Galleries

I recently found myself sitting on a couch in a dark room inside the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts at USC watching a play-test of a brand-new interactive video game.  I use the term ‘interactive,’ because it was less like your typical Nintendo or PlayStation proceeding, and more akin to one of those ‘choose your own adventure’ movies, only digitalized, intricately detailed, and not a little influenced by the likes of Spielberg or Christopher Nolan.  The game takes place in a slightly futuristic society, and at one point, the protagonist, a detective, is sitting in his beat-down, windowless office going over clues, when he puts on a pair of special sunglasses.  These sunglasses allow him, and by proxy, us, the audience, to perceive his spacial environment as a pristine mountain-top, or a Redwood forest.  The effect is novel, and provokes a round of ‘wouldn’t-that-be-cool’ comments from anybody who’s watching, yet it also brings up an interesting, modern phenomenon.  I call it the ‘it’s not to you’ syndrome, and it works like this: you’re sitting in a beat-down, windowless office, but…it’s not to you.

Don’t get me wrong, this syndrome is hardly new or original, although it is intensifying in our digital age.  And one person who’s exploring this intensification is artist Jeffrey Wells with his newest exhibit Seeing While Seeing at the Bergamont Station Arts Center, a part of the Santa Monica Museum of Art.  Wells attempts to recreate the optical illusions of everyday life—the after-image of an exit sign, the undulating intersection of two vertical walls that meet at a right-angle—using video projections.  Thus the viewer is left questioning whether or not an illusion is physical or digital.  Both are percepts, separate from what some would call “objective reality,” but only one is an intentionally manipulated percept.

What Wells—along with the interactive video game, to a certain extent—may be attempting to illustrate is the danger of the ‘it’s not to you’ syndrome.  Because how do you really know what is?  Or who’s presenting what to you, for that matter?  And as the line between what is and what is to you gets smaller and smaller, what becomes of you?

Jeffrey Wells’s Seeing While Seeing is on view until April 17th at Project Room 1 in the Bergamont Station Arts Center, a part of the Santa Monica Museum of Arts.  Bergamont Station is located at 2525 Michigan Ave, Building G-1.  For more information, please call (310) 586-6488, or visit www.smmoa.org.

Ever wonder what happened to Ed Templeton?  That professional skateboarder turned internationally renowned artist, photographer, D.I.Y. innovator, entrepreneur, ‘Beautiful Loser,’ and book publisher?  Well if you haven’t, then Ed Templeton has.

His eclectic career as both a skater and an artist has always seemed to be about his own relationship to time and motion.  In his famous photography book, Teenage Smokers, for instance, each medium to close-up image of a young person with a cigarette has the feeling of personal impermanence, like a flash-memory of a kid you might have seen at the mall once when you were nine.

Templeton, especially in his most recent work, seems to be obsessed with these fragile, ephemeral moments, and what they might mean.  His 2008 book, Deformer, which took him 11 years to complete, examines his youth growing up in the ultra-conservative suburban “incubator” of Orange County, using childhood letters, notes, photographs, sketches, and paintings to tell his story with as much physical accuracy as possible—even if it’s all long gone.

His latest photography show, The Seconds Pass, at the Roberts and Tilton Gallery in Culver City once again has Templeton on the move.  These thirty-some separate collages of pictures, mostly all taken from the vantage point of a moving vehicle, attempt to capture exactly where he’s been these last few years, so as not to miss a passing second.

Ed Templeton’s The Seconds Pass can be viewed at the Roberts and Tilton Gallery in Culver City until April 3.  Roberts and Tilton is located at 5801 Washinton Blvd.  For more information, please call (323) 549-0223, or visit www.robertsandtilton.com.

Kimberly Brooks had a great idea recently.  The local, Venice-based painter decided to look into the art that plays a role in our everyday lives and the people holding the cards behind it.  She looked beyond museum shows, beyond advertisements, and into the world of fashion that is so often considered less of an art form and more of a necessity.  The men and women working behind the scenes to make our world a touch more glamorous are artists who recognize that the necessity of fashion can be one of the more creative enterprises in our lives and it can be one that makes (or doesn’t make) the right impression.

