It’s easy to get jealous in Los Angeles. Most everyone came here from somewhere, even if it was here, to try and create art of some sort, to go behind the curtain of media-making in an attempt to toss in a pinch of their own individual ingredients. The result is an endless stream of Facebook invitations, familiar postcards on coffee shop pin-boards, and a daunting sense that others’ ingredients—some friends, some enemies, some people who just got to town—are taking over the stew.
But if there’s anything I learned in college—a smaller, but similar stew—it’s that the work of my peers, in analysis or collaboration, is often the best teacher out there. And it’s precisely because you are jealous, because you can view their creative process as a mirror of your own. You can say, “Huh, this person is no genius, they’re practically an idiot, but they made this choice. I never thought about doing that. Maybe I too can make that choice, only better.” It’s creative capitalism, but the only way it works is when you’re actively supporting one another.
This seems to be motto of the Los Angeles-based art collective, This Is What We Imagine (TIWWI, or Teewee), a group of young video, film, photography, and design makers—many of whom I went to school with—that are exhibiting their latest projects tonight, Saturday night, at the Echo Park Rec Center. Beginning at 9:00 PM, the program, called “Show and Tell,” boasts the premiere of two recent collaborative efforts: “Weekend of Wonderment 6” and “Remember When.” If you haven’t heard of the first five installments of the “Weekend of Wonderment” campaign, it’s comprised of about four or five projects, all made within the time-span of two days and with the help of anybody and everybody available. “Remember When,” also the product of many (as opposed to few), is a new comic web-series about a group of friends who try to recreate the lost memories of their amnesia-begotten buddy.
TIWWI’s “Show and Tell” begins tonight, Saturday, 9:00 PM, at the Echo Park Rec Center, located at 1161 Logan Street in Echo Park. For more information, please visit www.tiwwi.com.
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.
It seems only natural to combine our two first loves – art and food. Yet that combination is rarely accomplished in a tasteful manner — that is, until recently.
The artist group Fallen Fruit has pioneered a considerable effort that is changing the way we view Los Angeles’s urban landscape, one tree at a time. Fallen Fruit, founded by Matias Viegener, David Burns, and Austin Young, mapped areas of Silver Lake that have public access to fruit trees — i.e. free, locally grown, organic food. This project continues to connect those with too much and those with too little of that good stuff.
Fallen Fruit’s next big project is at LACMA and is aptly titled EATLACMA. Both today and tomorrow, Fallen Fruit will be giving away free fruit trees to kick off their year-long investigation into food, art, culture, and politics. And keep your ear to the ground as their program unfold seasonally, including the exhibition Fallen Fruit Presents the Fruit of LACMA and day-long event in November.
An apple a day never tasted so good – or so free for that matter.
For more information about Fallen Fruit, click here. For more information about EATLACMA, click here.
We all dream in our own style – some of us have dreams of grandiose places, some have anxiety dreams about some upcoming event, and the lucky ones have kinky dreams. It often takes more than just looking at someone to work out what their dreams might look like. But, and I’m really generalizing here, I have a feeling that the two artists currently on view at LeBasse Projects in Culver City have got the wonderfully indie dreams of film favorites like, say, Ellen Page or Michael Cera down.
On one hand, Scott Belcastro’s exhibit, called “Chasing the Last Glimpse of Light,” is full of paintings (somewhat big, acrylic paintings) that show a sort of Where The Wild Things Are existence with fuzzy mountains, a red menacing sky, and a lone reindeer beneath the stars. He has a simplistic painting style with colors that are more muted than vibrant – the paintings are ultimately a delicate view of the wild and twisted world we live in.
Then, there’s Linda Kim and her exhibit, “A Light Within.” The two painters easily complement each other – her style has a similarly minimalist, yet dreamlike quality with animals making their way through the mist or sleeping beneath an intensely blue sky. The immediate difference between those two is actually their use of color. Where Kim employs color blocking techniques and a more diverse and concentrated use of hues, Belcastro seems to want you to wander through his world with a more fragile touch. Kim also presents her work on little wood “houses” – which really make you wish you could crawl inside and lay down. You’d probably have some pretty crazy dreams in there.
