Artillery Magazine

Month: July 2017

  • Burning Incense and Fireworks

    Burning Incense and Fireworks

    A precariously long holiday weekend can lead to overcommitting, being noncommittal, or not knowing which exhibitions to see while catching up with family, friends, and maybe some if not a lot of fireworks. At the top of my list this weekend was the opening of “Home Scents, Home Sense, Home Cents,” Nikkolos Mohammed’s first solo exhibition at Damaris Rivera and Kim Alexander’s artist-run space, Age of Art Multiples.

    Arriving at the exhibition I walked up to sprinkled groups of supportive, jovial friends, family, and students. The aroma of burning incense spread a calm yet communicable energy throughout (and who doesn’t love burning incense?). The gallerygoers that I noticed ping-ponging inside and outside the show all had their favorites, pointing out details and highlighting parts that stood out to them. Mohammed with his luminous smile took time to speak to me about the show’s center and putting weight into the values and ideas of the family or home with the core of time being about everyone right now—his work, I thought, spoke to the waif that can be found within all of us at times.

     

    Letting Mohammed return to his attendees and listening to some of the DJing of Roy Rollin and Mike Reesé, (both associated with the Dreamhaus nonprofit) with the author of Deep Blue Giant, MJ Glover, the evening was swaddled in a long-lasting vibe.

     

    The only thing missing was an epigraph with the etching of “You will leave here more full than when you came,” somewhere on some wall, a hidden secret like tonight.

  • The Inner Eye: Vision and Transcendence in African Arts

    The Inner Eye: Vision and Transcendence in African Arts

    Not more than a year ago, I was writing about a show at LACMA with a transcendental dimension – not merely transcending its materials, approach and style, but whose visionary qualities might potentially carry the dedicated viewer to a place of transcendence. Only a year later, I am again confronted with an exhibition – that not only holds out this possibility, but announces it as subject and integral component of the exhibited work. The aforementioned show (Agnes Martin) came out of Western modernism. Here, the transcendence is intrinsic to an aspect of daily/historical life and cultural experience and (not incidentally) religious practices that accompanied them and emerges from a broad overview of several African cultures evolving over the course of six centuries. It’s also seen in this broad context as intrinsic to the act of seeing itself; also, paraphrasing John Berger, the ways of seeing – the casual observation, as distinguished from the deliberate or extended regard, an averted or deflected gaze. Where the direct gaze was discouraged (in ritual acknowledgment of power, religious observance, etc.), the gaze in these instances is redirected ‘inward,’ or ‘beyond.’ Although a number of the heads and masks have the pared, schematic quality of Cycladic idols, many of them acknowledge complexity, duality, even duplicity – thinking here of a Congolese head (albeit late 19th century) in which a double-funnel of heads is mounted atop another proto-Cubistic mask – literally gazing in all directions. Even the mask ‘speaks’ back to its bearer – it was not uncommon for inscriptions to appear on the mask inner side. 

    LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
    5905 Wilshire Blvd.
    Los Angeles, CA 90036
    Show runs thru July 9, 2017

  • MOCA GALA 2017

    MOCA GALA 2017

  • Shoshana Wayne Gallery: : Sabrina Gschwandtner

    Shoshana Wayne Gallery: : Sabrina Gschwandtner

    Sabrina Gschwandtner’s second solo exhibition at Shoshana Wayne Gallery continues her exploration into intricate quilting motifs, expanding on her already complex imagery with the addition of deaccessioned celluloid film strips of female hands hard at work—sewing, threading, knitting and crocheting their way into our human consciousness. These eleven “quilts” constructed entirely of pieces of film, which the artist procured from the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Anthology Film Archives, are radiant visual explorations into human history, specifically the undervalued work of female laborers and artisans, largely overlooked.

    Sabrina Gschwandtner, Untitled (Bradford Dyeing Hands at Work)  (2017). 16mm polyester film, polyester thread. Framed: 26 1/8” x 26 1/8” x 3”. Courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery. Photo: Joshua White.

    Gschwandtner’s celluloid quilts, exhibited here in light boxes, focus very specifically on the actual images of women’s hands as they move through space and time—pulling, stretching, crimping the fabric into new forms. Also, many of the works are conjoined through subtle color variations as in Untitled (Bradford Dyeing Hands at Work) (2017), where the content of the piece is revealed through a seductive palette that draws you deeper in.

    Sabrina Gschwandtner, Hands at Work III (2017). 16mm polyester film, polyester thread. Framed: 26 7/8” x 27” x 3”. Courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery. Photo: Joshua White.

    There are obvious nods here to artists like Louise Bourgeois and Eva Hesse, both of whom utilized alternative materials including fabric and textiles to speak to a larger context about female identity and sexuality as well as women’s invisibility in the greater world at large. Gschwandtner’s work is both beautiful and poignant as one is aware that the precise delicacy that is inherent to the quilting tradition has all but been forgotten. The sheer repetition of hands transforms these works into a kind of obsessive montage of an altered reality wherein “women’s work” transcends gender to become something altogether vibrant and necessary.

    Sabrina Gschwandtner, “Hands at Work,” installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery. Photo: Joshua White.

    Sabrina Gschwandtner, “Hands at Work,” June 3 – July 29, 2017 at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave, B1, Santa Monica, CA 90404, shoshanawayne.com.

  • EDITOR’S LETTER

    EDITOR’S LETTER

    Tulsa_portrait_roughDear Reader,

    “Write what you know”: this famous advice from fellow Missourian Mark Twain has always resonated with me. I apply it to my writing and I relied on it when I used to make art. The quote was delivered by many a professor and mentor in my past. It made perfect sense to me, and it was the easiest way to approach any creative endeavor.

    So when the most recent dust-up about censorship in art took place—concerning Dana Schutz’ painting of Emmett Till’s mutilated corpse at the Whitney Biennial, and more recently, LA artist Sam Durant’s sculpture at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis—it was the first thing that popped into my head. Why were these two white artists making art about the pain and suffering of people they knew nothing about?

    Writing about what you know mainly refers to experiences and the emotions that one knows and feels, but of course we develop those emotions from our surroundings and the treatment we’ve been exposed to: anger if we’ve been abused, insecurity if unloved or abandoned, love and happiness if we grew up in a safe environment. I don’t really know much about the backgrounds of Schutz or Durant, but I can safely assume they didn’t suffer from prejudices due to the color of their skin.

    That said, I’m not going to come right out and say, Hey, you can’t have empathy or a real desire to comment about injustice. In many cases it’s our moral duty to speak up. I had forgotten the brutal details of Emmett Till’s tragic fate—a black teenager tortured to death by grown white men—and when I went back to research it I felt rage and sorrow over the acts that humans willfully inflict on each other. It’s unbelievable to me, and the indignation is palpable. Perhaps so palpable I would even want to write about it (as I am here) or make art about it. Why shouldn’t I be able to do this?