In her latest series of paintings, called “The Stylist Project”, Kimberly Brooks scoured the world of stylists, costume designers, and Creative Directors to delve deeper into the minds of who exactly is dressing our most photographed celebrities and our most watched characters in TV and film.  She painted Vogue’s Creative Director Grace Coddington and Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant in their most comfortable settings (albeit in their most fabulous clothes).  She painted Elizabeth Stewart, a stylist for the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar, with a gorgeous and colorful palette and she captured the nervy and frazzled essence that is Rachel Zoe.

We got a chance to sit down with Brooks to discuss just what went into “The Stylist Project” and the upcoming show at Taylor de Cordoba gallery in Culver City.  We learned very quickly that stylist is a pretty loose term to us amateurs, but in the business, a stylist can be anyone who fashions a photo shoot (often-times called a Creative Director) to someone who styles a celebrity for a red carpet event.  Brooks’ colors and masterful way with a paintbrush allows us into this inner sanctum of fashion via the world of art – it’s almost as if we know them just by looking at these paintings.

Check out our video interview and go say hi to your new friends (the stylists, of course) at the opening reception at Taylor de Cordoba gallery on Saturday evening (February 27).  The show runs through April 3, 2010.  For more information, please click here or call (310) 559-9156.

What do you get when you showcase the brightest and boldest of Angeleno performance artists?  GUTTED.  Gutted is the only word to describe Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions’ encompassing performance art-based program, which includes live performance, texts, and objects speaking of, from, and to the body.

GUTTED is Saturday, February 20 at 7:00pm, LACE.  Click here for more info.

The exhibition Actions, Conversations, and Intersections at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park continues to add new participatory projects to its roster.  This weekend, roll up your sleeves and join artists Edward Pine Stevens and Joseph Stuckleman with their installation Make Objects Make Marks or BikeHaus as they bike through Los Angeles as part of Cloud Lines and Chemospheres.

Check out the rest of this weekend’s programming here.

Newly purchased by Quentin Tarantino, the New Beverly Cinema is continuing its program of repertory cinema.  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Election will play back-to-back not only once, but twice this Saturday because it is oh so nice.  Save Ferris!  Pick Flick!

The Matthew Broderick double feature starts at 3:20 and 7:30 at the New Beverly Cinema.  Click here for more info.

When you stop to think about women in countries like Argentina or in the countryside of Spain, what do you picture? If you’re anything like me, it’s a romantic vision of a flamenco dancer in a black dress with dramatic makeup, a lace fan, and the attitude of a seasoned temptress.  Ruven Afanador knows this woman – in fact, he knows many of them.

Photographed in a desert looking uncomfortably hot in long black dresses and striking wigs, Afanador’s women are the bold image of Latin women that remains burned in our brains from John Singer Sargent paintings and films by Luis Bunuel and Federico Fellini.  They are the women who look like they could teach you about the ways of the world in the most basic sense – they look like they’re from the earth.  That’s particularly why Afanador’s photographs, in his “Mil Besos” exhibition are so memorable, enticing, and true.  He photographs women of all shapes and sizes in various forms of undress at their most intense – one image shows two women nearly kissing, one shows three women who look like they’re on the verge of spontaneously imploding (in good and bad ways), and one shows two women in the midst of a certain kind of dance and wearing long skirts that almost seem connected.

In his “Torero” exhibit, showing in the smaller of Fahey/Klein’s two rooms, the images are more portrait-like and show the young men who become bull-fighters in all their embroidered, detailed, costume-like majesty.  There are the simple parts, like a dusty pair of shoes with a bow, there are images that celebrate the male body, and there are images that show the emotion behind such a dangerous and historically rich sport.

All in all, Afanador’s images, from both exhibits, succeed in so many ways.  They not only enhance the melodramatic and quixotic vision of Latin men and women, but they also seem to show the familiar and human side of these gorgeous specimens.

Ruven Afanador’s “Mil Besos” and “Torero” will be on view at Fahey/Klein Gallery through March 27.  Please click here for more information.

