Magritte at LACMA

DAMN LACMA. I had plans to go see the Magritte show at LACMA tonight. That is before I realized after an extensive search on the website that tickets cost $22 per adult. Now I am an art lover but $22? Is it really twice the entertainment and intellectual exercise of a good film whose tickets are going for about $11. Museums wonder why people don’t go to see art. It is because the big name shows cost $22. It turns people away and then they are less likely to see the less big name shows that are part of the regular admission. There should be free nights and if there is an additional cost for the show it should be obviously noted on the exhibitions webpage not buried with the subpages for ordering tickets.

2006 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art 11/24

Feeling a little like I had visited the Oprah set with the big “O” sticker used for admission, I took on the California Biennial that is now, a few weeks later, at the end of its run. It is always a big trek to head down to Orange County and I generally do so with a great amount of trepidation, knowing that if the show that I have gone to see is unsuccessful, then I feel as if I have wasted my day. The Biennial made for a satisfying day out. Packed wall to wall and in the lobby area as well, the work within the show seem to put forth a level of inquiry, formal structure and positivity. It was as if OCMA had taken all the best gallery shows of a year and crammed them into a museum setting.
I do not know what qualifies (or disqualifies) one for this particular show, but there were definitely no artists over the age of 40. Perhaps this is in part what caused the enthusiasm that seemed to be the undercurrent for the work, the energy manifest in the layers and intricate detail in painting and sculpture and the performance in the new media work. Or perhaps that is just the current thing for visual media. Either way, I walked away feeling good about art.
Of particular note out of the large list of artists were Christopher Ballantyne’s paintings of virtually uninhabited landscapes that border on a film set anticipating action to come. These scenes are painted upon wood panels that are never disguised. The wood grain always seeps through and brings back the materiality of the surface. On the video front Marie Jager’s oblique narrative of a societal disaster made with cutouts created a must watch Lynchian quality not often seen in the gallery setting and Goody-B Wiseman’s reflections on the implied fictions of 70’s album covers was such a guilty pleasure I stayed and watched the entirety of all 3 parts within the series.
These artists are just a small sampling of the work on the display, and many other names could be mentioned just as easily. I look forward to trying to track these artists as they progress further in their careers and see if the maintain the quality and enthusiasm displayed at OCMA.

New Media at OCCCA 11/24

I had not run across the OCCCA gallery before and was very hopeful when I saw the title “New Media” with the promise of many interesting video works. I found myself disappointed, however, by what I didn’t see. What I didn’t see were many things turned on correctly, or even at all, and other pieces in a various state of working. Putting on a new media show is a good noble cause, but I would rather not have work up than it not working. The art community would not allow paintings to be displayed in an “almost finished” form nor would a sculpture under construction be acceptable either. However, always in shows with media it there are works either not working at fault of the artist or the fault of the gallery staff. In this day and age it is not acceptable. The only thing of note was a video by Deva Eveland, part of a sub curated online exhibition by Humberto Ramirez. The video is a real time endurance work where tiny little flags are painstakingly forced into the crevices of the mouth of the featured performer. You can’t look away, but you cant stop as the symbol for the USA becomes a literal source of pain. Unfortunately, the artists who are part of the online part of the exhibition are not indicated in the publicity for the show. I hope that the OCCCA continues to have new media shows but, in the future, holds up there part of the art bargain, by working harder at having art that is really truly “there” instead of a place holder for what the artist would intended.

