing any yellow sunglasses.

The Annenberg Space for Photography, which has been open for a little over a year now, is as much an experience wandering through the curvy, camera-shaped building as it is seeing the photographs inside. Much more than just a traditional display area for prints, the digital projection gallery has two 7’x14’ seamless glass screens with real-projection imaging systems that exceed the level of image quality offered by Blu-Ray players. Watching photographs appear and fade with this caliber of stunning clarity and saturation paired with surround sound music will make your eyes and ears meld into one – taking the photographic image to the next level.

For the second year running the Annenberg Space for Photography is proud to host ‘Pictures of the Year’, a collection of the most outstanding documentary photography from 2009, recognized by Pictures of the Year International (POYi). With over 45,000 entries submitted from all over the world, the show is a pure visual story that explores humanity far beyond the greatest headline stories of 2009. Held for 65 years in Missouri, Los Angeles is fortunate to have the 67th annual exhibit return after it’s west coast debut last year.

With so many photographic stories being covered, the show is broken into four Categories: The United States War and Economy, The Human Experience, Ecologies and Economies, and The Globe. What makes the Annenberg Space for Photography unique is the digital features that play in the projection gallery. No longer is photography just a printed subject in a frame, but a visual story being told in a cinematic way, giving the viewer a greater insight to what is occurring inside the frame.

Be sure not to miss Stephanie Sinclair’s “Polygamy in America” about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) community in Eldorado, Texas. Also, Kitra Cahana’s portraits of teenage runaways who gather once a year in a different American national park are sure to drop your jaw.

Every now and then we come across photographs online or in magazines and newspapers that we cannot escape – they stick with us and often become permanent representations of a time or place. The images from ‘Pictures of the Year” may only exist for one moment but can last a lifetime. And that’s totally worth a free admission.

- By Gray Malin

The exhibit runs through October 10th and more information can be found on the Annenberg website, http://www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org/. Hours are Wednesday – Sunday 11:00-6:00pm.

Somehow, sometime, for some reason, something has drastically changed the relationship between human civilization and the arts. I’m not quite sure why it happened, or when it happened, or how to pinpoint exactly when governing powers decided that the arts aren’t as important anymore, but it has, most certainly, happened. I’m not sure where things went wrong, and I don’t know why I truly feel that we are in our very own Dark Ages, but I do indeed sense that we’re in a serious funk. Nowadays, school art programs are being cut at gut-wrenching rates, public funding for the arts is negligible compared to what is spent producing Monday Night Football, and general community interest in any art, let alone public art, is something to laugh at rather than be proud of.

Not to my surprise, it turns out that my fellow art lovers at FineArtsLA have also been asking themselves these questions and felt it was high time to talk about them in Hollywood’s very own Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). In concert with the first-ever Hollywood Fringe Festival, this awesome and active website hosted “Panel of the Muses”-a lively panel discussion with some of LA’s most prominent and emerging arts activists: Daniel Ingroff and Paul Pescador, Directors of Workspace Gallery; Freddi Cerasoli, Owner of the former Cerasoli Gallery; Arely Villegas, creator of the arts blog Art A L.A. MODE; and Lee Rachel Foley, Director of Actual Size Los Angeles, all beautifully moderated by our very own Editor-in-Chief, Joshua Morrison.

It’s no coincidence that the first question Josh asked of the panel provided one of the most important answers as to why the arts isn’t more accessible to Angelenos: Why does it feel like Los Angeles is so segregated in terms of its arts community? Freddi reminded us that troubled transportation (and the lack of public transport) impedes our city’s ability to share and engage its citizens in the constant up-surge of private galleries and arts spaces. According to Freddi, cities like Chicago and New York seem to have a much easier time getting people involved and interested in the art scene. When she said that traffic and the sprawling nature of our city is a major problem, she was terrifyingly right.  When it comes to the arts in LA, this is no joke.

Paul Pescador and Daniel Ingroff, whose site-specific installations are the main focus of their gallery Workspace, agreed that the viewer’s experience in LA is disconnected. Their space is feverishly trying to bridge the gap between the viewer and the artwork, and recently, the pair produced a show in which two identical exhibitions were taking place in two separate galleries. Their mission is carried out in even the smallest of details where the show, cards, invitations, and website design are all painstakingly cohesive.

The most remarkable thing among these luminaries was their shared experience with the City of Los Angeles and public funding for their separate but similar missions. The panelists also shared their experiences in making the decision whether or not to operate as “for profit” or “non-profit” businesses, many agreeing that despite the history of great non-profit art spaces, they’d rather keep their artistic freedom as a “for profit” business than have to deal with the incredible bureaucratic difficulties in obtaining not-for-profit status. If only the LA community could rally behind the arts, it would make their lives and purposes a hell of a lot easier. Unfortunately, there is a constant struggle between gallerists and city governments, so many galleries have to put more attention on making a profit than sharing the type of art that they’d prefer. For example, asked Freddi: where is all of the performance art? Arely pointed out that there is quite a bit of it here in LA, but even people in the arts don’t know about it! Much of what is going on in Chinatown is a mystery to those in Venice, and what’s happening in Culver City is unknown to those in Eagle Rock. Art in this city is anything but viral.

