Magritte at Lacma and WACK! at Moca

I saw two Mega art shows this weekend - Magritte at Lacma and WACK! at MOCA. It is kind of like seeing your favorite old rock band play all of their major hits. They are still all the same, but when they mix it up a bit, it adds a new depth and sensibility. The Magritte show was fun and it did what Magritte does best - shows that art can be smart and fun at the same time. The pairings with Rucha I thought quiet fabulous - they could have had a show just of that and they would have been just fine. However the other range of artists did bring greater diversity and understanding.

We did the Pierce Brosnon tour; at it was really annoying and interesting simultaneously. Annoying in that when taking about art Brosnon seems more full of himself than in regular life. Interesting in that if you look, read, and listen you get three slightly different interpretations of the piece usually at the same time. Since it was the final days of the show, LACMA was a big crowded art party, which is how I prefer to think the exhibition was the entire time.

As for the other big art party - the WACK! show at MOCA is big. So big that I hit the art viewing wall about 2/3 of the way in and didn't quite recover. The period of work 60's -80's often contains so much detail that each work takes a long time to absorb. Then multiply that by, at least, 75 works and your are a super tired art viewer. There is a ton of video in the show, but I didn't have a chance to see any of it. A lot of the video works are really long. I will come back on another day to see a few more. I think that this presentation of video however, may be just what the museum system doesn't need as far as art video. It makes it seem unapproachable and unconquerable. I will give a more comprehensive overview as time goes on.

JiHyun Kim - Breathe into Exhistance 2/22

Just a quick note about JiHyun's exhibition. In this work JiHyun used contact mics to act as a sensor inputs to change the speed, direction and duration of the video played back, which were her own animations. While this work wasn't perfect, it showed verve - a desire to try something new and the ability to see it through in the first phase. I expect that this is is not the last itteration I see of this work , I will be happy to see it flourish. It is always good to see nice artists making nice art.

Allison Schulnik at Mark Moore 2/17

It has been a while since I last posted and I've actually seen a good bit of art since I last posted, but the past is the past. Now I will move on to the current. I went to Bergamont Station over the weekend to meet up with friends and to also check out the opening of FOOLS, REJECTS, AND SANCTUARIES a new collection of paintings by Allison Schulnik at Mark Moore Gallery. The work was quirky and funny, with paint that was applied so thick it took on a life somewhere between bas relief and thick cake frosting. And while some of this was to interesting end, especially in her landscape painting, most of the other subject matters seemed just that, central subjects without greater meaning or greater context. It would be nice to see the same technique applied to a subject matter that gave room for greater contemplation, because as the 3d surface technique looked like it would allow for a relationship of nuiances to develop over time with the viewer, I can't imagine the same being said for the images represented.