    At the same time, I can empathize with the Native Americans who are protesting Scaffold. Durant’s sculpture is a replica of a gallows where 38 Dakota Indians were hanged. Now the Dakotas are saying, Fuck You White Privileged Artist, for thinking you can empathize with our plight, and then get on your high horse and receive gobs of money for your art and move on to the next topic of injustice. Thanks for your thoughtfulness, but no thank you. The Dakotas said of Scaffold: “This is not art.”

    Okay, now I’m really confused. Have the Dakotas now become arbiters of what is and what is not art? Walker Art Center apologized, and Durant is contrite. The sculpture is now being burned, and Durant is more than okay with that.

    Is Durant giving in? Doesn’t he feel that it is important to uphold our First Amendment? The whole episode feels like a grad-school walkthrough, when faculty members would tear through your studio and trash your art, then scream, “This is not art! Bad Artist! What the fuck are you making art about?” I guess Durant didn’t get that treatment in grad school. I know I certainly did. But I made art about my dysfunctional family, something I knew more about than my faculty members could ever know. Nobody can challenge that.

    Ultimately, I don’t think Durant’s art should be destroyed, or even dismantled. Scaffold was installed in the Sculpture Garden between pop-art sculptures of a giant cherry and a rooster. Perhaps the Walker curators made a poor choice on that!

    I respect our First Amendment, and would like to hold onto it dearly. Durant and Schutz had every right to make that art, but they also have to deal with the consequences of their free speech. A statement Durant delivered was noble in a sense: he realized his mistake, that wood and steel are nothing compared to the tyranny the Dakotas met on the gallows he replicated. Maybe Durant is beginning to understand that he can’t speak for the pain and suffering of people he knows nothing about. Durant’s heart is in the right place, and I feel Schutz’ is too, but I think they should have really thought through why they made this art. They need to dig deeper into what they are trying to say, and go back to the basics: Make art about what you know. No one can take that away from you.

     

  • The Netherlands

    The Netherlands

    Holland has an illustrious past and rich history in art, from golden age painters Rembrandt and Vermeer through modernist legends van Gogh, Mondrian and the de Stijl group, Cobra Dutch artists and expatriate Willem de Kooning, to enigmatic Conceptualist Bas Jan Ader, who disappeared in 1970 sailing a small boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Today, there is a thriving art scene centered around Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, three cities all within less than an hour’s travel from each other in central Netherlands. Exploring this region of the country while on a residency to Kaus Australis in Rotterdam, I became intrigued with the current art being exhibited in this tiny nation; returning recently, the vibrancy and unconventional nature of the scene in central Netherlands seemed a story begging to be told.

    “Excitement” show at the Stedelijk, photo by Gert Jan van Rooij

    Amsterdam has long been a destination for those whose joys in traveling centers on viewing art. The Stedelijk, Amsterdam’s modern and contemporary museum, featured a show of note organized by Rudi Fuchs, an unconventional Dutch curator now retired but still active. The exhibition, “Excitement,” featured an eclectic mix of art from the last 30 years, with work from the 1980s heavily represented. In contrast to The Broad in LA, which focuses on much the same period, Fuchs’ choices go more in the direction of Minimalism and Conceptualism rather than neo-pop. With a predilection for work that is both brainy and formally powerful, Fuchs manages to give novel perspectives on this often debased period. Known for his unconventional approach to curating, Fuchs juxtaposes figurative expressionism with reductivist painting and sculpture and idea-based work, creating fresh insights in familiar artworks.

    Paul McCarthy public sculpture in Rotterdam.
    Willem de Kooning public sculpture in Rotterdam.

    One of the most impressive aspects of contemporary art in Holland is the copious amount of public art one encounters. Art seems to be everywhere, especially in Rotterdam, from the enormous bronze abstract figures by de Kooning (the sublime) to LA artist Paul McCarthy’s large sculpture entitled Santa Claus (the ridiculous), which has been nicknamed “The Buttplug Gnome” by local residents. Public art is virtually ubiquitous, ranging from rather pedestrian abstract sculptures of modest size to James Turrell’s Celestial Vault (1996) at Kijkduin, a kind of miniature version of the crater bowl of his magnum opus Roden Crater in Arizona. Viewers can experience a reality-changing view of the sky by lying back on one of the concrete beds provided; the impression is that one is sitting in the back of a lens of a giant eyeball open to the beautifully infinite view. The work uses mundane materials (earth and concrete) to create a transcendent experience, placing the view as a conduit between earth and sky.

    James Turrell, Celestial Vault at Stroom, 1996
    Panorama Mesdag

    Not far from the Turrell in the city of The Hague is a 19th-century precursor to Celestial Vault, and to the kind of environmental installation art that has become so prevalent since the late 20th century—the Panorama Mesdag. Painted in 1881 by Dutch painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag, the panorama creates an uncanny illusion of being in the nearby dunes looking out at the ocean by using a combination of a 360-degree mural painting, sand dunes and sculptural objects. Standing on the observation platform, it is easy to imagine you are in the open air, viewing the dunes as they must have appeared in Mesdag’s day. The Museum Mesdag, attached to the panorama, contains Mesdag’s landscape paintings, as well as work by other European artists he collected. Recently, the museum has begun to show contemporary art that relates to the panorama as well; Los Angeles artist Jeremy Kidd’s exhibition of panoramic large-scale photographs is the most recent example. Kidd’s show included a new, massive 10 x 46 foot photograph depicting the same viewpoint Mesdag used in his panorama, and the changes from 1881 to the present day are dramatic.

    Jeremy Kidd, Scheveningen Mesdag 1 (installation in The Hague School room at the Panorama Mesdag), archival inkjet print on fabric, 3.08 x 12.76

    A few hours travel from The Hague, in the middle of the verdant Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo, lies the Kroller-Muller Museum and Sculpture Garden. At 75 acres, one of the largest sculpture parks in Europe, it features modern and contemporary art in a bucolic forest setting, including some architectural pavilions that showcase smaller sculptures. Of particular note is a massive work by Jean Dubuffet, Jardin d’émail (1974), a singular work in concrete that is a kind of installation art version of his later painted sculptures. The work intrigues because of the way it vacillates between more traditional discrete object sculpture and the notion of sculpture as a complete, immersive environment. One can wander for hours through the garden, which is adjacent to the museum, or explore the national park itself on one of the hundreds of white bicycles provided free. The sculpture collection includes work by such luminaries as Richard Serra, Christo, Lucio Fontana, Mark Di Suvero and many others, while the museum’s immense collection of van Gogh paintings is second in number only to that of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

    Jean Dubuffet, Jardin d’émail (1974)
    3D scan 2014 (©Fondation-Dubuffet)

    One of the most recently opened museums of contemporary art is the Voorlinden, the brainchild of Dutch businessman and collector Joop van Caldenborgh. This privately owned museum in Wassenaar, located in a field bordering a forest, sits on the 98-acre Voorlinden estate, and boasts 22,000 square feet of exhibition space. Designed by Rotterdam-based architecture studio Kraaijvanger, the building is a sleek minimalist edifice, flat-roofed and rectilinear, reminiscent of Mies van der Rohe. The inaugural exhibition was a retrospective of Ellsworth Kelly, and the impressive collection includes Jan Sluijters, Andy Warhol, Rineke Dijkstra, Ron Mueck, Yves Klein, Roni Horn, Richard Serra and Ai Weiwei. It is a real pleasure to view art in such serene surroundings, in the immaculate and understated galleries that underplay the architecture to show the art to greater advantage.

