Nov 202024
 

“Untitled”, 1930s-40s, Osamu Shiihara, photogram

The Getty has gathered several innovative photo works made from the 1920s to the 1950s for Abstracted Light: Experimental Photography, part of their PST ART: Art & Science Collide series. The exhibition also includes several experimental films and a room dedicated to Thomas Wilfred’s  “Lumia Instruments” that produce colorful moving abstract forms.

From the museum-

Light abstraction emerged after the First World War as a preoccupation of photographers and filmmakers in international centers of art production. Many artists began seeing light as something that could be manipulated, then photographed and filmed, like any other physical material. This exhibition offers a selection of works, dating from the 1920s onward, that reveals these artists’ fascination with the formal qualities of light as well as their innovative methods of projecting, reflecting, and refracting its rays to liberate their media from traditional modes of representation. They emphasized the novelty of their varied approaches by inventing new terms-including “Rayograph” (Man Ray), “Light Drawing” (Barbara Morgan), “Luminogramm” (Otto Steinert), “Photogenics” (Lotte Jacobi), and “Lumia” (Thomas Wilfred) -to characterize their work. “More and more artists of our generation have begun to contemplate light with the eyes of a sculptor gazing upon a block of marble,” noted Wilfred, “seeing in light a new and basic medium of expression with unlimited possibilities.”

Below are a few selections.

Edward W. Quigley, “Untitled (Light Abstraction)” 1931-39, and “Vortex”, 1933, Gelatin silver prints

Nathan Lerner, “Car Light Study #7”, 1939, and Hy Hersh, “Untitled (Abstraction)”, About 1950, Chromogenic print

Man Ray, “Untitled (Sequins)”, 1930 and “Untitled (Corkscrew and Lampshade)”, 1927

Francis Bruguiére, “Untitled (Design in Abstract Forms of Light)”, About 1927

This exhibition closes 11/24/24.

Nov 202024
 

Deana Lawson, “Black Gold (“Earth turns to gold, in the hands of the wise,” Rumi)”, 2021, Inkjet print with embedded transmission hologram in beveled-mirror frame

Detail from the image above- this hologram is of Ron Finley, an LA based food activist and farmer

Matthew Schreiber, “Bowie 1-8”, 2016-23, a series inspired by David Bowie’s death in 2016.

As part of their programming for PST ART: Art & Science Collide, The Getty is showing Sculpting with Light: Contemporary Artists and Holography. The exhibition explains the process and presents the unique ways several contemporary artists experimented with it in their work.

From the museum-

Holograms produce the magical illusion of three-dimensional objects floating in space. They were made possible by the invention of laser technology in the 1960s, and since then, many artists have experimented with the art form. This exhibition presents holograms by John Baldessari, Louise Bourgeois, Ed Ruscha, and other artists who were invited by the C Project to explore the creative potential of the medium in the 1990s. Deana Lawson turned to holography to expand her photographic practice around 2020. The master technician in both instances was artist Matthew Schreiber, whose work is also featured.

Ed Ruscha, “The End”, 1998 reissued 2016

Louise Bourgeois, “Untitled”, 1998, reissued 2014

This exhibition is on view until 11/24/24.

Oct 232024
 

magnetic instinct, Liz Larner’s current exhibition at Regen Projects, balances the textures and colors of her unique ceramic sculptures with the simplicity of her 1989 work Rubber Divider. The show is also part of the Getty’s PST ART: Art and Science Collide programming.

From the press release-

“…for wander is a verb that needs no object…My aim is to limit myself to the ingenuity of innate action, to be awed by it, and not to try and clear up its mysteries.”
—Fernand Deligny, The Arachnean and Other Texts, 2015, pp. 37/46

The exhibition presents new ceramic works surrounding Larner’s “Rubber Divider, 1989—two sheets of pure gum rubber connected to steel rods attached to two flame-cut, solid steel blocks that hold the tension of the opposing pull of weight and elasticity of the rubber sheets. Their opposition and mutual dependence underscores Larner’s longstanding interest in the relationship between structural support and the attitude of the object.