It’s not all bad. Exposing art throughout the city is something that will in fact create community. The arts are becoming more recognized throughout various popular outlets, even if it takes the form of Bravo TV’s newest show, “Work of Art.” But most importantly, as evidenced by this panel, there is a whole new generation of arts pioneers that will stop at nothing to bring the arts to the forefront of our cultural and civic identity. There is a long way to go and much to be done, but the room last Thursday night at LACE was teeming with hope, fervor, and a renewed passion that left everyone feeling inspired.

-By Brittany Krasner

For more information on the Hollywood Fringe Festival, please visit http://www.hollywoodfringe.org.

For more information on LACE, please visit http://www.welcometolace.org/.

But was Chinatown always like this? The short answer is no. In the early half of the 20^th century, Old Chinatown (which was then located in the Union Station area), fell into economic and cultural despondency due to widespread anti-Chinese sentiment, arson, lack of political presence, and inter-cultural warfare. The little that was left of the community was about to be completely annihilated with the creation of Union Station in the 1930’s (a bitterly ironic twist, given that many of the first Chinese immigrants had worked on the earliest railroads). Luckily, a determined group of Chinese Americans led by Peter SooHoo Sr. struck a deal to buy a portion of Downtown land, soon to be known as New Chinatown—the first Chinese community in America to be completely planned and owned by Chinese Americans. With the help of some sympathetic developers and architects, New Chinatown opned up shops, built around 62 units in a one-square-block radius, and erected the famous Chinatown gates straddling Gin Ling Way and Broadway. On the East Gate, there are four characters of poetry, which translate in English to “Cooperate to Achieve.”

And on Saturday, the formerly abandoned building of 510 Bernard Street, now housing three different galleries, with the new Dan Graham Gallery directly next-door, was doing exactly that. The actual art on view was by no means breath-taking (my favorite was Margie Schnibbe’s set of stream-of-consciousness doodlings, seeming to point at the mundane, existential stress of bad economic news). But that almost wasn’t the point. There were three shows going on at once, and a sense of respect for one another and one’s community was tangible.

Before the show, I stopped for a cup of coffee at the Via Café in the central square between Hill and Broadway, and watched Chinese-American fathers buy their sons packets of those miniature exploding pellets. I gazed at a couple of old men manning their shop beneath the strings of Chinese paper lamps. Yes, Chinatown may very well be the next neighborhood to fall victim to the claws of gentrification, but for now there’s just cooperation. Let’s hope it stays that way.

“Mystic Circle” at Human Resources is on view until July 27^th. “Carpenter’s carpenter (plan your escape)” is on view at WPA Gallery until July 4^th. And “Bourgeois Pig” at the Francois Ghebaly Gallery is up until July 24^th.  For more information, please visit www.humanresoucesla.com, www.ghebaly.com, or www.wpala.com.

The room (if you can call a closed-off, one-acre section of land a room) was nearly empty; no brochure stands, no explanatory plaques, no museum guards, not even other guests. It was just me and the sole installation on view, which was Walter de Maria’s “2000 Sculpture,” composed of—you guessed it—2000 pieces of intricately arranged polygonal rods, amounting to a rectangular grid the length of the entire Resnick floor.

De Maria is an artist who deals mostly in the worlds of enormous, tactile, mathematical systems, and a sculpture of his seems like the perfect testing grounds for the architectural specifications of the Resnick wing. Not only is the space large enough for such a monumental piece, but the natural lighting system—as provided by adjustable skylights above—illuminates the entire installation with an even, cool elegance. (I was told by a museum staffer that when the skylights are closed, the room becomes pitch-black).

The openness of the Resnick Pavilion, at least at this stage, is its key ingredient.  In fact, it’s almost intimidating in that it dwarfs a sculpture made out of 2000 separate pieces. But it is also a flexible space. One can easily envision large catered events taking place there, or possibly sectioning off the room into multiple exhibits. Any way you look at it, the new wing is a perfect compliment to the BCAM next-door (the first-half of Renzo Piano’s master vision), a more complex, densely structured building. And I look forward to the first three shows planned for the new space: “Eye for the Sensual: Selections From the Resnick Collection,” “Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915″ and “Olmec: Masterworks of Ancient Mexico.”

For more information about LACMA, please call (323) 857-6010, or visit www.lacma.org.