    Ewerdt Hilgemann, Three of a kind, 2017.

    In addition to the museums mentioned, the Amsterdam/Rotterdam/The Hague region contains many galleries, nonprofits, artist run spaces, and a very active artist community. The Netherlands seems to value contemporary art far more than America does, which is reflected in the presence of public art, the number of museums, and government support of the arts. While truly international in scope, there were several interesting shows of Dutch artists. The Gemeente Museum, The Hague, which has the world’s largest collection of Mondrian paintings, showed the work of Constant Nieuwenhuijs (1920–2005), a Dutch artist who created a fascinating art blending painting, sculpture and architectural models. The extent to which his work reflects the cross-disciplinary  nature of today’s art was quite unprecedented at the time. Ewerdt Hilgemann, a German artist who has long resided in the Netherlands, recently showed his “Implosion Sculptures” in Art Zuid in Amsterdam, welded stainless-steel minimalist-like boxes that he reshapes by removing the air inside with a compressor, creating strangely organic, unpredictable forms that are an intriguing conflation of both minimal and post-minimal/process art concerns. Hilgemann recently showed some of these works at Royale Projects in Los Angeles, and actually created new pieces in the gallery, imploding some large sculptures as gallery visitors watched the process with great anticipation. That brings the Netherlands back here to LA, which is where this story ends.

  • Conceptual Museum: Cesar Cornejo

    Conceptual Museum: Cesar Cornejo

    Cesar Cornejo sees artists as outsiders. They confront things that other people won’t—or can’t—see, the Peruvian-born artist told me in an interview in May, three days after the opening of “Building As Ever,” OCMA’s 2017 California-Pacific Triennial. His site-specific installation in the Triennial is part architectural intervention, part sculpture/ architectural model built out of materials scavenged from the museum’s storage. Architecture is a recurring theme in Cornejo’s work and a consideration in his ongoing project, Puno Museum of Contemporary Art, now in its 11th year.

    Puno MoCA began as an alternative model, Cornejo told me, an architectural and conceptual structure that he could use to defy expectations of what a museum should be. And in Latin America, he pointed out, the model of the museum has been adopted from the first world and imposed on a “system that is different.”

    Cesar Cornejo, photo by Henry Ortiz Tapia

    The city of Puno sits at about 12,500 feet on the shores of Lake Titicaca in the Peruvian Andes. Cornejo, who grew up and studied architecture in Lima before he moved to Japan for seven years to study sculpture and earn a Ph.D. in studio art, is not Quechua or Aymara, the two ethnic groups native to the region, and is viewed as an outsider there, too. It seemed an unlikely place for a museum of contemporary art, and in March 2007, when he started the project, even Lima had no contemporary art museum.

    Cornejo’s project is a unique mix of social engagement, architecture and a practical application of construction. A critique of museum culture, it extends art into places that have been starved of it. Cornejo also wanted to challenge the concept of community art in which the community is subsumed into the artist’s social practice, and the project concludes with no concrete benefit to the community, only some amorphous sense that they have been intangibly enriched. “Being from Latin America where people live day to day, and in many areas struggle to survive,” he said, “I wanted to give them something that really can be measured.”

    Cornejo surveyed the city and started where he usually does, working with the materials and conditions that already exist. When he asked himself what was readily available, the answer was apparent: “I thought, ‘We have an abundance of shanty towns.’”

    In 10 years, the city has changed some. There is more wealth, and sections of the city are gentrifying, which generates another set of problems. But conditions for many of Puno’s residents are still the same. “I say this as an architect. We have lots of places where there are occurrences of spontaneous architecture,” Cornejo explained; architecture that is “ephemeral in many cases.”

    Puno MoCA at House of Oscar Coila Huanca, Puno 2007, photo by Cesar Cornejo

    “I thought that could be our source for a museum,” he recounted. It would be an exchange. Cornejo would offer residents something very practical. Many of the homes he saw had unfinished portions or needed repair. And he would offer to repair the house. “You can measure that. You can see the benefit. I don’t have to explain to you [at length] how you’re going to grow, or how your vision is going to grow,” he asserted. And homeowners, in return, would host an exhibition for an artist (Cornejo doesn’t exhibit his own works in the Puno MoCA project) once the repairs were finished. The project is a union of offering a very tangible benefit for people who agree to participate, and provides a benefit to Puno MoCA in creating a limited exhibition space in the renovated home. Here, Puno MoCA inadvertently draws on the region’s tradition. In the mountains of Peru, Cornejo reported, there is a culture of reciprocity. The currency is the mutual benefit in the exchange.

    But not every candidate is a match when thinking about projects they might do with Puno MoCA. “What is interesting to me is when the person can see beyond that benefit, and they get really interested,” he said. In this sense, the museum couples the intangible benefits of art—the sense of extending one’s knowledge, or ken—with the very real, measurable benefits of one’s domicile.

    XII Havana Biennial: Puno MoCA presents Havana Museum of Contemporary Art (2015), photo by Cesar Cornejo

    Funding for the project is intermittent. In 2009, Cornejo received a grant from Creative Capital. At times, he has financed it through sales of his sculpture, and he has received some assistance from the University of South Florida, where he teaches. He is currently exploring possibilities that are self-sustaining, like establishing a small industry and adapting the project to include an economic model for development. In the meantime, he has begun to think of Puno MoCA as a brand and has implemented the concept in other places including an exhibition with his gallery in Lima and in the XII Habana Bienal, boasting that he gave Cuba its first museum of contemporary art.

  • South of the Border Down Tijuana Way

    South of the Border Down Tijuana Way

    Tijuana’s most famous contribution to art is the painting of zonkeys: combining donkeys with zebras so the pale Equus would stand out in black-and-white photographs. This is a paraphrased version of what I’m told when I mention I’m heading to Baja for cultural endeavors. The other thing I hear is advice not to go because I will be killed. Both responses are related. Founded during Prohibition as a city for Hollywood’s sin-loving denizens to escape to, Tijuana has never shed its desperado reputation. Tourism remained the city’s lifeblood until, near the end of the last decade, blood began spilling from cartel wars. Tijuana’s main strip, Revolución, usually rife with tourists, became a façade of boarded-up buildings. But then, as is often the case, artists entered where others feared to sell cheap souvenirs. Now, the revolución of Revolución is in full effect. Though the language border isn’t always easy to cross, the cheap food, craft-beer renaissance and burgeoning art community will make you wish had more than 24 hours to enjoy the zonkeys.