Scott Belcastro and Linda Kim’s works will be on display at LeBasse Projects through January 2010. For more information, please call (310) 558-0200 orclick here.
Tell me who loves you. Mom, Dad, Fine Arts LA…that’s three. Throw in your significant other and a best friend…that’s five.
Oh! Don’t forget…MOCA loves you, too. You didn’t know? You tend to ignore gossip, but it’s true. The Museum of Contemporary Art has decided to proceed into the rites of courtship and to show you that it is interested in making your friendship into something more. MOCA will open its doors (and heart) from Sunday, November 15 to Friday, November 20 so that you can explore Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years during its opening week at the Grand Avenue and Geffen Contemporary locations and to find out MOCA’s true intentions without costing you one red cent.
I can’t say how 20-somethings in the rest of the country are fairing at the moment, but in LA it seems like “unemployment” is the buzzword of the year among most of my peers. What boggles and frustrates me is to look around and see many highly intelligent, capable, and industrious people who are either working as telemarketers, pizza delivery drivers, and volunteers–or, not at all. Lately it feels like it’s getting worse. How many unpaid internships does one have to work until something finally gives?
The good people over at the Getty must feel the tension in the air. They’re putting on a series of films this and next weekend that few can appreciate like the embittered and unemployed. The “Four Angry Young Men” Series begins this Saturday with Tony Richardson’s “Look Back in Anger” (1958) and Karel Reisz’s “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” (1960), and closes next weekend with Lindsay Anderson’s “This Sporting Life” (1963) and Richardson’s “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” (1962). All four are directed by the founders of Britain’s New Wave Cinema and its precursory “no film can be too personal” Free Cinema Movement, whose aims were to spotlight the mostly overlooked lives of the struggling working class, dealing with issues of class consciousness, sex, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment. Ah, disillusionment. The films feature the young actors Richard Burton, Albert Finney, Richard Harris, and Tom Courtenay respectively, with the stunning Rachel Roberts playing in both “This Sporting Life” and “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.”
Best of all, all four screenings are free! Comfort certainly for a broken wallet, and there’s something everyone – even the monied old bluebloods out there – can enjoy.
- By Helen Kearns
For more information about the screenings and to make ticket reservations, visit the Getty’s website.
(Image from “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”)
Tomorrow evening, we are going to play it like it is 1984 all over again as The Wall Project commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall. Starting at 11:00pm, an 80’ x 10’ wall of art will span Wilshire Blvd. between Fairfax and Spaulding — and guess what? It is going to collapse at 12:00am just like the original wall separating East and West Germany. Join the rest of us tomorrow night after your evening stroll tonight up and down La Cienega catching all the Culver City gallery openings (Tomoo Gokita at Honor Fraser, Noah Sheldon at Cherry and Martin, and Sean Duffy at Susan Vielmetter). History repeats itself at one of its more finer points and even better…it won’t cost you one red cent.
Click here to read Fine Art LA’s piece about The Wall Project. Click here for more details about tomorrow evening.
How many appointments have you made in the last week? There’s the hair appointment, waxing, and obviously – therapy. None of that, while necessary, sounds all too fun. We think it’s time to make an appointment that not only brings you somewhere much more interesting, but that is also free.
Welcome to Marine, a private art salon that opened in July of this year. Bringing us back to the days when an art salon was, rather than an anomaly, a chic and inviting way of viewing group shows and discovering new artists, Marine hosts bi-monthly events and it’s only open to be viewed by appointment. Current artists represented in the salon include Drew Beckmeyer, Val Britton, Seth Kaufman, Matt Klos, and many others. Their work can be seen through November 7. The domestic space focuses on bringing attention to emerging, contemporary artists and is curated by Claressinka Anderson who has worked with galleries across the city including Pharmaka, Tarryn Teresa Gallery, and even Barker Hangar.
