Posts Tagged ‘LACE’

LACE, or Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, is located on Hollywood Boulevard, next to one of many local stripper clothing stores, down the block from a massive adult book outfit, and bordering that sticky, glitter-crusted, cement row of dead peoples’ names known more famously as the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Needless to say, it’s an odd place to hold a prestigious, annual art auction exhibiting more than 120 separate works from artists around the world (though mainly working in Los Angeles) as chosen by 21 different participating curators. And what’s even more surprising is that the art is good—no, beyond that—refreshing.

The actual LACE Benefit Art Auction, both live and silent, is set to take place on May 20^th, beginning at 7 PM and ending at 10 PM—though the corresponding online auction has already begun, and the works have already been put up for view to the public.

I know I found myself wandering through their spacious, unobstructed galleries on Tuesday night—for the opening reception of a huge, multicolored mural by artist Nick Lowe, entitled Wall Work (which spans the entirety of the west wing of the lobby)—thinking if I had some money, I’d for sure buy an auction number.

Mostly paintings and photographs with a half-dozen or so sculptures, as well as one video for good measure, the pieces are smartly organized along the walls by curator. This provides the viewer/potential bidder with a sense of context, and general breathing room between the sheer amount of art. Also, one finds themselves judging both the work of the artists and the eyes of the curators simultaneously.

I, for one, found a few of my personal favorites in this manner—the artists being Karl Haendel and Mara Lonner (as curated by Andrea Bowers), as well as Alice Jackel and Claudia Parducci (as curated by Kim McCarthy).

Haendel’s piece, Questions For My Father was, by far, the painting in front of which I spent the most time. And while this might have been because it is simply a paragraph of text to be read, it’s also because it had the most immediate effect on my emotions. It consists of a series of blunt, often disturbing queries, ostensibly addressed to the father of the artist. Some are deeply personal (“When were you the happiest?”). Some are political (“What did you think about Nixon?”) Some are sexual (“Did you ever jerk off while thinking about one of my girlfriends?”) And some are just questions (“Have you ever eaten foie gras?”) But all of them strike a deep-rooted chord connected to the idea that we might not know our own parents as well as we think we do. Or possibly, we know them all too well.

Mara Lonner’s drawing, entitled Between Green, interested me for the sole reason that it showed me something simple and obvious I hadn’t thought of before (what I often feel good art should do). The picture depicts a finely-crafted, Japanese-style tree branch, encircled by a kind of haunting, floral mandala. And though it’s quite clear the tree branch is separate from the mandala, they seem to mesh almost seamlessly. It left me with the impression that there is no separation between the two—the geometric is inherent in the natural and vice-versa. Between the green, as it were, lies a world of delicate furniture designs.

Cosmos, another colored pencil drawing—this one by Alice Jackel—depicts a crystalline, amorphous amoeba as the outline, and then within its swirling atom-like universe: fragile pop-ups of objects and locations. A farmhouse on a meadow, a snaking tree by a river, a turquoise peppermint, some water reeds, etc. It reminded me of what a feminist friend of mine had said to me about how she thinks females perceive time—not as a chronology, but as a subconscious categorization of moments. Whether this is true for all females, or solely females I’m not one to say, but it does present a quite beautiful portrait of memory.

Lastly, Claudia Parducci and her painting Pleas(e) Me. I like this piece for its unique sense of mystery. In it, Parducci presents a definite frame of a moment—where the viewer is put in the position of a highway voyager looking up to the sky, and beyond the alien, geometric lamp posts, a faint trace of an  airplane’s vapor trail spelling out the message: “pleas me.” The implied “e” in “please” is set off frame, adding a whole other poetic layer to the otherwise minimalist piece. It’s the kind of painting you can look at for days and still never quite figure out.

Other notable works include Emilie Halpern’s Hiroshima 2010, Ivan Terestchenko’s The Listener, Lily Skolnick Simonson’s Busy Body, and Andrew Berardini’s “Dead Letter” series.

Of course there are many more great pieces to explore—possibly to bid on—but I’ll let you do the exploring (and definitely the bidding) for yourself. There is an intentional reason, in light of my experiences, that LACE is located in the eye of the Hollywood storm: it’s to bring art out of its protective membrane of elitism, and present it to the people, letting us find our own way in.

The LACE Benefit Art Auction takes place on May 20^th, beginning at 7 PM and ending at 10 PM, though you may start the bidding now at the online auction. For more information, please call (323) 957-1777, or visit www.welcometolace.org.

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.

We (21st century Americans) take so much for granted.  Our food supply is but one example.  And unless you’ve read Squeezed or Fast Food Nation, you’re probably blissfully unaware of the journey most of our food takes to reach the local market.

Consider the banana.  At one time, the banana was an exotic tropical delicacy as mysterious to some as the block of ice which makes its improbable appearance in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude. (Fans of the book might remember that it is the establishment of a banana plantation that leads to the demise of the story’s fictional village, Macondo.)  Nowadays, bananas are ubiquitous and we don’t even blink an eye while chomping into a piece of fruit that originated halfway around the world.

The banana was first brought to Colombia over a century ago by the United Fruit Company.  As is often the case when outsiders reap the natural resources of poor countries, copious amounts of blood, sweat, and tears were shed.

United Fruit marks Fallen Fruit’s first solo show and runs from June 17 through September 29 at LACE.  It premieres a new body of work generated during Fallen Fruit’s recent residency in Colombia that features a series of photographs and video installations exploring the social, political, and pop history of the banana.

Fallen Fruit is a collective of artists and activists comprised of David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young. It originally started as a neighborhood project to map a section of Silverlake charting fruit trees – neighbors were then encouraged to share fruit with each other through direct exchange as well as partaking of ripe fruit that had fallen beyond the perimeters of a neighbor’s property.  Fallen Fruit’s website now has several neighborhood fruit maps for your perusal.

When you combine art, activism and food, good things abound.  Fallen Fruit uses fruit to get people thinking about social connections in new ways so that we consider how we can improve the dynamic of our societies — one apple, orange, and banana at a time.  Yum!!

-By Peter Lee

Fallen Fruit’s United Fruit  will be at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions until September 27.