No matter how many times I drag myself to the movie theater to see shows like Avatar in 3D or the latest Batman in I-Max, I always feel like I’m doing just that: dragging.  Throughout the last century, the entertainment industry has undeniably evolved, but whether it’s for better or for worse is strictly a matter of opinion.  Personally, there has never been a morsel of doubt that I extract the greatest amusement from plays, books, movies and performances that are inextricably linked to the past.  Call me old fashioned, old-soul, call me grandma, but there is something about the classics (they’re called classics for a reason) that resonates from the works of Tinseltown’s youth.  Something that I can’t quite put my finger on—something like star quality.

“I don’t know what is, but I’ve got it,” reads the inscription at the entrance to Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward, the current exhibition at the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts & Sciences.  Noel Coward embodied the term “Renaissance man” with the grace, style, and elegance of a true dandy, and the Academy pays homage to him with a compelling installation of photographs, antique personal items, letters, films, sheet music, posters, playbills, set and costume designs, and personal clothing.

Primarily known as a playwright (Hay Fever, Private Lives, Cavalcade, Design for Living and Blithe Sprit to name a few, all later adapted for the cinema), and a celebrated composer (Mad About the Boy, I’ll See You Again), Coward’s immense talent and contribution to the arts encompassed nearly every form.  Star Quality is the first exhibition to shine light on the full breadth of his copious talents as a stage and screen director, actor, cabaret performer, painter, and wartime patriot, all while evoking the world of sawdust, tinsel, and naïve opulence that characterized early 20th Century Hollywood.

The tone of the exhibition is set immediately when you enter the 4th floor gallery of the Academy.  Large black and white photographs radiate Coward’s star quality, presence, and personality where he, in his signature dressing gown with a cigarette, preens as a dapper Hollywood darling.  Mannequins display his trademark loungewear, some flanked by caricatures that capture the flamboyant and distinctive personality that earned him a reputation his peers regarded as frivolous.

One cannot help but be impressed by the array of artifacts on display from Coward’s career.  A fascinating collection of cigarette holders (many gifts from Hollywood starlets), embroidered slippers, and letters provide a glimpse into Coward’s personal and private life. Photos taken on the set of The Untamed Lady show the close and affectionate relationship between Coward and Mary Pickford, one of his first and dearest friends in Los Angeles.  A sapphire blue dressing gown, worn by Moira Lister in the production of Present Laughter, comes to life against an array of photographs from the film.  It is a thrill to wander through this collection and see the evolution of the creative process, from a nascent thought into a polished end product.

Great genius in any form can be met with skepticism and rejection.  Coward’s star shined the brightest late in his life, and full recognition of his brilliance was awarded posthumously. One photograph in particular had a lasting effect—an image of Julie Andrews (playing Gertrude Lawrence) and Daniel Massey (playing Noel Coward) from the 1968 movie Star!. It served as a reminder of Coward’s increasing public popularity towards the end of his life (the film was released just 5 years before his death).

Drawing on public and private collections, and with unparalleled access to the Coward Archives, Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward showcases a remarkably robust, multifaceted and marvelous career, and recalls an era of Los Angeles history known for its lavishness, luxury, and innovation.  Coward’s is a legacy that even through the glamour of Hollywood remains deeply human.  Having what it takes in this town is not enough to achieve your dreams, but if you have star quality, you just might be able to do it all.

-By Brittany Krasner

Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward is on view through April 18th at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences on Wilshire Blvd.  Please visit their website for public viewing hours and more information. Admission is free!

The relationship between people and animals, domesticated and wild, is endlessly fascinating. Some we admire from afar with awe, like the cuddly-looking but ferocious polar bear, while others play ball with us on the front yard or beg us incessantly for a bite of our burrito.  Living closely with an animal reveals just how intelligent, emotional, and unabashedly different they are.  Currently, Louis Stern Fine Arts is hosting an exhibition that through a number of critically acclaimed black and white photographs, captures the physical reality of animals with remarkable emotion. Anima: The Photography of Jean Francois Spricigo explores the relationship between animals and nature, but also provokes the viewer to contemplate our place amongst these wonderful creatures.

