Weekend Run-down

Fuel up your car and pack some snacks because come this weekend, you will be zipping around Los Angeles to stay on the pulse of the art scene.  It may be easier said than done, but you can be the judge of that…

Start your Saturday at the Honor Fraser Gallery in Culver City with a panel titled “Pop Art and Ethics,” which will be moderated by Ed Schad and include Irving Blum, David LaChapelle, Holly Myers, and Catherine Taft.  This discussion will explore what makes pop continually vital, continually hated, and perhaps a state of art practice that will always exist.  If you have two or three cents, be sure to throw them in.  [Panel is Saturday, December 12 at 2:00.  Click here for more info.]

Over at Regen Projects in West Hollywood, Glenn Ligon’s new exhibition Off Books is made up of paintings that continue Ligon’s study of James Baldwin’s seminal 1953 essay Stranger in the Village.  Ligon’s work focuses on themes found within this text, including cultural identity, the decipherability of the other, and the burden of history.  [Opening reception is Saturday, December 12, 6 – 8pm.  Click here for more info.]

Grab a drink at the Mountain Bar as you continue the adventure in Chinatown.  The doors for Chinatown galleries will be wide open during Chinatown Art Nights.  At FOCA, the exhibition All Time Greatest, curated by Natilee Harren, explores how an artist’s musical tastes add another dimension to his or her work.  We are hoping to find someone’s guilty musical pleasure.  Beyoncé, anyone?  [Opening reception is Saturday, December 12, 7 – 9 pm.  Click here for more info.]

Continuing northward, in Highland Park, workspace is playing it digital in “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened,” curated by Graham Kolbeins, which features a looped screening of videos.  These films explore reviving and exorcising the recent past.  [Event is Saturday, December 12, 7 – 10pm.  Click here for more info.]

If you are still on your art high from Saturday, swing by MOCA to watch Herb & Dorothy on Sunday.  This film features a couple, a postal clerk and librarian, who amassed one of the most important collections of contemporary art by buying art work “we liked, what we could afford, and what would fit in our one-bedroom apartment.” [Film is Sunday, December 13, 3–5pm.  Click here for more info.]

Those are the rounds to be made.  It’s a hard job, but someone’s got to do it.