Remember, this is the kind of salon for which you place the emphasis on the first syllable – it’s not the kind of salon where you’ve got to choose a polish color. We suggest putting their number in your phone with the name Marine – that way you can pretend she’s just a friend of yours with an enormous, amazing, rotating art collection.
Marine is a salon located in Santa Monica, CA. For more information, pleaseclick here.
The Miracle Mile Art Walk, which happens every third Saturday of the month, has a little extra flavor with The Wall Project this Saturday — the Wende Museum continues its plans to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall. They are preparing to build up the wall to tear it down all over again. Please leave your sledgehammer(s) at home. The LA-style fall won’t happen until next month.
The art walk starts officially at 4:00pm, which will give you plenty of time to survey the gallery scene on Wilshire, including some gems at 6150. At ACME, Jennifer Steinkamp’s new show Orbit is guaranteed to impress and is definitely worth your while to stop by. Last year, her gorgeous scrolling floral digital animations projected on the wall were a definite highlight, so her new show will surely be a treat.
At 4:30, Thierry Noir, who was the first painter of the original Berlin Wall in 1984, and Justinian Jampol, the Wende Museum’s director, will speak at the Wall Along Wilshire as part of the Wall Project. Also, on Saturday, Noir and his LA counterparts, Kent Twitchell, Marie Astrid Gonzalez, and Farrah Karapetian, will be painting the Wall Along Wilshire, which is set to be the longest stretch of the real Berlin Wall outside of Berlin.
The afterparty is over at Phantom Galleries from 8:30 – 10:00. The exhibition GraceBeautyFortitude, curated by Sophia Louisa as part of Sophia Louisa Project, opens on Saturday with work featuring Rebecca Niederlander, Leigh Salgado, and Coleen Sterritt. The preview images look gorgeous. The three qualities — grace, beauty, and fortitude — are presented through sculptures that seems so delicate and ephemeral, but at the same time very strong and resonate.
All will probably head over the Mandrake afterward You know how we do it around here.
Mention the Miracle Mile Art Walk for free entrance into LACMA and CAFAM.
The Miracle Mile Art walk is Saturday, October 17 from 4 – 10. For more information about The Wall Project (5900 Wilshire Blvd.) and Saturday’s events, please click here.Jennifer Steinkamp’s exhibition opens Saturday with an opening reception 6 – 8 at ACME (6150 Wilshire Blvd.). Also, Sophia Louisa Project’s GraceBeautyFortitude (5412 Wilshire Blvd.), opens on Saturday and will host the art walk after party.
It’s easy to get jealous in Los Angeles. Most everyone came here from somewhere, even if it was here, to try and create art of some sort, to go behind the curtain of media-making in an attempt to toss in a pinch of their own individual ingredients. The result is an endless stream of Facebook invitations, familiar postcards on coffee shop pin-boards, and a daunting sense that others’ ingredients—some friends, some enemies, some people who just got to town—are taking over the stew.
Ever wonder what happened to 
We all dream in our own style – some of us have dreams of grandiose places, some have anxiety dreams about some upcoming event, and the lucky ones have kinky dreams. It often takes more than just looking at someone to work out what their dreams might look like. But, and I’m really generalizing here, I have a feeling that the two artists currently on view at LeBasse Projects in Culver City have got the wonderfully indie dreams of film favorites like, say, Ellen Page or Michael Cera down.
I can’t say how 20-somethings in the rest of the country are fairing at the moment, but in LA it seems like “unemployment” is the buzzword of the year among most of my peers. What boggles and frustrates me is to look around and see many highly intelligent, capable, and industrious people who are either working as telemarketers, pizza delivery drivers, and volunteers–or, not at all. Lately it feels like it’s getting worse. How many unpaid internships does one have to work until something finally gives?
How many appointments have you made in the last week? There’s the hair appointment, waxing, and obviously – therapy. None of that, while necessary, sounds all too fun. We think it’s time to make an appointment that not only brings you somewhere much more interesting, but that is also free.
The 
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