    Guy Painting Donkey

    MORNING

    PARKING
    Driving into Mexico requires Mexican insurance; it’s cheaper to taxi or Uber around the city. Either park near the border (for $$$) or park further north (for free) and take the trolley ($5), which drops you off at the entrance to Mexico. You shouldn’t need more than a backpack or small rolling luggage for your time there, so I recommend walking the mile or so from the border to your hotel. (TIP: When returning, if the lines are long and you’re impatient, there are people who wait and give up their primo space-in-line for money.)  

    Hotel Ticuán
    Calle Octava 8190
    Tijuana’s main drag is Revolución, which is always buzzing with bars and taco carts. With the current exchange rate, an upscale two-bedroom queen room is around $100 on weekends. (Rooms can be rented for $10 or $15 in other parts of the city—or rented hourly in the Red Light district.) Needing a central location, and traveling with a friend who needed TJ after a bad breakup, we stayed at Hotel Ticuán. It’s about a 20-minute walk from the border, but you’ll get an entrée to the street art and murals of Tijuana during your please-come-in-my-store-and-buy-souvenirs trek. You’ll also pass bars, discount pharmacies and the aforementioned donkeys (eating corn husks). Though overpriced, Ticuán’s location makes it an ideal hub for your art adventures. Breakfast (for one) is included in the reservation, but everyone in your party can eat here on the cheap tomorrow morning. Today, drop your luggage off, get on the hotel’s Wi-Fi, alert your friends/family you made it to the hotel safely, then head out to…

    Museo del Coleccionista de Tijuana (MUCOTI) y el Museo de la Lucha Libre Mexicana (MULLME)
    Calle Hermenegildo Galeana 8186, Zona Centro
    Tijuana is a city of discovery. Leaving hotel Ticuán, I walked past a large green gate and heard shouting and slamming beyond it. Finagling my way inside, I came upon a luchador match. It was opening weekend for TJ’s newest cultural attraction, a museum dedicated to Mexican pop culture.

    MUSCOTI takes up the museum’s first floor: display cases filled with pogs, toys found in Fritos, Chespirito merchandise. MULLME, on the second floor, is a hagiography to lucha libre: costumes, movies, clippings of hair.

    Tejeda Art

    Perhaps to add more culture to the pop, the museum’s top floor is an open gallery space. Silvia Tejeda is the current artist-in-residence (she also designed the museum’s window displays). For one series of paintings, Tejeda asked students about their public bus experience. She then covered her canvas with a collage of red tickets (student pricing) and painted their responses—aliens, zombies, sacks of potatoes. The museum plans on hosting local artists—of all disciplines—in this space.    

    Random alley

    LUNCH

    Telefónica Gastro Park
    Av. Melchor Ocampo
    Leaving MULLME, taxi/Uber to Telefónica. This trailer park of upscale eateries truly has something for everyone, including La Taqueria Vegein, which serves up vegan and vegetarian versions of the signature street tacos. (An alternative is the Colectivo Nueve off Revolución, which does the same-as-above in a food courty setting.)

    Pasaje Rodriquez

    Pasaje Rodriguez
    In early afternoon, head to this alley off Revolución between Third and Fourth streets. Its history is a microcosm of Tijuana’s: originally part of the Foreign Club Hotel and Casino, Rodriguez later housed tacky souvenir shops. Once tourism declined, the alleyway became vacant. But then artists raised their paintbrushes and now Pasaje Rodriguez boasts dozens of murals, hand-crafted artisanal gifts, boutique restaurants and studio spaces. Silvia Tejeda—the artist exhibiting at MULLME—runs Pieza: during the day, kids paint clay statues; at night, it’s her studio. 

     
    Give yourself more time than you think you might need here. Once you start talking about your interest in art, Tijuaneros who feel the same will take you on side tours. Haydeé Jiménez, after translating for Tejeda at MULLME, invited us to her studio/office above Pasaje Rodriquez.  

    Vibroacustica

    Visitors slip on a pair of headphones and lie on a mattress embedded with transducers. Haydeé then sits beside her patients and “paints” on an iPad that translates her circles and finger-spreads into vibrations both sensed and heard. It is unlike anything you will ever experience; even cynical art journalists feel a loss of body. Head to vibroacustica.co and arrange a session before your visit. (Haydeé also invites musicians whose music would complement the vibroacustica to contact her.)

    You’re not far from your hotel. Check in, bathroom, then walk, or taxi, to La Casa De Tunel.

    La Casa De Tunel
    Calle Chapo Márquez, 133 Colonia Federal
    In outline: an art-loving lawyer built this boat-like house in the 1950s. Later, one of the building’s tenants dug a 150-foot tunnel to a parking lot in the U.S. Illegality ensued. In 2004, authorities discovered the underpass and everyone involved was imprisoned. Following years of litigation, the heirs of the original owner “liberated the building and decided to provide the space… for the establishment of an international center for the arts.” Now, The Tunnel House intermittently hosts exhibitions and special projects. Check its website (cofac101.org) before visiting, though it’s worth the short trek regardless—artists have decorated the outside walls with artes y manualidades (arts and crafts).

    Norte Brewing Co.
    Calle 4TA
    It’s difficult to meander around the city for more than a minute without passing a pharmacy or craft brewery. Aficionados should research which brewery carries their favorite blend of yeast and hops; indifferent to alcohol, I ceded the choice to Mantingas, who offers tours of the city at TijuanaAdventure.com. Norte’s located off the 5th floor of a parking garage, and the giant pole bisecting the space alludes to its former life as a strip club. Beer or (distilled) water in hand, enjoy the panoramic and pigeon-eye views of Tijuana and the hills beyond the border.  

     

    Tonala

    BEFORE SUNSET

    La Frontera – Airport Section
    Cuauhtémoc 118, Centro
    “Head towards the airport.” These are the directions you’ll likely need to provide your driver in order to visit this section of the border wall, known as “La Frontera” to locals. When highway 1 hits the border, it banks east; tap your driver and request they let you off at the roundabout.  Admire the red obelisk sprouting crosses, then walk east to understand the sculpture’s meaning. Soon, you’ll come upon wooden crosses mounted to the rust-stained wall. Upon each cross is a name, city and age. These are the person, the city in which they were born, and how old they were when they died trying to escape into the United States. The crosses have been there for years.  The “Chinga Tu Madre Trump” (“Fuck Your Mother, Trump!”) is new.

     
    NIGHT

    Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT)
    Paseo de los Héroes 9350
    Open each night until 9 p.m., and often hosting evening concerts and lectures, CECUT should be saved until you’ve maxed out your daylight hours. CECUT is, and will likely remain, the cultural nexus of Tijuana; if you ask taxi drivers where to go for “artes y cultura,” they’ll drop you off here. Regardless of whether you enter the building, admire from outside the OMNIMAX cinema, referred to by locals as “La Bola”—“The Ball.”

    In 2008, La Bola was joined by El Cubo, a space to showcase international exhibitions. Check the website (there’s an English version) for the current offerings, but previous shows have included Gabriel Fugeroa, Proyecto Civico, and, when I was there, Botero.

