@downtowndaniel’s reproduction of Estevan Oriol’s photograph of Nipsey Hussle, who passed away one year ago today.
Mar 312020
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Mar 132020
Currently at Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York is Purdy Eaton’s delightful painting exhibition Eat and Live. Eat and Die.
From the press release-
Eaton’s upcoming exhibition is a nod to Bruce Nauman’s One Hundred Live and Die. Eat and Live, Eat and Die; the essence of all life: plants, animals, humans, kings, queens, and cockroaches are all bound to this ethos. This, like Nauman’s other phrases, Feel and Live, Feel and Die, is simultaneously fatalistic and equalizing. The chaos of politics, climate volatility, and random violence is rightfully fear inducing and overwhelming, yet there is something hopeful and meditative about the reality you eat you live, you eat you die. There will always be a tomorrow no matter how dystopic.
Eaton’s darkly humorous oil paintings riff on this dichotomy. As climate change and divisive politics tear at our foundations, we are placated by funny cat videos and TikTok memes. Play and Live, Play and Die. We can see the big picture, but sometimes it is just too depressing and overwhelming, and we want to enjoy that gorgeous sunset even if it is made of toxins.
In a series about state birds, Eaton examines the warped reality that many of the state birds are no longer able to inhabit the states they were legislated to represent. The California quail, California’s state bird for nearly a century, is leaving the state as their range is becoming too warm for them to stay. In Eaton’s depiction, the quail appear in front of a lovely sunset, but on further inspection, they might actually be escaping the latest wildfire. In another painting, Paul Bunyan rises in the foreground, while an American loon flies in another direction. The juxtaposition of this iconic strongman roadside attraction—symbolic of the American celebration of “man taming the wilderness”—-with a bird that can no longer live in Minnesota, hints that it might be time to reexamine our origin stories. In another painting from the series, a Northern Flicker with bright yellow plumage rises from a background of rockets in Huntsville, Alabama. As the location of early launches, these relics of NASA’s glory years are now tourist attractions. Space is no longer the purview of science and human progress—it has become the escape hatch, the place to go when we need a Plan B.
Eaton also spins Nauman’s duality to remind us that despite the apocalyptic visions we read about daily, it is not all bad for all creatures. Fireflies, for instance, are flourishing. The Canada Goose, once on the verge of extinction, has become so common as to be a nuisance. With these color-rich and storied paintings, Eaton is asking us to realize that this is our moment to be alive, before we all die, and that the flowers are indeed quite beautiful.
This exhibition closes 3/14/20.
Mar 122020
Dan Deacon- Become A Mountain
So…a lot of events have been canceled already for this weekend due to coronavirus, including Pasadena’s ArtNight. I am listing events currently (as of this writing) still happening but please follow the links below to the event (and Twitter page if available) to confirm that it is taking place.
Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (3/12-3/15/20)-
Thursday
Zebulon is showing Silver Jew Documentary, a film by Michael Tully documenting two shows by the Silver Jews in Tel Aviv and an afternoon in Jerusalem during their first-ever tour in 2006, 15 years after its founder David Berman began recording under that name. Berman passed away in August of 2019. The film is short but there will also be a selection of Silver Jews and Purple Mountains (his later band) videos. It’s a free event but donations and proceeds from this screening will benefit MusiCares, a nonprofit that has provided more than $60 million in health, financial, and rehabilitation resources to musicians in times of need.