Engaged with the many possibilities of sculpture and abstract form, Larner uses material to encourage discoveries led by an intrinsic link between impulse and perception. Polished to a mirror finish, the brass and aluminum of these sculptures allows them to be positioned on the wall, as the side of the glazed ceramic facing the wall is reflected in the cool light of aluminum and the warm glow of brass. Each surface has its own quality, from the extremely reflective to a textured matte, and these differences create a varying vibrancy of reflected light. Larner’s ceramics highlight a symbiotic continuity that troubles definitions of art and environment, object and subject.

Larner’s morphological research thinks likewise with ecological networks, as described in the writings of Fernand Deligny, or by the botanist Anne Pringle, in “Establishing New Worlds: The Lichens of Petersham.” The dialogue between these new works and Larner’s more historic sculpture, Rubber Divider—which debuted in the 1989 Whitney Biennial—underscores the interplay between support, form, surface effect, and infrastructure, that has often animated her practice, exploring how our observed experience of the world is innately personal but based on connection. Mindful of the specter of the Anthropocene, it also occasions a meditation on how we distinguish past and present, wondering what forms, what artifacts of human action and intelligence will last, and outlast us.

Distinguished by the unique physical rules that govern its transition, from soft to fragile to almost indestructible, Larner engages clay in part because of its apparent self-determination and pliancy, a kind of material agency and chemical intelligence distinct from our own. The ceramic forms in this exhibition are molded by impressions with ubiquitous forms made with a precision that often goes unnoticed. These forms are softened by the contact of the clay being shaped by them. The consequence of this method of forming is ghostly and transpositional. Among many other potential interpretations and resonances, the exhibition’s title points to these principles, and likens them to the same encodings that inform human perception and the activity of many other life-forms, as we are learning to be of and with.

Larner’s work is also currently on view as part of Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean at the Orange County Museum of Art and For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego . Both shows are also part of PST ART: Art and Science Collide.

For more on her creative process, and earlier work, check out the video below from Art21 in 2016.

 

 

Oct 172024
 

“Seventh Lagoon”, 1979

VSF gallery is currently showing The Harrisons’ Survival Piece #1: Air, Earth, Water, Interface: Annual Hog Pasture Mix, 1970-1971, part of The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art & Science Collide.

On Thursday, 10/17, a local pig will enter the grow box to turn over the pasture in an iteration of the 2012 performance that took place at The Geffen Contemporary at MoCA.

From the gallery-

The first in their visionary series of Survival Pieces, “Hog Pasture,” as it is known by Harrison’s fans, emerged from a direct dialog with the most visionary and boundary pushing artists of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The impact of the Earth Day movement and the nascent cultural awareness that human beings were rapidly depleting the planet’s natural resources ignited a deep and sincere conversation within the art world about the stakes of art-making in the post-war, post-1968 world.

While later survival pieces highlighted a culminating harvest feast, Survival Piece #1 is focused on growth. The rectangular form of the raised planter bed and the grid of grow lights above echo sculptural innovations by artists like Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and Richard Morris;  however, Newton Harrison had by this time decided that a sculpture or a painting was not enough. His artwork needed to not only have a moral purpose, it needed to strive to restore the earth and protect the abundant future of humans on our planet.

In 1971, shortly after their first foray into ecological art, Making Earth (which VSF exhibited earlier this year at Frieze LA and is now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) Newton and Helen heard from David Antin that Virginia Gunter at the MFA Boston was curating a show titled Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: Elements of Art and wanted to include their work alongside contemporaries including Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Hans Haacke, and others. Exploring ideas of growth and change, Gunter’s vision for the exhibition was meant to challenge conservative, formalist, Greenbergian ideas about art as well as expectations of the museum as an institution that primarily collected unchanging pictures and objects that somehow articulated the best ideas and techniques of the time in which they were made.

Interested in building on his use of artificial lights, Newton decided that he should actually grow something. He commissioned one of his painting students to look through seed catalogs to find a mixture that was “totally singular,” eventually landing on R.H. Shumway Seedsman’s Annual Hog Pasture Mix. In Boston, a large raised planter bed was built in a basement gallery of the museum, agricultural grow lights were installed in a parallel grid from the ceiling, a potent mix of manure, compost, worm castings, and other rich grow media were added to the planter bed, the seed mix was added, and a small pasture grew there with alarming speed. While Gunter wouldn’t allow a hog to come and graze the original hog pasture, subsequent exhibitions of the work, including Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 curated by Miwon Kwon and Phillip Kaiser at MoCA in 2012, have brought the work to its natural conclusion and invited a pig in to enjoy the rich, velvety mix of legumes and grasses. Similarly, VSF has invited a hog to harvest the indoor meadow during the exhibition’s closing ceremony on October 17, 2024. The remaining pasture, earthworms, and soil mix will be gifted to visitors.