Belgian-born Spricigo, winner of the 2008 Laureate of the Prix de Photographie de l’Academie des Beaux-Arts, is one of the art world’s most eloquently outspoken animal advocates.  His admiration and respect for his subjects is evident in his photography.  Many popular animal photographers subject the animal to human confines a la Hallmark (kittens in picnic baskets), but Spricigo’s photographs capture more candid and intimate moments.  It’s easy to forget that he and his camera were present—his photographs evoke such an untouched solitude.

The first images that I experienced on entering the gallery were a combination of animals and natural objects, displayed in a double-triptych form.  This series of six images, some of abstract landscapes, others of animals in motion, immediately set the stage for the exhibition’s narrative. Two ducks swim along their way, utterly oblivious to the camera, while the sweet and vulnerable eyes of a dog stare right at the viewer, beckoning compassion and understanding.  In another photograph, a single dog almost lost in a blanket of night sky, offset by blurred city lights in the distance, serves as a harsh reminder of the divide that separates the manufactured human world from the visceral animal world.

The cats, dogs, birds, leopards, horses and cows represented in Spricigo’s work are captured as if caught off guard.  Spricigo’s photographs reveal a deep, soulful quality in his otherwise “common” subjects.  One piece captures the hearty laugh of a bah-ing billy goat with such depth that you feel as if you’re in on the joke.  Other heartwarming images include a fluffy, tiny, inquisitive square-shaped bird, and a playful, rambunctious dog, equipped with a stick and ready for the chase.  These images call to mind feelings of companionship, and at times lend a “family portrait”-like quality to the exhibition.

The interesting thing about Spricigo’s approach to his subject matter is that while his photography does call to mind the connection we have for animals, it also exposes them in moments of isolation and reflection.  Many of his photographs resemble impressionistic paintings in that they are mildly surrealist, blurred, and depict the animals in their natural, daily, and often private activities.  The third room of the exhibition houses the greatest number of these photographs, where Spricigo’s skill is just as impressive as his subject matter.  A lone horse at pasture is practically absorbed into the mist—something Spricigo depicts as hundreds of softly focused dots, while across the room, a sharply focused shot of a bird’s feet on a fence seamlessly coexists.  It is this diversity and range, not only in the photographs of Anima but also in the natural world, that make the psychological complexity of animals so enthralling.

-by Brittany Krasner

After a two month run at the Palais de l’Institute de France, Anima: The Photography of Jean Francois Spricigo has made quite a splash at its American debut in West Hollywood and is on view at Louis Stern Fine Arts through February 13. For more information, please call (310) 276-0147 or click here.

Pablo Uribe, Atardecer, 2008 (Dusk) - video still

This year, the Los Angeles Art Show made its home at Los Angeles Convention Center.  This venue change provided more space for gallery booths that ranged from contemporary works such as the Wall Project’s Shepard Fairey and Thierry Noir painted walls to landscapes galore — and even more space for project-based installations. The Vox Humana on-site art performance presented street artists Mear One, Kofie, Retna, and El Mac who showed off their talents over the length of the fair on large-scale canvases.  And speaking of more room, I wondered how Sidestreet Projects got one of their woodworking workshop buses into the fair.  These school buses are outfitted with project stations for elementary school children so they can make a nuts and bolts washer sandwich and one FUNdred dollar bills, which I am sure we all could use more of these days.

One of my favorite pieces of the art fair was Pablo Uribe’s video, Atardecer (2008), which screened in a makeshift dark room in the Guest Country program booth’s rear.  While looking at the other works from the 34° 53’ 0” S – 56° 10’ 0” W show, I heard animals sounds curiously mix with the ambient art fair noise.  Upon stepping into the screening area, there was a video of an older man standing before a black background looking as if he were about to perform a gorgeous aria.  Instead of sweet notes pouring out of his mouth, the sound of a dog’s bark came out.  And then the cooing of a bird!  The actor was imitating the sounds of native rain forest animals.