Tamino is playing with Matt Holubowski at The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever
Dry Cleaning are playing at El Cid
USA Fellow and five-time Grammy-winning trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard will be at California African American Museum (CAAM) to discuss his legendary career and his nearly three-decades-long collaboration with director Spike Lee, with Hamza Walker, executive director of the Los Angeles nonprofit art space LAXART, moderating the conversation. (free but register)
Heart Attack Man and Better Love are opening for Knuckle Puck at The Echo
Downtown Los Angeles Artwalk returns for its monthly event with various galleries staying open late
Friday
Dan Deacon is playing at The Regent Theater with Ed Schrader’s Musical Beat, R. Clown, and Sarah Squirm
Pussy Riot are playing at 1720 with special guest Deli Girls
Yves Tumor is performing at the Fonda Theatre with Theophilus London, ECCO2K & Diana Gordon
The New Beverly has a double feature of Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz and Hong Kong action film Big Bullet
The Aero Theatre has a double feature of American Graffiti and The Outsiders
Telefon Tel Aviv is playing with Chasms at Lodge Room
Saturday
Shannon Lay is playing with Boy Scouts at Zebulon
The Strokes are playing at The Forum with King Princess and Alvvays
Burgerama 2020 is taking place at The Echo/Echoplex with a huge lineup of Burger Records bands including The Mummies, Tomorrow’s Tulips, Cosmonauts, Healing Gems, Reckling, Psychic Bloom, The Premonitions, and many more
A bit further afield at Fox Theater Pomona is Minor League Music Spring Fest with a ton of Southern California bands including Sad Park, The High Curbs, Kicked Off The Streets, Makeout Reef, Ignant Benches and more
Love is Gay Fest 2020 is taking place at the Bootleg Theater featuring Polartropica, Lucy & La Mer, WASI, Guppy and Rat Fancy
Double features continue at the Aero Theatre with Out of Sight and Jackie Brown
Sunday
HTRK are playing at the Echoplex with Dry Cleaning and OTZI opening
The Egyptian Theatre has Disarm the Right to Violence!: Recent Mexican Experimental Short Films, a selection of films produced between 2018-2020 in intensive filmmaking workshops at Catedra Ingmar Bergman and Filmoteca UNAM, in collaboration with DocsMX. There will be a conversation to follow with filmmaker Andrea Rodea.
Jazz artist Cécile McLorin Salvant is performing at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with “her most ambitious project yet, combining jazz and bluegrass in the poignant fairytale Ogresse, a wickedly delicious work about a human-eating monster who lives in the woods”.
Screaming Females are playing at the Bootleg Theater with Alice Bag and Generación Suicida
Mar 112020
This mural, Untitled (Questions) (1990/2018), by artist Barbara Kruger, is on the wall of The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles until November 2020. The work was originally commissioned by MOCA in 1989 for the exhibition A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation, and was last installed in 1990 on the south wall of MOCA’s building (now The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA).
Mar 062020
Currently at Galerie Lelong & Co. is Krzysztof Wodiczko: A House Divided…, a projection installation work that explores the diverse political issues in the United States. For this project Wodiczko projects videos of various people from New York’s Staten Island discussing their political views. Their bodies appear superimposed on two large statues of Abraham Lincoln, which face each other in the room.
From the press release-
The exhibition’s title refers to the phrase “A house divided against itself cannot stand” from Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 speech during an unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate, which quoted a passage from the Bible, Matthew (12:22-28). Lincoln borrowed a familiar phrase in order to garner support for the contentious proposition of unifying a rapidly expanding nation teetering on the brink of war. Wodiczko repurposes the statement in a contemporary setting to highlight the partisan contention. In 2019, Wodiczko conducted research of suburban social landscapes in the Tri-State area before choosing Staten Island, a New York City borough that is racially and ethnically diverse yet a simultaneously politically divided geography: north as liberal-leaning and south as conservative-leaning. “Speaking to each other, they explain and exchange their positions and disagreements while expressing their mutual wish for careful and respectful listening to the opposite side,” says Wodiczko.
This exhibition closes 3/7/20 but the artist’s most recent site-specific projection, Monument, is showing in Madison Square Park (starting at dusk) through May 10th.
For Monument, Wodiczko projects “the likenesses and spoken narratives of resettled refugees—who have originated from different parts of the world—onto the Park’s 1881 monument to Admiral David Glasgow Farragut. A looping video projection will bring the monument to life with stories of displacement that illuminate how war, conflict, and political fallout impact individuals globally, encouraging visitors to consider how the history of conflict is memorialized.”
Mar 062020
Spoons, 1979.
For Sandy Skoglund’s exhibition Winter, at Ryan Lee gallery in New York, she has partially recreated the environment she used to created the title piece. Many of her photographs are created by building new worlds-this is a chance to immerse yourself in one of them.
The exhibition also includes a collection of her work from the late ’70s to 2005, including Radioactive Cats from 1980 (pictured below).
From the press release-
Skoglund describes Winter as “a study in perseverance and persistence, an artificial landscape celebrating the beautiful and frightening qualities of the coldest season.” In the photographic image, a man, woman, and child punctuate an icy blue scene. They are inside of an iceberg, perhaps, surrounded by its craggy walls. Standing pensive with hands in the pockets of their winter coats, only the child, a red-headed girl, looks out toward the viewer. The trio is joined in this fantastical setting by a cluster of three snowflake-emblazoned owls and a female figure that seems to have frozen mid-slumber. The imagery evolved from Skoglund’s interest in similarity and difference among snowflakes. Her fascination with the appearance of correspondence versus the reality of difference extends from earlier investigations of the liminal territory between the natural and the artificial, or order and chaos. Through her constructed imagery, Skoglund explores the space between what the human eye and the camera can see.