    Caesar’s

    DINNER

    Caesars
    This is the actual birthplace of the Caesar salad, and they treat it accordingly. Vest-wearing waiters wheel a cart to your table that is a double-decker of ingredients to create the salad and dressing. Fresh eggs, lemon, Parmesan, et al, are mixed in a silver bowl and gently painted on four pieces of lettuce. Vegetarian? Just ask them to forgo the anchovy paste. Caesars’ remaining offerings are par to sub-par. Their olive tapenade, however, may be better than the best-salad-you’ll-ever-eat, and it—and the associated bread—is complimentary. My suggestion: order the large salad (around $6), finish off the tapenade and bread, order more of each, then head out and get street tacos from any of the endless carts ($1) to fill up your remaining stomach space.

    Traveler’s Choice
    Depending on your interests, and ethics, Tijuana offers various late-night activities. While I am opposed to sex workers and strip clubs, I fully support feeling wanted by strangers. It’s worth visiting Zona Norte to take in the flashing neon lights and to be endlessly propositioned for sex. (You can try explaining to the prostitutes why they should charge more, but they’re not likely to understand and may grab your friend’s crotch.) Other options are art-house movie theaters, clubs, breweries, meandering around and taking photos of graffiti and murals, or arguing with your significant other that it actually is completely safe to do any of the above.


    MORNING

    La Frontera – La Playa
    Av. Del Pacífico 4,
    Sección Monumental Playas de Tijuana
    Near the airport, the border wall is made of corrugated metal. By the beach, it seems made of towering prison bars that wade out into the high surf of the Pacific. Artists and activists use this section of La Frontera as an ever-evolving gallery. When I visited, in late April 2017, someone had recently painted a half–American/Mexican flag with “Love Trumps Hate” and “Al Amor Vence Al Odio.” Taxis/Uber should drop you off at the top of the parking lot leading down to the sand. Walk the short trail while admiring the wall art and community gardens, then head south on the boardwalk, enjoying the churro carts, views and graffiti. The smells, and sights, are the perfect souvenirs to take back home.

    Photos by Josh Herman

  • Off the Beaten Path in Barcelona

    Off the Beaten Path in Barcelona

    I landed in Barcelona a little sweaty, slightly hung over, and very much lost. Much to my surprise, the discount tickets I purchased for $350 round-trip included three meals, unlimited snacks, and all-you-can-drink beverages (including alcohol). By the end of the 13-hour flight from LAX, I had the sneaking suspicion that Delta’s flight attendants were trying to fatten us all up for a cult ritual after landing.

    I was recently visiting Spain partly because the tickets were so cheap, but mostly to explore the culturally rich region where some of my all-time favorite painters—Goya, Velázquez, El Greco—hailed from. Spain is much more vast, both culturally and geographically, than I had first assumed. With over 50 provinces, several tongues and 10,000 miles of train lines (fun fact), it can be difficult to tackle the art scene of an entire country. Thus, Barcelona.

    In Barrio Gotico_photo by Leanna Robinson

    Barcelona practically breathes art. With the Picasso museum, the Miró museum, the National Museum of Catalunya—to name a few—and Gaudi’s psychedelic architecture around every turn, one can easily get wrapped up in viewing the foundations of art history without exploring what the city currently has to offer. It’s also, frankly, difficult to discover “underground” galleries and events when one is a tourist. Does one, embarrassingly and with shame, type “hip spots in Barcelona” into Google? Luckily, I was graced with friends of friends who pointed me in the direction of galleries and alternative spaces that seemed up my alley.

    My greatest piece of advice for anyone visiting Barcelona who is interested in exploring contemporary art galleries is to not travel on or near a holiday. I happened to arrive near Easter—one of the most celebrated holidays in Spain—and the timing for getting in contact with galleries was less than ideal.

    After compiling a list of places to visit, I set out with my travel partner to check out the galleries, and one after the other, they were closed despite their listed hours. Look, I get it. Spain is a conservative, Catholic country, and people take their Christian holidays seriously. Still, galleries closing three days before Easter without any listed notice seemed a bit odd to my naïve American sensibilities. After waiting out the passage of Easter, and the traditional all-day processions in the street that followed, I was able to actually view some art.

    Andrzej Farfulowski, Sabrina, 2014

    In the Gothic Quarter (Barri Gòtic) lies Artevistas Gallery. Only a few steps away from the Picasso museum, this gallery is hidden off one of the narrow, winding streets characteristic of the neighborhood. Part art shop, part gallery, Artevistas exemplifies the street-art style still thriving in Barcelona. While a bit passé, the gallery should be on any visitor’s radar as its collection holds work emblematic of the genre; it seems to be a cornerstone of gallery-work street art in the city.

    I found the gallery to be youthful and vibrant, and best of all, the famous tapas bar El Xampanyet is only steps away. I also wandered into the eclectic dive bar Sor Rita, which I would advise any art freak to frequent for ambiance and a cheap caña (draft beer). To be avoided in the area is the European Museum of Modern Art—a misnamed “museum” of figurative art, which I, a figurative painter and undercover admirer of figurative work, found to be embarrassingly bad. Unless you are a fan of photorealistic renderings of poorly composed photographs, MEAM is not for you.

    In search of more “highbrow” work, I found myself in the Eixample neighborhood, not too far from the quickly-gentrifying, previously rough-and-tumble area of El Ravel. The strip near Carrer d’Aribau and Carrer de València is becoming something akin to Los Angeles’ Culver City, with trendy galleries moving into the newly gay (the neighborhood is sometimes referred to as “Gaixample”) party scene.

    3Punts, Pabellon de rezos, 2016

    Most notable in this neighborhood are Víctor Lope Arte Contemporáneo, 3 Punts Galeria and Galeria Joan Prats.

    When I visited Joan Prats, they were showing Madrid-based Teresa Solar Abboud’s “Ground Control,” a solo show of ceramic sculptures, videos and photographs that I found exciting, with its somewhat disturbing renderings of human forms interacting with industrial objects. 3 Punts, a gallery spanning both in Barcelona and Berlin, was displaying the work of Spanish artist José Benítez, a mixed-media artist whose solo show “Exodus” I could easily see being shown at forward-thinking contemporary galleries like Night Gallery in LA. Meanwhile, at Víctor Lope they were showing Ana Riaño’s “RRSS” (Social Networks). This collection of work was most exciting and terribly relevant, as it showed acrylic renderings of past artists as if they lived in our social media-ridden world. Ingres (2017) shows a Facebook profile of Dominique Ingres with Grand Odalisque as his cover photo, and presses the question: What would it be like if these artists lived in our time?

    Teresa Solar Abboud, Untitled, 2017, detail photography from her “Ground Control” solo show at Galeria Joan Prats in Barcelona
    Joan Prats Gallery: Crushed by pressure, over the ceramic- Texas sky, 2017 (detail)

    Other notable off-the-beaten-path galleries include Galeria Senda, Hans & Fritz Contemporary and alternative space Untitled BCN. I was also lucky enough to wander into independent film space Crater Lab, which was hosting “Dones que donen… la llum…a l’ombra” (“Women who give birth …the light…the shadow”), a showcase of experimental artist and poet Rrose Present and a series of shorts she curated.