Willy Rojas, Egg

Willy Rojas’ photographs at Barcelona’s Villa del Arte booth depicted miniature figurines interacting with their food-based environment.  Tiny people ski down slopes of salt or a wedge of hard cheese.  A man broke the shell of an egg with his sledgehammer while a couple ice skates on an orange hued soup.

Speaking of food, the Timothy Yarger Gallery presented Jean Wells’ The Giant Kiss quite literally.  The huge chocolate-scented foil wrapped sculpture demanded a tongue-in-cheek presence while paying homage to Claes Oldenburg’s shop.

The Rebecca Hossack Gallery held quite a few treats, including a gorgeous papel picado-esque paper cutting in the shape of a peacock (Ian Penney), a piece of toast with an image of Shakespeare burnt onto it à la the Virgen de Guadalupe (Maria Morrow), and also Phil Shaw’s photographs of brightly colored bookshelves, which was a voyeur’s delight to snoop the book titles.

And on my way out, I spotted three Jeff Koon’s puppy vases filled with fresh flowers guarding Jean Dubuffet’s Tapis at the Jane Kahan Gallery.  In my mind, they were the guardians of the LA Art Show — a much friendlier and kitsch version of Cerberus.

What does pop culture mean to you? The first thing anyone might think is Andy Warhol – largely considered the father of pop art – and his Marilyn Monroe, Campbell’s soup, and Mickey Mouse prints.  On now through February 20 at the William Turner Gallery at Bergamot Station is your chance to redefine pop art for our generation.  Large-scale, colorful prints by two artists, Mikel Alatza and Kadir Lopez are full of color, texture, and familiar faces and things.

Mikel Alatza’s works range from a skull with the Mastercard logo to a clowned, vibrant, contorted painting of Julia Roberts.  Angelina Jolie has been given fire engine red hair and a bright red clown nose next to Paris Hilton whose tan looks even more fiercely dangerous than usual.

Kadir Lopez takes a more muted and almost vintage approach to the pop art world.  His Shell print features a river and skyline fitted within a Shell gasoline sign while his Wrigley’s piece has a distinctly political, textural feel.

Andy Warhol had his finger on the pulse of popular culture in the 70s (we still use the phrase he coined “fifteen minutes of fame” with great frequency) and perhaps its time we find an artist who knows how to transform our current pop culture icons into wild, vivacious prints that speak to us today.  Are you team Alatza, team Lopez, or both?

Mikel Alatza and Kadir Lopez’ exhibits will be up at William Turner Gallery through February 20.  Please call (310) 453-0909 or click here.

Los Angeles deserves some more recognition and maybe some better press, while we’re at it.  The reputation that many of our more blonde and ditsy denizens have created for us can often precede the fact that our art scene is one to be reckoned with.  If not, how would we have something to write about everyday?

In Spring 2009 when the LA Philharmonic, alongside their new Music Director Gustavo Dudamel, was invited to be a resident orchestra of the Barbican Centre in London, it was clear that the world of classical music was officially interested in what was happening out West.  It was just the right kind of recognition, of international press, that LA’s prized artists had been working toward.

In February, we can all look forward to moving up another notch on the world stage.  At the 29th annual International Contemporary Art Fair in Madrid, called ARCOmadrid, Los Angeles will be honored in a special exhibition entitled Panorama: Los Angeles.  For the first time in the history of the festival, the special exhibition will focus on a singular city instead of a country; it will be the first time Los Angeles has been celebrated as a city whose contemporary art scene is vibrant, prolific, and significant.  Curated by Kris Kuramitsu, some of the galleries and artists represented in the exhibition are Cherry and Martin Gallery, L.A. Louver, Regen Projects, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, and Steve Turner Gallery.

As if this weren’t enough, the Getty Research Institute will also present their exhibition Julius Shulman’s Los Angeles. Featuring over 100 rarely seen photos from Julius Shulman’s photography archive, the exhibit will showcase the passion that Shulman had for this sprawling, culturally rich City of Angels.

We all love Los Angeles in different ways – some love to hate it, some just love it unabashedly.  But no one can deny how enticing, unique, and powerful our art scene has become, even just in recent years.  Locals can’t deny it and now even the Spanish can’t deny it.