ALAVs 2.0 at Art Center 12/14

Though it seemed to be a one night and one night only exhibition, it was a fun outing over at the South Campus of the Pasadena Art Center. There were a few works displayed: interactive plastic geese that seemed to be a hit with the small kids, funny little bunny sculptures that lit up when walked by, but the big draw for the evening were the Autonomous Light Air Vessels (ALAVs) 2.0 by Jed Berk. The text for the work makes all kinds of claims for smart interactions between people and the transparent, microchip carrying 3ft blimps that circulated in the space. Now, I am not sure how much of what was said was true, but there did seem to be some interaction, real or imagined between the folks at the opening and those crazy little mobile creatures. My husband called one of the blimps on the provided phone number for blimp interaction, promptly found his blimp, responded to the phone questions, made the blimp mad and caused it to fly away. Other blimps seemed to respond to a “feeder” device and others still seemed to follow you around a little like a dog. Everyone seemed to be having a good time trying to figure out the proper method of relating to the art objects (if only people did this with all the art they see). Besides being objects to interact with, they were also very lovely, interesting, sculptural objects. The whole scene reminded me of a Warhol work with slver ballons that were floated back and forth by large fans and created a great joy for the audience. It definitely seemed like a prototype for something more large scale, but charming enough that I would definitely like to see the results when it all gets figured out.

La Fabrique - Tania Mouraud 11/24/06

Recent Artist in Residence, Paris native Tania Mouraud, has created an interesting large-scale multic-hannel video installation at the Grand Central Art Gallery, part of the CSUF campus. The work documents the Indian cloth workers at their independent weaving stations. With 18 channels of video (14 monitors and 4 projections) the room is transformed into a factory of workers amongst noise and simple mechanization. La Fabrique challenges us not to look away, as the workers often stare directly into the lens while doing the labor that is so repetitive that it needs no specific attention. The work provides no contextual background of conditions, or place in Indian society for the workers (though some context is given in the wall write up). This forces the viewers to take it upon themselves to make their own decision about what their Western gaze on a room full of Indian workers means to them. The scale of the image of the workers within the monitors takes on a very realistic size, providing a real sense of the occupation of the space. However, the four large-scale projections of workers spinning act a bit of a distraction with no explanation of why the spinners would deserve such a greater scale than rest of the weavers. Also the low luminosity of the projected image leaves a feeling of removed otherness that the richness of the CRT monitors does not imply. Though the projections are not as richly realized as the multi-channel monitors, they do not diminish the piece, they just do not bring additional richness to the work that they could have provided. The strength of the work is in the multiple monitors transforming the space, when you enter the darkened room you leave your world and enter a constructed space of labor and life. It is definitely worth the trip to see the installation live, as documentation will just not provide the real information of what La Fabrique has to say.

MOCA –Skin and Bones 11/25/06

The opening of the Skin and Bones exhibit was a crowded but interesting affair, as I wish more art scenes in Los Angeles were. Of course crowds mean many people are seeing art, but definitely not at optimum viewing conditions, so I will hold of on a more in depth description of the show until I have more time to actually view the work on display. But from a first walk through, the show is smart and definitely a smart layout and comparison of work that you might be familiar with a lot that you are not. Innovative displays of architecture and fashion make you ask, “Why does my home, my work, my recreation, my fashion look like everything else?” And in my opinion it is always good to leave with more questions than when you arrived.

Ernest Gusella at EPFC 11/9

Thursday nights at the Echo Park Film Center are often a treat, finding something that you haven't seen or didn't know and then instantaneously becoming quite fond of it. Last Thursday EPFC featured a selection the works of Ernest Gusella from the 1970's. How Gusella'’s work had slipped by me in the past, I am not sure. The 17 or so works screened were charming funny and a bit magical. Often that which is high tech a few years ago quickly loses its charm today, but I imagine that Gusella's tapes are as fun as they were when they were produced in the New York art-tech era of The Kitchen, if not quite as radical to the viewing audience. Of particular note were two pieces: Exquiste Corpse and Iris. Both utilized a play of the eye produced by a home manufactured switiching device rapidly cutting between perfectly aligned alternating color and black and white sources. The effect was an optical illusion of video containing another video without subdividing the frame.

Chintown 10/21

Better late than never. Two weekends ago I head over to Chinatown for a Saturday night of art openings. There were openings at Happy Lion, Kontainer Gallery, Rental Gallery, Telic, Peres Projects and Mary Goldman . Two weeks has calmed by view of what I saw. As I left the scene after hitting the openings, I was full of venom for the state of the art world. In retrospect, things are not as bad as my initial reaction.

