Art

When Art Had Heart

May 17, 2012 | by Constance Mallinson | Category: Art | Leave a Comment

L.A. Raw—Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980 – As part of the massive near year long Pacific Standard Time series of exhibitions exploring the post-World War II Los Angeles art scene, curator Michael Duncan’s survey L.A. Raw - Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, from Rico Lebrun to Paul McCartney at the Pasadena Museum of California Art stands out as the most memorable and powerful—and least publicized—of all the PST offerings. An in-depth investigation of notable and less familiar artists of that period who were driven by “introspection and angst” to make “socially relevant art ,“ the exhibition raises as many questions about the current state of art in the face of equally compelling ... [Read more]

Tagged: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, Barbara T. Smith, Charles White, Chris Burden, Hans Burhkart, Jack Zajac, Judy Chicago, L.A. Raw, MIchael Duncan, My Lai (1968), Rico Lebrun

Inside the Artists Studio—Sean Duffy

March 5, 2012 | by Constance Mallinson | Category: Art | Leave a Comment

Dude-entity – Consider the American garage. Besides its primary purpose as storage for automotive maintenance supplies and providing year round protection for our economy’s most important commodity, the 21st century garage might be analyzed in the same manner as Walter Benjamin examined the deteriorating 19th century Parisian arcades. According to Benjamin, the 20th century was foretold in the demise of the 19th century shopping malls with its often absurd contents. Catacombs of surplus and obsolete consumer items, like the arcades, the garage reveals the fashions, consumption patterns, and media trends that define the era but also as importantly, functions as a kind of “dream space” allowing for those who inhabit them to ... [Read more]

Tagged: Cherry Makita—Honest Engine Work, Constance Mallinson, Garage Sale, Jason Rhoades, Los Angeles Artist, Sean Duffy

The Quiet Artwork of an Outspoken Artist

February 27, 2012 | by Alissa Guzman | Category: Art | Leave a Comment

Ai Weiwei’s Sunflowers at the Mary Boone Gallery, 2012 – Last year the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei captured the world’s attention when he was detained on April 3rd, and was held in a secret police detention center for the following 80 days. It was a story that brought the real world to the doorstep of the art world, and as the art world awaited news of the already internationally known artist, protests of his disappearance took place everywhere. In New York City, home to a particularly large and vocal art community, various different protests—Creative Time’s 1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei, a staged recreation of the artist’s own installation Fairytale: 1001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs for Documenta 12, or the Cuban artist ... [Read more]

Tagged: Ai Weiwei, Alissa Guzman, Mary Boone Gallery, Sunflower Seeds

Chauvet and Lascaux, The Deeper Syntax

February 6, 2012 | by Aram Yardumian | Category: Art | 4 Comments

Reflections on the Phenomenology of Upper Paleolithic Cave Art – One of the most important questions we can ask is how we came to recognize ourselves. This is not the same as asking when we first saw our image reflected in still water, or how we learned to react selfishly to pain and fear. It is not merely self-awareness we are after, but the awareness of oneself as oneself—the awareness of ‘I’ apart from the material continuum of the natural world, and without any other quality attached to it. So many uniquely human technological achievements—the fishhook, fire, cutting edges, even basic seafaring—the results of millennia of trials and errors—seem possible without recourse to ‘I’. But identity, philosophy, poetry, ... [Read more]

Tagged: Aram Yardumian, Cave Art, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Chauvet, Georges Bataille, Homo sapiens, Jakob von Uexküll, Juri Lotman, Konrad Theodor Preuss, Lascaux, Semiotics, Upper Paleolithic, Werner Herzog

Mike Kelley, In Memoriam

February 3, 2012 | by Rita Valencia | Category: Art | 1 Comment

I’ll always think of Mike as a beautifully raging genius who was a protean artist, great dancer, and highly skilled in dismantling all manner of bullshit. With fondness always. —Rita Valencia PRESS RELEASE Subject: Mike Kelley, artist, passes away Date: Weds. February 1, 2012 From: Kelley Studio and Friends Contact: Studio: 323 257 7853 John C. Welchman: 323 258 8957 ********************************* Our dear friend the artist Mike Kelley (born 1954 in Detroit) has passed away. Unstintingly passionate, habitually outspoken and immeasurably creative in every genre or material with which he took up—and that was most of them, from performance and sculpture to painting, installation and video, from ... [Read more]

