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.
From George Washington on the Delaware, to Huck Finn on the Mississippi, to Katrina on the Gulf, rivers make up an integral part of the geographical, historical, cultural, political, and artistic landscape of the America we know. And Los Angeles is no exception. Yes it’s true that for the good part of the year, the L.A. River remains hopelessly barren, and provides a better bike path to Long Beach than it does a waterway. But if you’ve ever actually step foot into that mighty concrete divider of our city, then you’d know it’s every bit as organic and symbolic as any other great river. Whether it’s the plastic bag trees, the graffiti-worn banks, or the garbage disposal current, one would be hard-pressed to not find the same beauty that Mark Twain once described in his memoir, Life on the Mississippi, as “…a wonderful book…which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it had uttered them with a voice.”
On show until July 3rd at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the collective exhibition entitled The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River(UGLAR for short) also uses the metaphor of a book, only this one screams its secrets. Consisting of a wide range of contemporary, LA-based artists, this unique assortment of paintings, sculptures, photographs, and illustrations all converge like tributaries into one central theme: the Los Angeles River.
One oil painting called “Confluence” by Tyson Dolan portrays the intersection of two concrete canals, meeting and opening into the space of the viewer. The colors are muted, almost foggy, and with the installed background sounds of dripping water and distant train bells echoing throughout the room, one gets the distinct feeling of being alone and drifting through Dolan’s industrial river-basin.
Another piece, up-and-comer Rob Sato’s “Land Admiral Lefebvre’s Fleet Makes Sail”, takes a more surreal, maximalist route. This multi-medium, ‘Where’s Waldo’ mash-up depicts an elaborate, farcical, eighteenth-century showdown between the Blue-Coats and the Reds on the battlefield of the Los Angeles River. There’s of course no water for the huge wooden ships, so the implied Admiral Lefebvre sails upon his own ocean, with hundreds of tiny minions carrying the actual waves themselves. Not to be ignored in this spectacle are Sato’s frequent dips into brash absurdity: slave-like giants, a monstrous fish-man-beast riding a whale like an Avatar pterodactyl, and if you look hard enough, a modern car wreck upon the bridge over the river.
The biggest work on show, however, is a mural completed by all the contributing artists. It’s title is “The River Experiment,” and it speaks to the theme of the collection, which is one of evolution, or perhaps more accurately, mutation. Because The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River – to complete Mark Twain’s quote – “[is] not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”
The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River runs until July 3rd at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. For more information, please visit pmcaonline.org, or call (626) 568-3665.
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.
It is fascinating to see a sculptor’s preliminary study of his or her work. Especially if the artwork has been created, it is a glimpse into the ever evolving nature of the creative process. These type of drawings are like a secondary, kid sister manifestation of the artist’s idea.
Rachel Whiteread, House, 1993
Speaking of sculptors, Rachel Whiteread, one of the British Young Artists, is well-known for her encompassing sculptures that depict negative space. For an example, the work House is a concrete cast of a house’s inside. It is as if someone had poured concrete through the chimney, filled up the interior space of the house, and then cracked the roof and walls away with a huge chisel. But before the sculpture, there were the drawings.
The Hammer Museum presents the first museum retrospective of Whiteread’s drawings and other preliminary work. And the drawings are coupled with objects that Whiteread found and sought inspiration from for her artistic practice.
This show will make you want to dust of your black book to get drawing again.
Rachel Whiteread Drawings closes April 25th, 2010. For more information, please click here.
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 toStar 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 visittheir websitefor public viewing hours and more information. Admission is free!
It was only a little earlier today that the Los Angeles City Council voted down the proposition to eliminate the Transient Occupancy Tax (the TOT), the sole source of governmental funding behind of the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA). This action, had it been carried through, would have effectively shut down 18 cultural centers—including the Barnsdall Arts Center in Hollywood and the Center for the Arts in Eagle Rock, host to the Sony Pictures Media Arts Program for middle school youth—as well as five professional theatre facilities, and an array of classes, programs, and cultural events.
Such a worthwhile institution as the DCA might seem like an easy stronghold in such a creatively centered city as Los Angeles, but it was largely due to incredible advocacy organizations like Arts for LA that the proposition was shot down. They, along with other activist groups and privately-funded museums such as the Hammer, urged their supporters to write letters to their councilmen, and voice their opinions at the City Council public hearing this Wednesday. Some handed out stickers with the phrase “Arts Fuel LA,” others toted hand-made signs, and one woman addressed the council in a full-on angel costume.
Lo and behold, these efforts proved successful, and as a website strictly devoted toward promoting the arts, artists, and cultural community of Los Angeles, FineArtsLA would like to sincerely thank both the City Council members, and the hard-working advocacy organizations for their aid and congratulate them on their accomplishment today.
Of course the fight for the arts is never through—the council issue still undecided is whether the current cultural grants will be honored—but in celebration of this week’s victory, may I suggest checking out the DCA-funded Municipal Arts Gallery in the Barnsdall Arts Park. From January 24th through April 18th, they are hosting an enormous series of participatory exhibitions entitled “Actions, Conversations, and Intersections,” all aimed at enhancing the artistic community of Los Angeles. In residency this week is Smart Gals Productions, whose patented “Reading Preserve and Speakeasy Collection” features public readings from some of LA’s best authors, including John Albert, Noel Alumit, and Aimee Bender (my personal favorite).