Chinatown is known for the youth of the artists having shows, which can be both good and bad; new fresh art blood mixed with works about ideas that haven’t reached maturity.Dan Attoe, at Peres Projects, had freshness, a sensation I imagine hard to infuse into his neon sculptures. His efforts to turn the gallery into a lodge atmosphere are admirable, but in the end a little to testosterone driven for my personal taste. The art at many of the other galleries was the art you would expect, paintings, drawings and prints challenging the frame and traditional methods of making, but overall a little to predictable to be excited about. I had hoped for some excitement down at Telic with Mario’s Furniture, but there were very few people in the space and some of those were be pressured into being participants. It was too much pressure for me on a Saturday night, so I left without playing.

The one show that I did see that I thought was of note was Freedom: and Other Seldom Travelled Roads by Sanford Biggers at the Mary Goldman Gallery. The works were playful yet thoughtful renditions of the African American consciousness, using iconography typically associated with that culture or the image of that culture to push a little further. Each work, simple yet strong, would be quite understated as an entity unto itself. However, displayed together in the gallery setting they made smart pairings and brought out the meanings a little further. The series of metallic east coast doorknockers originally meant to look like comical servant, recast here metallic and partially melted in combination with drawings that used the same silhouetted shapes in mirrored metallic stickers recalled the pop sensibility of Jeff Koons with ideas greater than celebrity. Another work, a typical fertility idol, simple split down the middle and then separated spoke volumes about concepts of identity. It was overall a strong show and by far the highlight of the most current crop of Chinatown offerings.

Raid FC?

One additional quick post – last week while I was down in Venice checking out the Jeremy Blake show, I stopped in to another gallery on Abbot Kinney that seems to call itself Raid FC and might be affiliated with the Raid Projects at the Brewery (sorry for the sketchy information).

The work presented, a group show, seemed to follow the theme of geography and mapping. Like all group shows, it was a bit of a mixed bag but there were a few works that really stood out. The first is Dimitiri Kozyrv. His painting, Europe, a multiplane painting dissects the traditional landscape and presents multiple lines of vision of different soil and different sky combining them into a strangely cohesive work. Less cubist, more Zaha Hadid, the painting works both from a distance drawing us closer and when viewed from an immediate distance gives us enough details to keep us there.

Porch by Kerry Skarbakka is the other standout work within the show. Skarbakka large C-print provides us with the moment right after the “decisive moment” that moment in which a future is inevitable but still full of tension. The image of a man falling/jumping from a balcony area, presumably to the hard ground below, insinuates a filmic narrative of what is outside of the frame and its multiple possibilities while still discussing the topics of form and weight more associated with sculpture.

Both works are sole pieces by the artist in a group show that left me strongly wanting to see greater collections by these two artists and hopefully more shows by the mysterious Raid FC.

Distributed Memory: Live Music and Projected Image at the Getty

This week Friday Nights at the Getty, their weekly lecture and performance series, became Friday and Saturday night at the Getty with the presentation of Distributed Memory: Live Music and Projected Image. Saturday night, the night I attended, featured the film work of Janie Geiser, and Brent Green, accompanied by Tom Recchion and Califone, respectively, playing live sets to the previously existing images. Though all the individual elements of film and sound were strong, somewhere in the middle of the evening I asked myself “Why is it important that the musicians be part of this live performance? Is it providing me anymore information than would have been understood on a prerecorded soundtrack.” Besides a little bit of additional verve in the auditorium setting the answer for me was no. There was nothing that required the musicians to be there – no additional on the spot improvisation, no use of the space as an instrument or playback device, no audience interaction that made the live musicians imperative. In fact the only reason that I could equate was an extension of the historical idea of the live musical score being played to silent films. But these films are not silent in their construction – from what I could tell they are never meant to be viewed without sound, so the evening seemed like an exaggerated presentation.