Tagged: John Welchman, Kelly Studio, Mike Kelley, Rita Valencia

Inside the Artist’s Studio – Maren Hassinger

October 19, 2011 | by Constance Mallinson | Category: Art | 6 Comments

Now Dig Into This – There are opportunities for sculpture everywhere. In a field, in a room, on a stage, in the street, on the ceiling, in front of a camera, etc. Every place inspires a different response. Some responses locate us in space and time and link us to particular people in particular places. These last offerings might be political. There are reactions to given events…..There are sculptures acting like sculptures and people acting like people and sculptures acting like people and people acting like sculptures. There’s stillness and motion. There’s the “littering” of space to mark it. There are pieces that last and pieces that erode. Materials are many—steel to video, plastic bags to newspapers. — Maren ... [Read more]

Tagged: Constance Mallinson, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Art, Maren Hassinger, Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, Pacific Standard Time

Cameron

September 15, 2011 | by Nancy Cantwell | Category: Art | 1 Comment

Pacific Standard Time Arrives – Initiated by the Getty Museum along with the Getty Research Institute, Pacific Standard Time has blossomed into a comprehensive collaboration of 60 cultural institutes whose focus will be the art and artists of Southern California from the years 1945 to 1980. While the official kickoff date is October 1st, the festival has already taken on wings with gallery exhibitions of works by such L.A. original as Beatrice Wood, Maria Nordman and John Outterbridge. I was thrilled when Scott Hobbs, brought to my attention that the work of Marjorie Cameron was to be included as part PST's inaugural Getty exhibition "Crosscurrents" and featured as part of the Getty's "Explore the Era" web archive. Scott along George ... [Read more]

Tagged: Cameron, George Herms, Los Angeles Art, Marjorie Cameron, Nancy Cantwell, Pacific Standard Time, Portrait of Crystal, Scott Hobbs, Semina

Inside the Artist’s Studio – Nuttaphol Ma

July 9, 2011 | by Constance Mallinson | Category: Art | 2 Comments

A River Runs Through It – Badwater Basin in Death Valley, the lowest point in the continental US, is flat, empty, surrounded by desolate, desiccated mountains, and yet the near blinding whiteness of the valley floor symbolizes and enlarges upon the traditional ground zero for the artist—the vacant white studio wall. Or as Jean Baudrillard described the desert, it is the place of “superficial neutrality”, a “challenge to meaning and profundity.” Here on May Day this year Thai American multi-disciplinary artist Nuttaphol Ma began a 6 day, 138.3 mile documented performance/journey to the trailhead of Mt. Whitney—the highest point in the U.S.– carrying a body-sized lightweight handmade “boat” over his head. As recipient ... [Read more]

Tagged: Born by the River, Constance Mallinson, Feitelson Arts Fellowship, Inside the Artist's Studio, Los Angeles Art, Nuttaphol Ma, Relational Aesthetics

The Stark Fist of Removal

June 13, 2011 | by Rita Valencia | Category: Art | Leave a Comment

Rem Koolhaas' CRONOCAOS at New Museum, Lower East Side, Manhattan– Architecture is monstrous in the way in which each choice leads to the reduction of possibility. —Rem Koolhaas May 2011: New York City is at its greige gritty best. It is springtime and the promise of a rain is unfulfilled as storm clouds scutter uselessly across a blue sky. In the lower East Side, where the New Museum now occupies its splendid SANAA designed building of stacked white boxes, the word CRONOCAOS is lettered in white Helvetica Medium on a chrome yellow awning on the museum's homely neighbor, the site of a former wholesale business. The Helvetica poses as a kind of institutional graffiti, jaunty and cool in a "made ya look" way. The signage of the ... [Read more]

Tagged: CRONOCAOS, Historic Preservation, New Museum, OMA, Rem Koolhaas, Rita Valencia

Immensities and Infinities

June 1, 2011 | by Tom Wudl | Category: Art | Leave a Comment

Further Specimens from the Flowerbank World, Tom Wudl, L.A. Louver Gallery, June 2 through July 9 2011 – Immensities and Infinities: Further Specimens from the Flowerbank World is the artist Tom Wudl's continuing investigation of the Avatamasaka Sutra (or Flower Ornament Sutra), a revered scripture of Huayan Buddhism. Earlier works by Wudl inspired by the sutra were first exhibited at L.A. Louver in Specimens from the Flowerbank World, November-December 2009. Read here the Artforum review by Annie Buckley. There was a time when the world was small and man knew his place in it....Today, space is expanding beyond the reaches of the imagination....we inhabit immensities and infinities that also inhabit us. I have attempted to ... [Read more]

Tagged: Avatamsaka Sutra, Flower Ornament Sutra, Immensities and Infinities, LA Louver, Los Angeles Artist, Specimens from the Flowerbank World, Tom Wudl