    Victor Lope: Ana Riaño, Ingres, 2017

    Admittedly, my favorite stop in Barcelona wasn’t terribly underground at all, but still, it wasn’t terribly obvious either. The oft-overlooked Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) hosted an impressive permanent collection along with a thought-provoking exhibit by Akram Zaatari titled “Against Photography, an Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation.” The huge collection displayed the archives of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, Lebanon and addressed radical questions about photography, images and documentation itself. The permanent collection was certainly worth devoting an entire day to. I accidentally wandered across the courtyard into Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, where I explored their mostly empty exhibition space, and eventually stumbled downstairs to a poetry slam competition.

    Akram Zaatari, Objects of Study / Studio Shehrazade—Reception Space, 2006

    MACBA was, without a doubt, my favorite stop in Barcelona, not only because of what the museum housed, but also because of the atmosphere outside. The exterior serves as an impromptu skate park for El Ravel, and hundreds of pros along with amateurs can be seen grinding the rails of the museum during the weekend. Given the prevalence of cafes near the museum, there’s nothing more pleasurable than sipping a sangria and eating a meringue as large as a watermelon while watching the locals express themselves outside of Barcelona’s greatest art house.

  • Living Larger: Lauren Greenfield

    Living Larger: Lauren Greenfield

    In the earliest days of his unlikely, unfortunate campaign for president, billionaire Donald Trump declared in 2015: “Sadly, the American dream is dead,” adding special emphasis on the last word, delivering the bad news like a judge slamming down a gavel. As in many things uttered by our gilded president, the truth lies somewhere in the opposite direction, with Americans still grasping for greater wealth or at least the illusion of prosperity. If anything, the American dream has only grown larger and more frantic the last quarter-century, and photographer Lauren Greenfield has been there to document the wild cultural shifts.

    For many of those captured in the pictures of her “Generation Wealth”—both a career-spanning book and an exhibition at the Annenberg Space for Photography—conspicuous consumption is a lifestyle and a religion. What was once considered crass in these United States is now understood in the era of Trump and Keeping Up with the Kardashians as a sign of winning. Without flash and some glistening bling, you are simply a loser.

    The exhibit begins with an image at the beach, and the same picture that was the cover of Greenfield’s 1997 book on modern youth, Fast Forward: young people are cruising in convertibles by the boardwalk in Santa Monica, carefree and affluent, vibrant bodies on display. It’s a classic Southern Californian scene, and the distance between the classes is less profound here.

    Crenshaw High School girls…Culver City, California, 2001

    In other pictures, we meet adolescents with deep-pocket parents: a 13-year-old boy on the dance floor of an extravagant Bar Mitzvah at the Whisky a Go Go, leaning a little too close to a dancer’s prominent breasts; a girl at a July 4th pool party just days after her nose job sits peacefully with family, bandages covering the center of her face. In most cases here, people are thrilled to see the camera pointed at them, to strut their threads, their new faces and piles of cash.

    The American upper classes have been documented before, including by the likes of Tina Barney, whose large pictures (often of her own well-off family members on the East Coast) are like romantic paintings. Greenfield is also from an upscale background and attended the same Los Angeles private school as some of her subjects, but she’s more of a classic documentary photographer, where the environment is an essential part of the whole. Like the book, her Annenberg show takes an encyclopedic approach, collecting a mountain of compelling photojournalism—with a clear emphasis on the journalism. It’s that approach that led her to a smooth transition into documentary filmmaking, delivering meaningful content and storytelling for HBO and elsewhere in work that shows a still-photographer’s eye. In “Generation Wealth,” Greenfield spends as much time exploring the yearning and struggles of people who at least want to appear to be living large. There is the teen who has learned to fake the affluence of his classmates, desperately scrimping to purchase bits of Cartier and Dior; a homeless woman at 67 beams next to her imitation Louis Vuitton bag; and a 17-year-old dude in pinstriped zoot suit picks pick up his prom date in a limo in South Central LA.

    Photographer and former model Ilona in the mezzanine library of her home, Moscow, 2012

    One video screen presents the Greenfield short film Kids + Money, as adolescents grapple with issues of finance and image. One teenage boy spends $700 to $800 a month on clothes and says, “Hopefully, I can give up this addiction.” Later, a precocious 12-year-old girl has become aware what “Made in Indonesia” means in terms of child labor, and what it should mean to her as a shopper. “I feel guilty for a minute,” she says; then adds, “These jeans are amazing. I’m going to buy them anyway.”

    A side room at the Annenberg titled “Make It Rain” captures a scene of strippers and the flashy dudes who shower them with one-dollar bills, suggesting a level of performance on both sides of a very public transaction. The façade falls away in a large photograph of a nude stripper in stilettos on her knees clawing at a pile of singles on the floor.

    A wall dedicated to “The Cult of Celebrity” announces itself with a huge, startling image of 6-year-old pageant winner Eden Wood, already practiced in the look of beauty and utter insincerity, gleamingly blonde and blue-eyed, her tongue curled upward suggestively. Barely out of her toddler years and dressed in frilly pink, she’s commodified and corrupted for modest fame and fortune, on her way to temporary stardom on reality TV’s Toddlers and Tiaras.

    More lasting is the fame of Kim Kardashian, seen here in a 1992 picture as a 12-year-old girl at a Bel Air school dance, looking passively into the lens she will soon call home. She’s pampered but still far from becoming the ultimate consumer and narcissist she is today. (Her own book, Selfish, is 448 pages of selfies, starting with a cover showing her heaving breasts pressing toward the camera.) We also see her in an image from the more recent past, as the lucrative reality TV star stands serenely at the trunk of her car while surrounded by a pack of paparazzi (including a teenage boy).

    Most of the pictures in “Generation Wealth” are from the United States, with occasional trips overseas to include the common ailments of mass foreclosures and dehumanizing greed, casualties along the way to emulating the unreachable American dream. We see people in countries and regions with proud, rich cultures (Asia, Europe, the Middle East, etc.) that are centuries older than the United States, turning westward to emulate the manners, styles and excessive consumerism of the Great Satan, funded by debt and shaky loans even in the richest of countries.

    Lauren Greenfield, Russell Simmons, cofounder of Def Jam Recordings, and Brett Ratner, film director and producer, at L’Iguane restaurant, St. Barts, 1998

    It’s an unwinnable battle for most. In the U.S., the early postwar years were a time of shared affluence, with unprecedented access to comfort and education in a swelling middle class, at least for families headed by white males. There was a new wave of home ownership and college degrees through the GI Bill. But by 2017, the executive class had left the working classes way behind. The disparity in compensation between top CEOs and workers is now 347 to 1—nearly six times the ratio in the Reagan ’80s. The resulting stress on the common American dreamer is easily charted through Greenfield’s work.

