Jan 242020
 

Sadie Barnette’s recreation of her father Rodney Barnette’s bar, Eagle Creek Saloon for The New Eagle Creek Saloon at ICA LA is not only beautiful, but it also celebrates an important piece of history.

From the museum’s website-

For her first solo museum presentation in Los Angeles, Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette (b. 1984) will reimagine the Eagle Creek Saloon, the first black-owned gay bar in San Francisco, established by the artist’s father Rodney Barnette, founder of the Compton, CA chapter of the Black Panther Party. From 1990–93 Barnette’s father operated the bar and offered a safe space for the multiracial LGBTQ community who were marginalized at other social spaces throughout the city at that time.

Barnette engages the aesthetics of Minimalism and Conceptualism through an idiosyncratic use of text, decoration, photographs, and found objects that approach the speculative and otherworldly. Barnette’s recent drawings, sculptures, and installations have incorporated the 500-page FBI surveillance file kept on her father and references to West Coast funk and hip-hop culture to consider the historical and present-day dynamics of race, gender, and politics in the United States. Using materials such as spray paint, crystals, and glitter, she transforms the bureaucratic remnants from a dark chapter in American history into vibrant celebrations of personal, familial, and cultural histories and visual acts of resistance. The New Eagle Creek Saloon is a glittering bar installation that exists somewhere between a monument and an altar, at once archiving the past and providing space for potential actions.

The museum is also showing No Wrong Holes: Thirty Years of Nayland Blake (pictured below).

From the museum’s website-

For over 30 years, artist, educator, and curator Nayland Blake (b. 1960) has been a critical figure in American art, working between sculpture, drawing, performance, and video. No Wrong Holes marks the most comprehensive survey of Blake’s work to date and their first solo institutional presentation in Los Angeles.

Heavily inspired by feminist and queer liberation movements, and subcultures ranging from punk to kink, Blake’s multidisciplinary practice considers the complexities of representation, particularly racial and gender identity; play and eroticism; and the subjective experience of desire, loss, and power. The artist’s sustained meditation on “passing” and duality as a queer, biracial (African American and white) person is grounded in post-minimalist and conceptual approaches made personal through an idiosyncratic array of materials (such as leather, medical equipment, and food) and the tropes of fairy tales and fantasy. Particular focus will be paid to work produced while Blake lived on the West Coast, first in the greater Los Angeles area as a graduate student at CalArts, followed by a decade in San Francisco—years bookended by the advancement of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and the “culture wars” of the 1990s.

Feeder 2, 1998

The gingerbread house, pictured above, is one of Blake’s best known works and was created using actual gingerbread. It references the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel as it recreates the house used to lure the children to their potential doom.

From the wall description-

Fairy tale and fantasy are themes to which the artist often returns as a mirror onto society and culture. Further, duality and the act of revealing are critical to Blake’s practice: as a biracial, white-passing, queer, gender non-binary person, Blake’s identity is one that is not obvious and is predicated on existing in two spaces at once. Though initially captivating through its inviting sight and scent, over time, the once-pleasant sensorial experience of Feeder 2, with its cold, empty interior, becomes overwhelming, even nauseating, as it challenges the truth of perception and association.

Both of these exhibitions close 1/26/20.

Oct 102019
 

Bleached- Hard to Kill

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (10/10-10/14/19)-

Thursday

Artist Sadie Barnette and her father Rodney Barnette will be celebrating their shared birthday at ICA LA, with an art talk, DJ, and a performance by Global Street Dance Masquerade- taking place along with her newest project The New Eagle Creek Saloon, a tribute to her father’s bar, Eagle Creek Saloon, the first black-owned gay bar in San Francisco

Downtown LA’s Art Walk returns for its monthly event with lots of galleries in the area staying open late

Snow Tha Product is performing at the El Rey Theatre

Numb.er are opening for Drahla at The Echo

Mega Bog, L.A. Takedown and Spookey Ruben are performing free at Zebulon with Dent May DJ’ing

 

Friday

ArtNight Pasadena returns for its biannual event with a free evening of live music, performances, and free admission to museums and galleries in Pasadena. There will also be free shuttles to take you around to the various locations.

Hassan Hajjaj: My Rockstars Experimental- Live has the Moroccan phototographer, designer and filmmaker, creating sets and clothes from his portraits and videos- this time for the stage of The Ford and including live performances by musicians Afrikan Boy, Bumi, Simo Lagnawi, Marques Toliver, Gail Ann Dorsey and Omar Offendum at The Ford. My Rockstars Experimental, Volume I was shown at LACMA in 2013.

Adam Melchor is opening for singer dodie at the Hollywood Palladium

Dan Luke and the Raid are opening for The Parlor Mob at the Bootleg Theater

 

Saturday

Bleached are playing at the Lodge Room with Dude York and Lunch Lady

Psychic Twin is having a free single release party show at Gold Diggers with Drum & Lace opening

Culver City Arts District is hosting its annual Art Walk and Roll, a free festival with live music, food trucks, and more, plus a chance to see all the art shows happening in the area.

If you are in Culver City, head to Luis de Jesus Los Angeles to hear artist Laura Krifka discuss her paintings currently on view at the gallery

2019 Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation has three different programs starting at 3pm at REDCAT

Arto Lindsay is playing at Zebulon featuring Rodrigo Amarante, along with Ofir Ganon playing solo/duo with Chris Bear (Grizzly Bear)

Joywave are opening for Bastille at The Greek Theatre

Mereba is performing at the Ford Theatre with We Are King

 

Sunday

At Fowler Museum on Sunday afternoons and Wednesday evenings, to accompany its exhibition Through Positive Eyes, seven HIV-positive Angelenos known as the Los Angeles Through Positive Eyes Collective will share their photographs and personal narratives (today beginning at 1pm)

The Dead End Kids Club is having its 1st Fall Ball at The Echo with performances by Z Berg, Ryan Ross, Palm Springsteen and Dan Keyes

Highland Park is having its first Oktoberfest at The Hi Hat with music by West Coast Prost, Oktoberfest inspired food and of course, German Bier

Andrew Combs is playing at the Bootleg Theater with Harrison Whitford and Austin Manuel

 

Monday

Temples are playing at the Echoplex with Trupa Trupa

Kishi Bashi is performing at The Regent Theater with Takenobu opening

The Spirit of the Beehive are opening for Ride at the Teragram Ballroom

Weirdo Night is happening at Zebulon with performances by Dynasty Handbag, Marawa The Amazing, Casey Jane Ellison and Earth Girl Helen Brown