Oct 162024
 

Lita Albuquerque’s exhibition of new work for Earth Skin, on view at Michael Kohn Gallery, includes several dramatic blue paintings and a huge installation piece on the floor of the gallery that grabs your attention the moment you enter the gallery.

From the gallery-

Beginning her career in the 1970s with works that intimately connected her to the earth, Albuquerque’s artistic evolution envelops the cosmos and the space between it and us. Her work emanates from years of practicing the exact science of Kundalini breath technique as well as automatic writing; both drive a deep investigation and scientific inquiry of who we are as individual beings on this planet. Albuquerque further connects to the exactness of physics by a meditation she, and astronomers, call the cosmic address. These daily practices are at the root of her art, precisely positioning self to cosmos. It is those discoveries she embeds in works of art that permit us, the viewer, to experience the connections she has made between these internal and external worlds.

Thinking about the exhibition, Albuquerque writes:
Feet dancing above the earth, dancing with fervor, drumming, the increasing drumming of the feet not fragile on the fragile earth.

The wisps of bodies, like skins falling off their frames leaving the planet, the planet strong and our forms ethereal, the strength of us, our feet, on the fragile earth, the wispy lightness of us, detached from the earth, transforming into space.

The earth strong behind us, propelling us upward, giving us her strength, throwing us in the air, while we fly, never falling, the fierce intensity of our rhythm while alive, and the freedom of release from the earth.

Experiments of intensities of emotions and colors, whirling dervishes’ cyclones, Earth Skin is whispered, “Earth Skin” she whispered.

For PST’s Art and Science Collide, Albuquerque transforms the gallery with a titular installation, Earth Skin. A membrane of decomposed granite fills the space creating the illusory sensation of the earth being revealed below the gallery, as if the concrete floor has been meticulously removed. Accompanying this installation is a new series of paintings revolving around the gestures of the body and ancient marks, like a hieroglyphic code only the artist has a key for. With each gesture, Albuquerque embraces the tactile intimacy of painting, reminding us of the power of capturing and transforming the elusive into the material. This installation invites viewers to explore the shared fragility of humanity and earth.

Two of the paintings, picutred below, include poems referencing fellow artist Ana Mendieta, who was known in part for her “earth-body” work and who passed away tragically in 1985.

“Propelling Us Upwards, She, The Earth, Throwing Us In The Air While We Fly, Never Falling, A Poem for A.M.”, 2024, Pigment on Canvas

“Desire and Memory, A Poem for A.M.”, 2024, Pigment on canvas

This exhibition is part of The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art and Science Collide an arts event taking place in various venues around Southern California.

For more information on Lita Albuquerque and her work Red Canary Magazine recently published an excellent article that is worth a read as well.

Jan 182018
 

Joyce Manor- Last You Heard Of Me

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (1/18-1/21/18)-

Thursday

Tennis System and Souvenirs are opening for Teenage Wrist at The Hi Hat

Artist Gala Porras-Kim will be discussing her work from A Universal History of Infamy with curator Megan O’Neil, at LACMA (free but ticket required)

Also at LACMA is a screening of John Carpenter’s classic They Live

Guards and Veronica Bianqui are opening for The Soft White Sixties at The Echo

At REDCAT, LA-based performers Rubén Martínez and Raquel Gutiérrez will be performing VARIEDADES, “an interdisciplinary performance that brings together music, spoken word, theater, comedy and the visual arts, loosely based on the Mexican vaudeville shows of early 20th century”

Friday

Surfer Blood are playing at The Hi Hat with Terry Malts opening

Sociologist and writer Greg Snyder will be discussing his book SKATEBOARDING LA at The Last Bookstore with some of the professional skateboarders profiled in the book joining him (free)

De Lux are playing with The Juan Maclean at The Regent Theater

Suno Deko is performing at the Bootleg Theater with special sets/collaborations with Zach Tetreault, Cyrus Gengras, Alex Somers, and Julianna Barwick

iHeartRadio ALTer Ego 2018 is happening at The Forum with Beck, The National, Spoon, and more

