Jun 192023
 

Robert Pruitt, “A Song for Travelers”

Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition, A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, is an opportunity to learn about an important period of American history, and see it interpreted through the eyes of twelve contemporary artists.

From the museum’s website-

Between 1915 and 1970, in the wake of racial terror during the post-Reconstruction period, millions of Black Americans fled from their homes to other areas within the South and to other parts of the country. This remarkable movement of people, known as the Great Migration, caused a radical shift in the demographic, economic, and sociopolitical makeup of the United States. A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration brings together twelve contemporary artists to consider the complex impact of this period on their lives, as well as on social and cultural life, with newly commissioned works ranging from large-scale installation, immersive film, and tapestry to photography, painting, and mixed media. Featured artists are Akea Brionne, Mark Bradford, Zoë Charlton, Larry W. Cook, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates Jr., Allison Janae Hamilton, Leslie Hewitt, Steffani Jemison, Robert Pruitt, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, and Carrie Mae Weems.

A Movement in Every Direction presents a departure from traditional accounts of the Great Migration, which are often understood through a lens of trauma, and reconceptualizes them through stories of self-possession, self-determination, and self-examination. While the South did lose generations of courageous, creative, and productive Black Americans due to racial and social inequities, the exhibition expands the narrative by introducing people who stayed in, or returned to, the region during this time. Additionally, the Brooklyn Museum’s presentation centers Brooklyn as another important site in the Great Migration, highlighting historical and contemporary census data about the borough’s migration patterns. Visitors are encouraged to share their own personal and familial stories of migration through an oral history “pod” available in the exhibition galleries.

About Robert Pruitt’s work, pictured above, from the museum’s wall information plaque-

“A Song for Travelers” celebrates the individual and Black collective experiences that have shaped the histories of rural East Texas and Houston’s Third, Fourth, and Fifth Wards. In this drawing-based on an early 1970’s photograph of a reunion of the artist’s family in Dobbin, Texas -sixteen people gather around a seated central figure about to embark on a journey. During the creation of this work, the masked traveler became a stand-in for Pruitt, who had recently left his hometown of Houston.

Pruitt often draws inspiration from his and others’ family photographs while examining historical events that have impacted Houston’s Black communities. Wearing costumes and adorned with items that reference various aspects of Black culture found in schools, social clubs, and religious spaces, the figures in the work reflect the numerous networks that remained and flourished in the South. Merging the Great Migration period with the present, Pruitt centers the Black neighborhoods across the southern region that served as safe havens and rich sites of cultural expression for migrants during the twentieth century. This link extends to today as many Black Americans leave the northern and western cities that once attracted their elders and return to the South.

Allison Janae Hamilton’s A House Called Florida, below, takes the viewer on a journey through part of northern Florida’s natural beauty.

From the museum’s information plaque about the video installation-

Allison Janae Hamilton produced the three-channel film installation A House Called Florida in her hometown region of northern Florida. The breathtaking landscapes of Apalachicola Bay and the swampy Blackwater Lakes of Florida’s Big Bend frame musicians, dancers, motorists, a Victorian house, and a slow resounding rhythm.

The artist references French Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar’s 1946 short story “Casa Tomada.” (“House Taken Over”) about ghosts that slowly take over a home and eventually push out its owners, room by room. Hamilton echoes the story’s theme of displacement with two regally dressed, spirit-like protagonists who move about the house engaging in mark-making and ritual performances. Hamilton’s film pays tribute to the Black Floridians who remained in the Red Hills and the Forgotten Coast regions, despite the racial violence and environmental precariousness they faced throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Carrie Mae Weems‘ personal and moving contribution is in two parts- a series of photographs and a unique digital video installation.

The museum’s description of the work-

Carrie Mae Weems explores a painful family story: the disappearance of her grandfather Frank Weems, a tenant farmer and union activist who was attacked by a white mob in Earle Arkansas, in 1936. Presumed dead, he narrowly escaped and made his way to Chicago on foot, never again reuniting with his family. Frank Weems may have followed the North Star to Chicago. Weems’s series of seven prints, The North Star, makes an apt metaphor for Frank’s life. In Leave! Leave Now! Weems conjures the figure of her grandfather with a Pepper’s Ghost, a late nineteenth-century form of illusion first used in theater. By weaving historical events with fragmented family stories, photographs, poetry, music, and interviews, the artist reveals the tragedy of her grandfather’s disappearance and the aftermath.

This exhibition will close on Sunday, June 25th, 2023.

Jul 062020
 

Today, July 6th, is the four year anniversary of the fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a police officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota. Castile was shot five times while his girlfriend and her four year old daughter were in the car.

Mark Bradford’s 150 Portrait Tone, 2017, currently at LACMA, is a devastating large scale work that uses excerpts from Philando Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds’s dialogue from the video she live streamed on Facebook from the incident.

From LACMA’s wall description of the work-

Bradford notes that he was moved by the multiple subjects Reynolds simultaneously addressed and the different spaces they occupied: her boyfriend, Castile, next to her (“stay with me”); the officer outside the car (“please, officer, don’t tell me that you just did this”); God (“Lord, please Jesus, don’t tell me that he’s gone”); as well as the unknown receiver on the other side of her lifestream (“please don’t tell me he just went like that”).