However the over work presented was an interesting combination of experimental animation and sound. The collaboration between Janie Geiser and Tom Recchion was ethereal, Geiser’s filmmaking pushing dreamlike landscapes of forlorn men and women, always utilizing imagery of film days gone by. Recchion sound work, which was only performed live to her newest video, full of contemporary pops and synth provided a nice counterpoint to general film-as-film presentations.

The collaboration between Brent Green and Califone is a little more hand worked and homespun, with saw instruments and acetate overlay edges. Both filmmaker and musicians have a folk-alt edge, reaching down to the dark edges of the universe. The complexities of life for an unknowable Santa and a bastard child provided the material for simple, unrefined animation and the almost preacher frenzy of narrative being sung. During it’s best moments, the combination of frenetic energy between the animation and music painted a dark picture that previously been envisioned, but often the works were a little long and shut me out soon after they invited me to the new landscape.

All of the works presented created a universe of fantasy just left of what you normally see. And for a casual Saturday night’s entertainment, that is not too bad.

Natalie Jeremijenko at Materials and Architecture

Some where between artist, scientist and second grade teacher seems to lay Natalie Jeremijenko. Last Thursday amongst the large illuminated balloons of the Bubble project at Materials and Architecture she presented a lecture on some of her last works exhibited at Postmasters focusing on the line between natural and urban, giving a staring role to the pigeons of New York city. With all the verve of an elementary school teacher she presented her vision of, for lack of a better term, art/science, a popular trend in new media and where her work is strongly placed and she is kind of the Queen Bee. This area of artistic development takes arts usefulness out of the realm of visual pleasure and positions it in the world of science and experimentation. This analytical inquiry by way of quirky art projects seems to allow some type of “value” in a post-post modern vision of art.
Natalie’s entire presentation had the air of car salesman to it, trying hard to convince you of the ideas behind her unusual projects. Her ideas sounded interesting, but it was hard to judge how successful they are as individual/collected artworks, as the documentation requires considerable notation to know what is going on. Even Natalie herself seemed to indicate that the public at large has had a hard time knowing how to approach her work without further instruction. Her green roof work at Postmaster has an interesting premise, but a little too cutesy at times, using exaggerated concepts (How long will it take for a plastic toy to degrade? A wedding dress?) to make points that are rather easy.
Though my instinctual bias has been to be a bit dismissive of works like this, something in her presentation lightened my approach to art/science. So strongly tied to performance/conceptual art of the last century, perhaps it is still just the gesture of art/science that is the point of the work rather actual pieces themselves, with awareness and small interactions always at the forefront of meaning.

Jeremy Blake at Honor Fraser Gallery

Jeremy Blake is no writer. After beginning to read his artist statement, I abandoned half way through, as nothing that I had gleaned was more interesting or informative than watching his new work which is on show down at the Honor Fraser Gallery in Venice. If familiar with Blake’s previous works, his signature techniques are still employed: still images becoming motion, dissolves that are transitions and subtlety provide focus of attention and meaning. However, unlike the previous work of Blake’s that I have seen, which are always on the edge of a nostalgia for a future yet to come, his new video Sodium Fox, feels like it occupies a time somewhere between years ago and now. The imagery evokes a 60's-70’s nostalgia: beaches, matchbooks, and half nude women with lazy flowing hair. However the visual motion is all today, knowingly living in the world of motion graphics sophistication. The audio chronicles the rambling of a poet, but quite unfortunately in the gallery, the audio is almost indiscernible because of the conflict with traffic noise and highly inadequate speakers. With this said, there is a captivating quality to the way he moves and manipulates attention around the frame, a fluidness not seen often in video art work. His video seems to appropriately occupy the “framed” flat panel that it displayed on, still feeling more akin to the history of painting than moving images, and something that you might need time to develop a relationship with over repeated viewings.

Unfortunately the stills that fill the rest of the show seem like extras, a way to fill the gallery walls of this very small gallery. The reduction of his work to the 2d realm, a realm without time, just reemphasizes their static quality, removes their context of before and after. This before and after is really where Jeremy Blake’s meaning seems to lie, not in any one image, but the transition between images, providing a journey that we take from a point close to nowhere to somewhere just past it.