    The morning after the crashes has been devastating internationally, with neighborhoods of foreclosed homes abandoned to the elements, and the broken people forced to leave their dreams behind. One notable exception shown by Greenfield is the Iceland fisherman-turned-banker who happily returned to working on a trawler at sea after the economy turned nasty. He is among the few heroes in “Generation Wealth.”

    The style and point of view in these pictures and video content is consistent through the years, seamlessly moving from slide film to digital, from the early ’90s to now. But Greenfield’s work reached a new level of empathy with Thin, a 2006 film and photography essay that captured young women struggling with self-image and eating disorders, clouded by body dysmorphia and endless media depictions of perfection. It’s an ailment that transcends class, but not everyone can afford a solution. The exhibition includes a section called, “New Aging,” examining the horrors of plastic surgery, the pain and abuse it requires for a chance at approximating youth. (It is, after all, surgery.)

    Lauren Greenfield, Jackie and friends with Versace handbags at a private opening
    at the Versace store, Beverly Hills, California, 2007

    The Annenberg show is sensory overload, with nearly 200 pictures and an infinite loop of video footage and more stills on a variety of high-tech screens. An accompanying exhibition across town at the Fahey/Klein Gallery is much more selective, offering a smaller show with an eye toward identifying single images that stand alone—not just as journalism but photography as collectable art.

    One photograph there presents a row of fashion models backstage at a 2009 Prada show standing utterly blank and mannequin-like, looking as strange as a scene from David Lynch. There’s also an extreme close-up of a Jesus medallion, which has jewels for eyes and a crown of thorns transformed from a symbol of holy sacrifice into yet another layer of bling. The look of shock frozen on his golden face seems entirely appropriate.

    ©Lauren Greenfield. All photos ©Lauren Greenfield, from the exhibition “Generation Wealth,” courtesy the Annenberg Space for Photography.

    Generation Wealth by Lauren Greenfield at Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, runs through August 13, 2017; annenbergphotospace.org

  • Summer of Love Redux

    Summer of Love Redux

    When I moved to San Francisco to begin college nearly a decade ago, the refrain from Scott McKenzie’s 1967 hippie anthem “San Francisco” rang through my ears, beckoning me to the city by the bay with dreams of “flowers in my hair,” but I quickly learned that much had changed since the late 1960s. So I was curious to visit the “Summer of Love” exhibit at de Young museum, nestled in Golden Gate Park, birthplace of “the hippie.”

    Victor Moscoso, Pablo Ferro film advertisement, 1967. Color offset lithograph “animated” poster. Haight Street Art Center. © Victor Moscoso Image Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

    The show promises a trip down memory lane for baby boomers, and a showcase celebrating the art and aesthetics of the San Francisco counterculture of 1967—exactly 50 years later. The exhibition is curated by Jill D’Alessandro and Colleen Terry of the Achenbach Foundation of Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, with contributions by Julian Cox, chief curator of photography at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

    The viewer is taken on a journey through the ideals and history of the hippie movement with over 400 artifacts presenting the music, fashion, poetry, poster art, light art, film and photography of the time. Psychedelic posters and mock  school certificates crafted by Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters ask, “Can You Pass the Acid Test?” Mannequins carefully poised throughout the show adorn handmade outfits that demonstrate how every aspect of life in this time period provided opportunities for exploration of the self and innovations for society at large.

    Embroidered hospital scrub top, ca. 1968. Cotton plain weave with cotton embroidery (bullion knots, encroaching satin, fly, running, and satin stitches). Collection of Arthur Leeper and Cynthia Shaver Image Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

    A canon of symbols emerges from the art, ripe with sexual innuendos, nudity, depictions of Earth’s elements, and scenes from the American West. Much of the art was steeped in Native American culture, along with patterns and colors drawn from South American and Eastern cultures—all framed against a psychedelic cacophony of neon colors, shapes and patterns, engaging the senses particularly heightened by LSD, THE drug of choice; strangely, there was a glaring absence of peace signs, flowers and paisleys.

    The self-proclaimed “Hippies of Haight” forged a sovereign state within the borders of San Francisco, ruled by their own social mores, run by a barter economy, and complete with its own language, fashion and public ceremonial rituals. The intricate, nearly illegible poster art displayed across the city held coded signs, sending messages that only those within the movement could comprehend.

    One poster created by Rick Griffin, of a Native American on a horse with guitar in hand, advertises 1967s historic “Human Be-in” at which a “Gathering of the Tribes” was intended to bring together the intellectual activists of Berkeley with the free-love Haight Hippies in one event. This intersection of the different subcultures of the late ’60s blooming in the Bay Area is fascinating and opens up many intriguing questions, which the exhibit fails to really answer.

    Elaine Mayes, “Couple with Child, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco,” 1968. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery. Image Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

    Outside the entrance to the de Young, mock street signs annotate intersections from the past to the present, including “Free Love” juxtaposed with “Marriage Equality,” “Hipster” with “Hippie” and “Civil Rights Movement” with “Black Lives Matter.” These seem to suggest that the hippie culture of 1967 largely paved the way for key aspects of modern society. The exhibition itself, however, lacks any real proof of these overarching claims, providing only one small room that speaks to the “activism” of the time—the Black Panthers, the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Lib—reduced to two or three posters each. To blanket these several movements within the hippie lifestyle seems misleading, omitting the nuances of the divided subcultures that bloomed across America in the late ’60s.

    While craft and creativity is evident, the exhibit left a bittersweet taste. After seven years as a San Francisco local, I am particularly sensitive to the gimmicky co-opting of the clothes and psychedelic art of the Haight Hippies to sell some cheesy sentiment of tripping out and being “groovy.” Walking down Haight Street today, head shops with neon colors painted on the wall selling shot glasses decorated with marijuana leaves are sad examples of this. A few short blocks over, you can visit “Hippie Hill” in Golden Gate Park, where the famous “Be-in” was held, and come face to face with the lingering reincarnation of this culture of runaways from 1967, in the form of packs of “gutter punks.”

    Ruth-Marion Baruch, “Hare Krishna Dance in Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury,” 1967. Gelatin silver print. Lumière Gallery, Atlanta, and Robert A. Yellowlees. Courtesy Special Collections, University Library, University of California Santa Cruz. Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch Photographs Image Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

    The hippie era is purported to be a major influence on Silicon Valley and the culture revolution of tech. Many burgeoning tech companies use the language of connectedness, using hippie ideals to justify their rapid expansion and disregard for labor regulations. The Haight Hippies would be sickened to think that they planted the seeds for the new corporate revolution of apps and startups, which deregulate labor, displace communities and feed into the widening and devastating wealth divide in our country. That the counterculture celebrated in the “Summer of Love” exhibit could not survive, let alone thrive in San Francisco today, is an irony not lost on us millennials—those of us who came to this city inspired by the very ideals and creations of that period. While it was a nostalgic enjoyable trip to a beautiful burst in time, I am reminded that the next birth of a powerful revolution like the Haight Hippies will happen anywhere but San Francisco.