Like many of Bradford’s works, the mural-size composition contains elements of both abstraction and realism. In places, layers of manipulated paint render the text almost illegible. The dark form in the background, however, evokes all-too-real associations with the horrific shooting, such as Castile’s twisted arm and the dark-red bloodstain spread across his white shirt, both visible in the live stream feed.

The title, “150 Portrait Tone”, refers to the name and color code of the pink acrylic used throughout the painting (most conspicuous in a large patch at the work’s bottom edge). Like the now-obsolete “flesh” crayon in the Crayola 64 box (the color was renamed “peach” in 1962), the color “portrait tone” carries inherent assumptions about who, exactly, is being depicted. In the context of Bradford’s painting, the title presents a sobering commentary on power and representation.

May 192018
 

This weekend head to Hauser & Wirth to check out artist Mark Bradford’s exhibition New Works. His first gallery exhibition in Los Angeles in over fifteen years, the paintings included continue to explore societal issues through his dramatic use of color, and his unique technique- which involves combining layers of printed paper with paint and then cutting into these layers to create intricate patterns and shapes. They are incredible to see in person.

From the press release-

Bradford employs the ‘tools of civilization’ – billboards, merchant posters, newsprint, comics, magazines, and endpapers – to conflate cultural and political forces, and create layers of social commentary in paintings that evoke deep feeling. ‘How we build and destroy ourself are the materials that I’m really interested in,’ the artist once stated, ‘and paper is one of the main ways in which information is displayed.’ Through his rigorous physical approach to the material presence of painting, Bradford has addressed powerful issues of our time, including the AIDS epidemic, the misrepresentation and fear of queer identity, and systemic racism in America. His recent work engages in a broader excavation of American history to raise questions about the preservation of the past and the transference of power.

In the new works on view at Hauser & Wirth, Bradford probes stories found in comic books to question the archetype of the antihero and the influence of the media on contemporary society, while also revisiting misconceptions of black identity and gender as seen in previous works. ‘New Works’ presents paintings that extend the artist’s examination of homophobia and racism in American society, continuing themes explored in Bradford’s multimedia installation ‘Spiderman’ (2015), which was shown at the Hammer Museum in LA in 2015.

Also at the Hauser & Wirth space are two other exhibitions worth checking out- Louise Bourgeois: The Red Sky and Romanian artist Geta Brătescu’s The Leaps of Aesop. All of these shows close 5/20/18.

If you go on 5/19, at 2pm artist Matthew Day Jackson will be discussing his work with curator Hamza Walker, Executive Director of LAXART.

 

May 102018
 

ScHoolboy Q- John Muir

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (5/10-5/13/18)-

Thursday

Hammer Museum has a free screening of the short film Eve, by Susan Bay Nimoy, with a discussion to follow

American Pleasure Club (fka Teen Suicide) are playing at The Hi Hat with Special Explosion and Wreck and Reference opening

Khalid is playing at the Greek Theatre with PrettyMuch opening

CalArts Writers Showcase is hosting a free reading series featuring its graduating Creative Writing MFAs at REDCAT

Doja Cat is playing at The Echo with StarBoi3 and L8loomer opening

Erika Wennerstrom (of Heartless Bastards) is playing at the Bootleg Theater

Friday

There are still some seats left for The Championship Tour at The Forum featuring Kendrick Lamar, SZA, ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, SiR, and Lance SkiiiWalker (also Thursday)

There’s a screening of the Hitchcock classic Rear Window at Vista Theatre

Or you can check out Hitchcock’s Psycho as well as the non-Hitchcock sequels Psycho II and Psycho III for the triple feature at the Aero Theatre

RuPaul’s DragCon begins today and runs until Sunday

Born Ruffians are playing at the Teragram Ballroom with Little Junior opening

Liam Gallagher is playing with Richard Ashcroft at the Greek Theatre

Saturday

Photographer John Divola will be in conversation with Getty Museum Department of Photographs curator Amanda Maddox at Arcana Books followed by a book signing

Artist Charles Gaines and curator Connie Butler are giving a free walk-through of the Mark Bradford exhibition at Hauser & Wirth

BoldPas: An Art Takeover is a free one day art event in Pasadena with 13 large scale installations in the historic alleyways, live painters, art activities, and more

EatSeeHear’s outdoor movie at LA State Historic Park this week is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Hit Bargain are playing at Rec Center with Media Jeweler, Moira Scar, and Fucked Forever

Hovvdy are playing at The Hi Hat with Lomelda and Diners opening

Sunday

Curator Connie Butler is leading a walk-through of the exhibition of video art Unspeakable: Atlas, Kruger, Walker at Hammer Museum

Celebrate Mother’s Day 2018 with the double feature of Grey Gardens and Mommy Dearest at the Egyptian Theatre

The Telescopes, LSD & The Search For God, No Sun, and Snowball II are playing Part Time Punks 13th Anniversary show at the Echoplex

Pllush are opening for Editors at The Belasco

Emmy Award winner Debbie Allen is giving free dance outdoor lessons at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

Sep 202015
 

markbradforddeadhummingbirdviahammer

Mark Bradford- Dead Hummingbird, 2015 (image via Hammer Museum)

Today (9/20/15) is the last day to see the majority of artist Mark Bradford’s exhibition Scorched Earth at the Hammer Museum.