The Cremaster Cycle is comprised of Barney’s sculpture, photography, drawings, and five feature-length films that Barney created between 1994 and 2002.  The films, whose loose, wordless narratives vary widely, explore the processes of creation in ways that reach far beyond the biological implications (“cremaster” is the term for the muscle that controls testicular response to external stimuli).  Barney spares no expense—he includes everything from an extravagant, Busby Berkeley-esque musical revue in a blue-turf’d football stadium to a high-fashion Western starring Norman Mailer; an epic ascension of New York City’s Chrysler Building, to motorcycle gangs, faeries, magicians, live pigeons, and the Budapest Opera & Philharmonic—I mean, everything. What’s best, the films can be enjoyed individually or as consecutive parts of a whole.

So act fast, folks. These films are rarely screened—especially with the opportunity to see them consecutively. My recommendation would be to take the day off, swing by the 99c store for a few packs of Red Vines, and settle in to the dark theater for a day of gross overstimulation.

The Cremaster Cycle screens at the Nuart from June 11 through the 17^th. Visit the Nuart’s website for ticket information.

For three weeks in early 2010, artist/photojournalist KC Ortiz willingly joined and lived with the last surviving members of the Hmong people in the jungles of Laos. The process of gaining access to this seclusive, nomadic, and persecuted group took Ortiz two years.

Ortiz’s images—all in black-and-white—which hang in the back room of the newly established Known Gallery on Fairfax under the title “Forced Rebellion,” reveal a stark, multi-generational, Flying Dutchman society. Constantly on the move, the Hmong cannot afford to plant crops, or build permanent shelters; the jungle, their only real home, serves as the background for almost every photograph. Most of the subjects hold AK-47’s in their arms, sometimes alongside a newborn baby. Their entire demeanor is one of defense. They stare into the lens of the camera solemnly, almost judging it—and by extension, the viewer.

Ortiz got his start documenting graffiti artists in the Chicago area (the work of his former subject, Pose, a major name in the street-art movement, is on view in the front room of Known Gallery), and his journey toward covering more remote, often subjugated cultures in the world is one of extreme courage. He has shot photographs of Vietnamese cancer patients, Burmese migrant workers, the Hong Kong lower class, and Delhi Tuberculosis victims. Word has it that his next mission is the Colombian drug trade.

Here in LA, it’s often too easy to dismiss socially conscious photojournalism, as if it were simply some type of clever “hook.” But seeing Ortiz’s work, and reading about what went into it, one can see it is just as personal as any other form of photography—or artwork, for that matter. He, much like the Hmong soldier posing center-frame with his rifle, stands for rebellion: a conscious, slow, determined, little-seen, and worthwhile rebellion.

Known Gallery is located at 441 North Fairfax Avenue. KC  Ortiz’s “Forced Rebellion” is on view until June 12th. For more information, please call (310) 860-6263, or visit www.knowngallery.com.

In a friendly twist of roles, Koons selected works from Dakis Joannou’s own collection to create a fantastical spectacle that transformed the floors of the New Museum into a fun house of contemporary art: towering sculptures constructed of fragmented matter; a daily performance of a passerby who strips from their street clothes into a loin cloth and crown of thorns, only to hang from a crucifix outfitted with a bicycle seat; and even a full-on chorus of museum guards singing “this is propaganda” in a tone similar to a Gregorian chant.

The fourth floor of the exhibit proves to be the most visually diverse and confounding as the elevator opens and the viewer is aligned with David Altmejd’s The Cave, a towering shard of glass that divides and refracts Charles Ray’s Fall ’91, a female mannequin outfitted in a blue skirt suit.  She would be considered dainty and feminine if not for her enlarged proportions and nine-foot stature.  Positioned directly across from the mannequin is a sparkling and bedazzled streetwalker, Liza Lou’s Super Sister, who cocks a gun against her wide hips.  The positioning seems intentional as it signals hyper femininity and sexuality that become conflated through the single prism of The Cave.

Descending upon each floor, the viewer not only witnesses the complete invagination of the body and its vulnerability, but the viewer themselves become untangled, and unglued in their efforts to gain understanding. The human form is continually considered and reconsidered through a literal and metaphorical dissection of “skin.” Like Urs Fischer’s melting wax sculpture What if the Phone Rings—in a constant state of decay as the candles that are lit inside the mold cause the sculpture to melt and disintegrate on the floor.

Perhaps it is this type of embedded catharsis within “Skin Fruit” that makes it linger with you days after you left the museum, reminding us that art is a living entity which sheds its own skin.

- By A. Moret

Related Los Angeles news:

This Sunday, June 13^th, at 10 AM, the A.N. Abell Auction Co.—a family business run out of the City of Commerce since 1916—will hold its Spring Fine Art and Antique Auction. Normally, this event is the LA Art World’s best kept secret, as it is confined to invitees only. But this year, everyone’s invited. And among the amazing items up for grabs are two exemplary works by iconoclastic, American contemporary artist, Jeff Koons.