Saturday

The Women’s March is taking place in downtown LA- moving from Pershing Square to City Hall

Joyce Manor are playing two shows at Union Station– tickets are still available for the earlier one (3pm) with Surf Curse and Peach Kelli Pop

For the final weekend of Mike Kelley: Kandors 1999-2011 at Hauser & Wirth, Extended Organ, Lonely Street and Telecaves will be performing (free)

There are still tickets available for the later show at The Broad of En Cuatro Patas: The Formaldehyde Trip, a work by Mexico City artist Naomi Rincón Gallardo, that includes songs and videos dedicated to murdered Mixtec activist Alberta “Bety” Cariño, performed live with props (part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA)

Wolf Parade are playing at The Fonda Theatre with Charly Bliss opening (also Friday)

Sondre Lerche is performing at Largo

Sunday

Worn-Tin is playing at the Moroccan Lounge with Small Forward and runnner opening

Hammer Museum is showing the experimental short films of Narcisa Hirsch as part of Los Angeles Filmforum’s Ism Ism Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America, part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA (free)

Death of Lovers (members of Nothing) are playing at the Echoplex with Choir Boy opening

 

Jan 122018
 

Shannon Lay- Asa

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (1/11-1/14/18)-

Thursday

Shannon Lay is opening for Ablebody and So Many Wizards at The Hi Hat

MOCA Grand Avenue and LA Film Forum are hosting the film screening- Estrellas de Ayer: Latin Camp–  “a new constellation of Latina/o American fascination with Hollywood starlets: José Rodríguez Soltero’s classic Lupe (1966); the celebration of decadentism in the Colombian film Pasión y Muerte de Margarita Gautier (1964), by Enrique Grau & Luís Ernesto Arocha; and other films that pay homage to Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Lupe Vélez, replete with campy nods to the star system” ($15)

The LA Art Show opened yesterday and continues today until Sunday

The LA Launch Party for Oral History Project’s Women of Rock is tonight at Zebulon with live performances and discussion panels with artists that include Phranc, Neon Music, Alice Bag, Patty Schemel and more

Poet Srikanth Reddy will be giving a free reading and book signing at Hammer Museum

Luna are playing at the Moroccan Lounge with Big Mother Gig opening

Friday

Artist Carolina Caycedo will be speaking as part of a participatory book launch/event at LACMA that begins in the exhibition A Universal History of Infamy, and includes performances by Marina Magalhães, Isis Avalos, and Samad Raheem Guerra (free)

Sextile are playing at The Hi Hat with Flat Worms and Warm Drag opening

The Egyptian Theatre is showing a double feature of The Florida Project and Shadow of the Vampire with a discussion in between the films with Willem Dafoe

Emily Wells is playing at the Bootleg Theater with Haunted Summer opening

Red Aunts are playing with The Lamps and Des Roar at The Echo

Saturday

Sadly, gallery and event space Machine Project is closing its doors- for their final event they are having a print sale from 2-6pm, followed by a closing party with beer and surprise performances

The Bookstore at MAF is hosting a reading with writers Alissa Bennett and John Marr- Bennett will share two of her essays about dead celebrities and Marr will read from his work chronicling tragic accidents (both will be signing their respective zines after)

Neon Indian and Holy Ghost! are playing DJ sets with Gigamesh at Exchange LA

American Culture are playing with Plague Survivor at Zebulon

Sunday

The California African American Museum is hosting an all day symposium to mark the closing of the exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85- with opening remarks by Alison Saar honoring her mother Betye Saar and Samella Lewis, Faith Ringgold in conversation with her daughter Michele Wallace, a workshop, a performance, a closing reception and more (free but register)

White Magic are opening for Linda Perhacs at Zebulon

Big Boi is playing at The Regent Theater with The Cool Kids opening

No Win are opening for Teenage Faces at The Hi Hat

Justus Proffit and The She’s are opening for Potty Mouth at the Bootleg Theater

All Weekend

The Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA  has numerous performances happening throughout the weekend at  REDCAT (many of them free)

dineL.A. is back for its winter edition and runs until 1/26

Nov 302017
 

The High Curbs- Empty Bottles

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (11/30-12/3/17)-

Thursday

Writer Raquel Gutiérrez will be giving a walk through and discussing certain works from Hammer Museum’s exhibition Radical Women. Later in the evening there is a film screening of various experimental films created by Latin American women artists (both events free)