The Smart Gals will toast off their weeklong program on Sunday, February 7th at 2:00pm with the collaborative “Winter Picnic Performance,” a fun mix of music, theatre, fresh bread courtesy of the Bicycle Bread Company, and hot coffee from Cafécito Organico. So come along, fuel the arts that fuel LA, and if you get the chance, thank somebody.
Curated by Edith Abeyta and Michael Lewis Miller, “Actions, Conversations, and Intersections” runs until April 18th, 2010 at the Los Angeles Municipal Arts Gallery in the Barnsdall Art Park. For more information, visit www.actionsconversationsintersections.com
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.
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.
Yesterday, I journeyed to the center of the Earth. And by the center of the Earth, I mean Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth, an exhibition at the Fowler Museum. The whole experience wasn’t too strenuous and it provided a welcomed break and plenty of inspiration into my day.
Upon entrance, there is a huge bear made out of striped sweaters standing on its hind legs. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. Your journey has just begun. In the same room, a three-panel screen showing different videos sets the tone of the show because they depict Nick Cave’s Soundsuits in resonating action. Soundsuits are elaborate, labor-intensive costumes, or “suits,” made out of household materials. The name of each suit is the sound each costume makes when worn.
Marching straight out of a hallucination, the 35 Soundsuits on display boggle the mind because they are part ritualistic garb and part Alice in Wonderland with a touch of Liberace. They range from knitted bodysuits patched together from afghans to intricate headdresses turned body-based sculpture covered with sequins and video tape. Considering the sculptures are to be worn, one can start to think about the notions of performance whether in terms of art, ritual, or art and ritual’s intersection. Furthermore, just imagine wearing one of these suits. Not only would you need a team to help you put it on, but also you would need to relearn how to move and learn how to be this character. There is only room for one personality when wearing a Soundsuit. And I think the Soundsuit would win.
A close inspection of the suits’ materials dazzle the mind. Materials include remnants of cozy sweaters, sequin jackets, kitsch bird sculptures, vintage toy tops, and buttons galore all stacked on top of each other or sewn right next to each other. You start to wonder about the life of each material before it was placed onto this sculpture. Each button was once sewn onto a shirt. Each afghan warmed families on their couch. The sheer amount of found materials is astounding.
Furthermore, the show’s installation was a treat. Instead of following the works-on-white-wall model, brilliantly colored walls and screens lead the viewer throughout the exhibition Wild Toad-style to examine the Soundsuits in the round.
As you walk out of the exhibition, you might be wondering where you could see one of these Soundsuits in action. If you keep your eyes and ears open, you will. Nick Cave is partnering up with UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures to create a series of impromptu performance-interventions around the city called Soundsuit Invasions. Just keep tabs on the Fowler’s Twitter and Facebook feeds for the details.
Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth closes May 30, 2010. Please click here for more information.
With Art Basel Miami Beach securely behind us now, the remaining weeks before we kick off the new year should be spent reflecting and looking forward.
The undercurrent of 2008’s string of art fairs, festivals, and biennials was the sting of the recession – sales were down across the board, works were priced significantly lower at auction houses, and the number of artists and galleries showing had decreased from years before. If that was 2008’s unspoken theme, 2009’s theme was surely a wait-and-see attitude. The recession has shown signs of lifting, depending on how optimistic you are, and the art world is treading lightly and with baited breath.
This year, Art Basel Miami saw more than 250 galleries participate with exhibits featuring over 2,000 artists including Hannah Wilke, Marilyn Minter, James Rosenquist, and Dana Schutz. Galleries that represented the City of Angels include Blum & Poe, Cherry and Martin, Mixografia, and Roberts & Tilton. What was most important to the art world at this year’s Miami show, however, was whether or not we’d all feel the market had stabilized. Mission accomplished. It’s largely agreed upon that this years Art Basel Miami was a stronger show than last year’s with a host of veteran collectors and up-and-coming arts aficionados at every turn.
And just like that, 2010 will be here in the blink of an eye bringing with it a confidence in the market that was largely absent in 2008. Fairs, festivals, and shows may be scaled down and galleries may still be closing, but now there’s an air of resurgence and renaissance as opposed to a feeling of chaos, uncertainty, and failure.
Take the Whitney Biennial 2010, for example. While the show will be toned down this year – exhibiting 55 artists as opposed to 100 in 2006 and utilizing only the Whitney Museum as opposed to multiple locations – it will be no less an examination of the American art world at large. First, its relatively small size reflects the art market in a tough economic climate. Second, and more thrilling, is how many LA-based artists will be represented in the show, proving again that LA’s art scene is nothing to shake a stick at. Twelve out of 55 is a pretty good percentage from a city whose art scene can be often overlooked. Pasadena-born artist Pae White and her colorful installations will be there, Martin Kersels, too, and British import Thomas Houseago will present his new sense of self as an Angeleno and his wild man/beast sculptures. Alongside recognizable names and heavyweights, in true American fashion, the Whitney Biennial will show a number of emerging artists like LA-based Hannah Greely and Lesley Vance.
All in all, how much a work sells for is only as important as the reaction it triggers – when the market is on its upward climb, that’s when innovation and creativity are valued most.
From George Washington on the Delaware, to Huck Finn on the Mississippi, to Katrina on the Gulf, rivers make up an integral part of the geographical, historical, cultural, political, and artistic landscape of the America we know. And Los Angeles is no exception. Yes it’s true that for the good part of the year, the 
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.
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?
Yesterday, I journeyed to the center of the Earth. And by the center of the Earth, I mean Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth, an exhibition at the Fowler Museum. The whole experience wasn’t too strenuous and it provided a welcomed break and plenty of inspiration into my day.
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