Knock Knock, Whose Home? at The Acorn Gallery

Unfortunately, I write this as the show has already closed, because it would have been recommended if it were still open. The group show, curated by Nancy Buchanan, gathers works that find their nexus in politics and home. The show though petite in floor space was dense with works. Unlike so many gallery experiences where you feel like you could walk out the door a few seconds after walking in, Knock, Knock demands your time, with an emphasis on time based pieces. The works are not entirely activist oriented; from the personal remembrances of Amar Ravva about the implications on the physical structure of the home in a family stuck in the middle of two cultures, to the playful book of suggestions of how the US-Mexican border can be reimagined by Evelyn Serrano. There were also direct statements such as the video Lincoln Place by Laura Silagi and David Ewing, covering the evictions of the residents of a long-standing affordable housing development in Venice. The combination of these approaches left me with a reinforced sense of community activism as well as questions of what importance of home in the average life. Which for tiny little gallery crammed full to the gills of art, speaks mountains for the quality of the work included.

Four Eyed Monsters

I went to see Four Eyed Monsters this last Thursday. It is a video that fits the category that my husband and I like to call "where film should be"; meaning film/video trying something a little different and not producing the same recycled crud that has been created for the last 100 years. This doesn't always require avant guard abstraction; sometimes it is a simple as pushing the narrative structure a little bit, which is the case with Four Eyed Monsters. Directed and created by Susan Buice and Arin Crumley, this video that lives somewhere between fiction and documentary follows their real (though recreated) meet cute story of artists in love who have taken control of how to structure their relationship.
The video is not perfect, but it is charming, and in the end leaves you wanting more of them, which can be partially fulfilled with their ongoing podcasts. Some of the cinematography is lovely and the animations emotive while maintaining a hip roughness to them. It is only when they really seem to follow the Hollywood norms, does the visuals and the storytelling loose a little of it's luster.
The screenings are port of a homespun distribution push by the filmmakers. Each Thursday in September in 6 cities around the country they are producing a showing of their work (plus an additional short film). Having become acquainted with the concept of the films through their series of podcasts which are extremely well done, I wonder why the filmmakers still feel the to show their video in theaters and not just continue with a web distribution which would could garner a much larger audience. One day the world will realize that movies really don't need to be seen on the big screen anymore.
With all of this said, however, I was much happier having spent my time, energy, and money on this film than that of any other film I have ventured out into the theater to see lately. So, good work Arin and Susan. I look forward to continuing to follow your podcasts.

Dangerous Curve and de soto

While everyone was falling over themselves to get to the Banksy show to behold the power of a live elephant and a lot of paint, I took in a couple of smaller shows downtown. Both, by coincidence, were contemplated the art of design and the design of art.

At Dangerous Curve, the featured show was “No point takes up space” by Sky Burchard. The show was really a show in two parts, one an exhibition of faux furniture made from Styrofoam cutouts and basic three-dimensional prints to give the illusion of depth, the other contained small sculptural objects reminiscent of architectural/environmental models. The two separate sections were both fun and contemplative, giving thought to questions of design, scale, the objects being represented, and the life of the materials that are used to create them. However, the artist was still gluing pieces to the works as the show opened, leaving me to wonder how much care the artist had put into the pieces and thus how much I should put in them as well.

The other show that I caught was at the Desoto Gallery of works by Kelly Reemtseen. This was a collection of prints and cutouts, again the emphasis being the art of design with images of chairs, motorcycles, etc… While the craftsmanship was high, I was left feeling a little like the works had just exploded from an ipod or Target ad. The more simplistic abstract work was a little fresher, but at the same time just seemed a perkier version of 70’s abstraction. Which, I suppose, isn’t a horrible thing to be.

Both shows left me with the feeling that style is more important than substance and both contained work that I would buy because it matched a room in my house, but I wouldn’t change a room in the house to match it.