From the museum’s site:

Comprising a suite of new paintings (on view through September 20), a multimedia installation (on view through September 27), and a major painting on the Lobby Wall (on view through November 15), this new body of work by the Los Angeles–based artist Mark Bradford refers to formative moments in his life and ruminations on the body in crisis. As an artist who has long been interested in strategies of mapping and the psychogeography of the city he calls home, Bradford uses his characteristic painting style to excavate the terrain— emotional, political and actual—that he inhabits. Examining the moment and afterlife of the 1992 uprisings in Los Angeles, which he experienced from his studio in Leimert Park, Bradford has translated the outrage and lasting wounds of the riots into these new paintings. Scorched Earth is Bradford’s first solo museum exhibition in Los Angeles.

For more on Mark Bradford, his life and work, this LA Times article is an excellent portrait of the artist- http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-ca-cam-mark-bradford-scorched-earth-hammer-20150621-column.html

Get out of the heat and check it out- it’s free!

Jul 302015
 

Ben Browning- Friends of Mine

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (7/30-8/2/15)-

Thursday

Wye Oak are playing at Club Bahia- http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=5945525

REDCAT’s New Original Works Festival begins tonight (running through Aug 15)- http://www.redcat.org/festival/new-original-works-festival-2015

Tom Of Finland: Up Close and Personal, a discussion with Durk Dehner (President, Tom of Finland Foundation), Dian
Hanson (Editor, TASCHEN’s Tom of Finland XXL), F. Valentine Hooven III
(Author, Tom of Finland: Life and Work of a Gay Hero) and moderated by
Joakim Andreasson is happening downtown at Austere- http://byhenzel.com/exhibition/tom-of-finland-up-close-and-personal/

The Suffers are the headliners for this week’s Summer of Soul concert series at the Hammer Museum (free)- http://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2015/07/summer-of-soul-the-suffers-jungle-fire-kcrw-dj-garth-trinidad/

Baths is playing at the Echoplex with Wrestlers and OOFJ as part of Red Bull Sound Select- RSVP and it’s $3- http://www.theecho.com/event/897445-red-bull-sound-select-baths-los-angeles/

Friday

Ben Browning (of Cut Copy) will be performing songs from his new solo project at the Regent Theater along with Moullinex, L.A.Girlfriend, Deep Chills, and Maikol- http://www.theregenttheater.com/event/864965-moullinex-ben-browning-cut-los-angeles/

Opening today and running this weekend and next is CA 101 2015 an artist exhibition taking place at the historic AES Power Plant in Redondo Beach- https://www.facebook.com/events/725293150926871/

Porcelain Raft and Tennis System are at the Echo- http://www.theecho.com/event/856067-porcelain-raft-los-angeles/

Saturday

Wet Hot American Summer is the outdoor movie at The Autry this week- https://theautry.org/programs/film/wet-hot-american-summer-on-the-autry-lawn

Or you could see Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Electric Dusk Drive-In downtown (only lawn seating available)- https://www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/778441

OR Hollywood Forever Cemetery is showing Apocalypse Now (which has a Harrison Ford cameo)- http://cinespia.org/event/apocalypse-now/

Grand Performances has Rocky Dawuni and Blitz the Ambassador in concert- http://www.grandperformances.org/more_info.php?show_id=271

Sunday

Artist Mark Bradford and law professor Anita Hill will be discussing “feminism as a gateway to activism and social justice, and their interdisciplinary methods for speaking truth to power” at the Hammer Museum (free)- http://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2015/08/mark-bradford-anita-hill/

Rock ‘N’ Roll Flea Market is on at the Regent Theater- http://www.theregenttheater.com/event/747461-rock-n-roll-flea-market-los-angeles/

Or you could check out the flea market at Pasadena City College which has a little bit of everything- http://www.pasadena.edu/fleamarket/market_info.cfm

*This weekend Much Ado About Nothing opens at the Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival and it’s set in Italy in 1945- http://www.iscla.org/griffith-park-festival/

Mar 222015
 
rachel lachowicz at LACMA for Variations Conversations on Abstract Painting posted on tumblr lipstick urinals

Rachel Lachowicz

theastergatesatlacma

Theaster Gates

markbradfordatlacma

Mark Bradford

 

Today (3/23) is the last day to see Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting at LACMA.

From the press release:

In an attention-compromised age when images are instant and prevalent, abstract painting serves as a contradiction, acting as a conduit for the mark of the original, individual artist. While most of the work in the exhibition has been recently created and acquired, additional paintings culled from LACMA’s collection illustrate how artists have reanimated techniques and forms using other sources that are appropriated from popular culture, photography, and collage, essentially creating a new variation of abstract painting.

It’s also a good day to visit LACMA because they are having a full day of  activities and performances to celebrate Nowruz, the Iranian New Year and the first day of spring.