FYOHNA is opening for Wildling at Resident

CAFAM is hosting CraftNight at Angel City Brewery where you can have a pint while enjoying an air-dry clay workshop ($10)

Summer Moon and Mereki are opening for Dhani Harrison at the El Rey Theatre

Prism Tats is opening for Dommengang at The Hi Hat

Downtown Boys are playing with Generacion Suicida and Ex-Stains at the Echoplex

iam8bit gallery is having its 3rd Annual Handmade Holiday Show

Friday

Metro Art is showing Ava DuVernay’s documentary This is the Life at Union Station (free)

Slothrust are playing at The Echo with And The Kids and SLUGS

Hundred Waters are playing at the El Rey Theatre with Julianna Barwick and Banoffee

Blitzen Trapper are playing at the Bootleg Theater with Lilly Hiatt

Saturday

DocuSlate, a day dedicated to documentary films presented by NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFLMA) is $10 per program or for $25 you can see all the programs and enjoy an open bar

Hauser & Wirth is having a Holiday Market (also Sunday)

Union Station is also having a Holiday Market with live entertainment, a beer garden and Santa

The Dandy Warhols are playing with POW! at the Teragram Ballroom

HUNNY’s Winter Talent Show at the Echoplex includes bands Potty Mouth and King Shelter

Sunday

The High Curbs are opening for Hockey Dad at the Bootleg Theater with Jurassic Shark

Artist Alec Soth will be in conversation with photographic historian Kate Albers at Arcana with a book signing to follow

LAXART will be screening States of Crisis at the City of West Hollywood Library- a video program that includes videos by artists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Honduras and Peru reflecting on political, economic and ecological crises. This program is in conjunction with the exhibition Pacific Standard Time LA/LA: Video Art in Latin America at LAXART. (free)

John Waters performs A John Waters Christmas, his one man show, at The Comedy Store

Sep 142017
 

Rostam- Gwan

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (9/14-9/17/17)-

Thursday

Rostam from Vampire Weekend has a new album out and to celebrate he will be performing a free set at Amoeba Records in Hollywood

Tonight’s Downtown Art Walk will focus on LA Street Artists in the Art Walk Lounge

To mark the opening of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, MOCA Grand Ave will re-present Anna Maria Maiolino’s performance piece Entrevidas in conjunction with the exhibition Anna Maria Maiolino. Maiolino will perform the work. (free)

Daryl Hall & John Oates are playing with Tears for Fears at the Staples Center (also Friday)

Friday

James Supercave is playing at the Teragram Ballroom with The Seshen

Enjoy a kid free night at the LA Zoo’s Roaring Nights, which also has bands, DJs, “special animal encounters” and more (check Goldstar for discount tix)

Frankie and the Witch Fingers are having a record release party at The Echo with POW! and The Mad Walls opening

The Church are playing at the Fonda Theatre with The Helio Sequence opening

Golden Animals, decker., The Astronots, and Joy Downer are playing at The Hi Hat

Together Pangea are playing with Tall Juan, Side Eyes and Daddy Issues at the El Rey Theatre

Saturday

The free 2nd Annual Open Arts and Music Festival is in Downtown Glendale with bands that include Run River North, DUCKWRTH, and Buyepongo plus art installations and an art market

Black Kids are playing with Seratones and LondonBridge at the Echoplex

Hammer Museum is having a free party to celebrate the opening of Radical Women, with galleries open late, performances,live music by Jungle Fire, DJ sets by Chulita Vinyl Club, and a cash bar (RSVP here)

Street Food Cinema’s outdoor movie in Poinsettia Rec Park is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

L7: Pretend That We’re Dead, the documentary about the band, is screening at the Regent Theater with a meet and greet with the band to follow

Tristen is playing an early show at Resident with Jenny O. opening

Sunday

For Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA’s Launch Weekend, several museums and art institutions are free in and around LA, Santa Barbara, the Inland Cities and San Diego

Tijuana Panthers, Slothrust, Mourn, and Dude York are playing at the Regent Theater

Café Tacvba, La Santa Cecilia, and Mon Laferte are playing at the Hollywood Bowl

Oddisee & Good Compny are playing at The Echo with SALES and LVL UP