Since the late 1970s, Skoglund has been celebrated for her panoramic installations—entire environments that she meticulously designs, constructs, and then re-visualizes photographically. Skoglund likens Winter to “a very slow shutter speed on a camera. Time stands still but also inches forward.” Relentlessly inventive, Skoglund challenges herself to experiment with new creative technologies, always in search of the medium best suited for her message. For Winter, which was part of a larger project on the four seasons, years of experimenting with various forms of clay modeling and 3D-printing led to the ultimate inclusion of digitally-cut metal snowflakes bearing ultraviolet cured ink, and the computer-sculpted figure and owls.
Radioactive Cats, 1980. (image courtesy of Ryan Lee )
This exhibition closes 3/7/20.
Mar 052020
Mar 052020
Young Guv- Every Flower I See
Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (3/5-3/8/20)-
Thursday
The Paranoyds are playing at the free premiere of the skateboarding/surfing/roadtrip film This Way- A Western Film at 2027 E. 7th Street
Patrick Jagoda, Professor of English and Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Chicago, and Weston Game Lab director Ashlyn Sparrow will discuss a series of the lab’s innovative digital and analog game projects- including games with implications for learning and social justice at Hammer Museum
Black Violin, led by classically trained string players Wil B. (viola) and Kev Marcus (violin), blend classical music with hip hop and will be performing at the Theatre at Ace Hotel
MOCA Senior Curator Bennett Simpson is leading a walkthrough of Seven Stations: Selections from MOCA’s Collection at the Grand Avenue location
The Sea and Cake are playing at Zebulon with L.A. Takedown
The Aero Theatre is showing Ingmar Bergman’s Persona
Friday
No Win are playing at Gold Diggers with On Drugs and Criminal Hygiene
Smokescreens, Venetian Blinds, Massage, and Dummy are playing at Permanent Records Roadhouse
First Fridays is back at the Natural History Museum with performances by Wajatta (featuring Reggie Watts and John Tejada), French Vanilla, and Café Molly; DJ Novena Carmel is joined by Guest DJ Josh Peace in the DJ Lounge; as well as a discussion on the Future of Medicine, and more.
Residency in Inglewood is having an Open House Party with a project by Devon Tsuno in the main gallery and work from Texas Isaiah, Devin Reynolds, Bradley Ward and Yasmine Diaz in the annex, as well as a burger pop up, a DJ, and more
Healing Gems are playing a free rush hour concert (4-6pm) at Union Station
Seratones are performing at the Bootleg Theater with Pet Dress opening
Gold Cage, No Swoon, LMI and Nico Turner are playing at The Smell
Saturday
Artist T. Kim-Trang Tran will be discussing her exhibition at LAMAG
Shannon Lay is opening for Jonathan Wilson at The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever (he is also playing Friday with Valley Queen opening)
As part of the Egyptian Theatre’s programming for Noir City: Hollywood – The 22nd Annual Los Angeles Festival of Film Noir, they are showing a triple feature tonight of M (1931), M (1951), and El Vampiro Negro
Thundercat is performing at The Wiltern
Gus Seyffert & Friends are performing at the Bootleg Theater
Boan and Dancing Tongues are opening for Bambara at The Echo
Sunday
The LA Marathon is taking place and the route runs from downtown to Santa Monica, adjust your travel plans accordingly or cheer the runners on
The Annual Festival of the Kite is happening in Redondo Beach
The Aero Theatre is having a free screening of Yung Chang’s documentary This Is Not A Movie about British journalist Robert Fisk’s dangerous career covering conflicts around the world over several decades. A discussion with the director will follow.
Young Guv is playing at Zebulon with Spiritual Cramp
Palehound is playing with Adult Mom after teaching a free workshop on writing a pop song at Junior High
Feb 282020
Feb 272020
Every week I listen to the majority of bands and artists playing in Los Angeles to decide which shows to recommend for the Los Angeles Weekend Planner. I then create a playlist for that month of the music I liked.
The above are January’s selections.