    The Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion, and Rock & Roll, at de Young in San Francisco, runs through August 20, 2017, deyoung.famsf.org

  • Reykjavík in LA

    Reykjavík in LA

    The Reykjavík Festival at Walt Disney Concert Hall presents an opportunity to experience a site-specific installation by Icelandic artist Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir and a film by fellow Icelander Xárene Eskandar. The Festival brings up a larger question of cultural specificity amidst the ever-expanding waves of globalism, and whether it is possible to understand and integrate the kind of cultural differences presented in this kind of exchange, rather than simply marking them off as expressions of a culture more exotic than our own.

    Arnardóttir’s Nervescape VI (2017) hangs above the BP Hall like an ornate and colorful set of boas, frozen in place, as if tossed upward from the floor below. The bright, nearly fluorescent colors of the artificial hair strands from which the individual links have been fashioned stand in counterpoint to the warm, wood surfaces of the surrounding walls. The variety of colors is either thrilling or disturbing, and may be a little of both. Impromptu stage and viewing platforms are similarly bedecked, appearing soft and amorphous, flocked with thick patterns of this hair-like material.

    Arnardóttir, who lives in New York and Iceland, explores the use and symbolic nature of hair and the hair-like. Better known as Shoplifter, her transformation from her given name (which translates as Raven Battle Daughter of Eagle) occurred when someone, attempting to pronounce Hrafnhildur, asked if it was Shoplifter. Conceding, she even adopted the American preference for nicknames; she became Shopi.

    Still from Xárene Eskandar’s Driving at the speed of the Nordic sun, 2014.

    On opening night, the Icelandic group amiina played live musical accompaniment to Fantômas (1913-14), the black-and-white French silent film series directed by Louis Feuillade. Standing with their feet thoroughly embedded in Shoplifter’s colorful patterns, the band performed on a mix of traditional string quartet instruments—violin, viola, cello—and saws, kalimba, music boxes, percussion and electronics, which seemed to mirror the visual antimonies that filled the auditorium. Shoplifter’s rich decorative flourishes run countercurrent to the sleek subdued context of Gehry’s architecture; that tension made the relationship between the music, the installation and the site all the more captivating. Shoplifter’s use of humor and her coloristic overstatement obliquely address how identity is established. It is inevitable for anyone from sunny California to think about the origin of this artist in a land in which there are so many monochromatic stretches of land under what must, at times, look like an astoundingly luminous sky.

    Xárene Eskandar, who divides her time between Los Angeles and Reykjavik, utilizes video and photography to explore how changes in temporal and spatial modes alter the perception of one’s body. Her single-take four-hour film, Driving at the speed of the Nordic sun (2014), even more overtly references Iceland’s austere landscape. Focusing on the changing horizon on December 11, 2014 from sunrise to sunset (a very brief duration of just four and a half hours), she intently explores the shifting of bodily self-perception that charts her own movement back-and-forth between this far northern location and Southern California. It is a site-specific film possible only in one location in Iceland, limited to a brief window of time. Eskandar spent considerable effort in determining when the extended single-take could be filmed without the interference of clouds or darkness to disrupt the shot.

    Hrafnhildur Arnar­dóttir, Nervescape VI, 2017.

    Her intent is to relay how one’s perception of self is indelibly linked to one’s incremental understanding of one’s own shadow, and how the radical shifts of a person’s geophysical configurations register that change. The film’s soundtrack samples a six-second segment from composer and Reykjavik Festival organizer Daníel Bjarnason’s Emergence 1. Silence, from Over Light Earth (2013); it is stretched into various lengths, creating new sound qualities and accompanying the film as it traverses the vast atmospheric-panoramic landscape, in its slow but significant changes. The almost monochromatic film sequence tracks along lines of frozen ice and sparsely occupied roadways. Tufts of wind-borne snow drift in and out of view while there are glimpses of an occasional truck or car being passed, and some signage whisks by very quickly.

    Hrafnhildur’s story of renaming herself is an apt metaphor for how the differences these artists bring to LA can both be partially leveled and yet maintain the hallmarks of their otherness. Her extended moniker, and all of her a.k.a.’s, engage both strands of the culture-span that she (and Eskandar) inhabit and explore. Both sets of meaning remain at play, and they are not entirely subverted by the kind of permanent renaming that occurred at Ellis Island. Likewise, in these artworks, vestiges of the differences remain visible, encouraging the viewer to consider and straddle the divide.

  • UNDER THE RADAR: Gary Panter

    UNDER THE RADAR: Gary Panter

    Gary Panter wears many hats—visionary punk cartoonist, Emmy-award winning designer for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, psychedelic lightshow revivalist, cutting-edge graphic designer, experimental musician, candlestick maker. Having dazzled the comic art world with his elaborate and sumptuous freeform adaptations of Dante (2004’s Jimbo in Purgatory and 2006’s Jimbo’s Inferno), Panter has just released a final, tangential volume—Songy of Paradise, based on John Milton’s 1671 Paradise Regained.

    DOUG HARVEY: Can you give a bit of a rundown on your upbringing and relationship to Christianity?
    GARY PANTER: I was born in 1950 in Durant, Oklahoma. My father was [a member of the] Church of Christ which considers itself the only true church with a literal reading of the King James version of the Bible. We were lower class people who went to church three times a week and had Sunday school, Wednesday night bible class and singing. The church forbade imagery in worship, musical instruments in worship and orbit dancing and frolicking in general. I was a Christian missionary to Belfast in the summer of 1969—bringing Christ to the Irish religious war. Many things about it bothered me and it took a while to get over, if I did.

    Do you consider yourself a Christian now?
    I am not part of the cult of Jesus. And I am not a fan of organized religion. I am superstitious to an extent. I was raised to try to obey and conform with the end in mind of getting to a better place with the right ritual and magic words, which generally makes no sense. And also the idea that this place is a horrible torturous test seems ungrateful to the gift of some kind of existence—and not digging this one, why would you trust the god to give you an untricky one next? I just have to dig this one as much as possible and not seek THE ANSWER. Interesting questions are enough.

    So, having spent so much time adapting Dante, why move on to the next biggest Christian cosmologist with Milton?
    I felt like I had to do some kind of Paradise to finish the trilogy, but I built a lot of Dante’s paradise into Jimbo In Purgatory. I did reference lighting and motifs from Dante’s Paradise in this Milton comic as a background thing.

    I got a research residency at the New York Public Library. I applied to study Milton and Paradise Regained specifically. It was an amazing situation to have access to manuscripts and an office to read books in. I didn’t know so much about Milton—and maybe I still don’t—but I got the idea from reading a lot of academic writing that Milton was a self-justifying religious pilgrim who found arguments for each change or shedding of skin on his spiritual journey, and he got in a lot of trouble.

    What were you trying for formally in SoP? I notice that there are a lot of full-page layouts.
    The further I went in the Milton story and in my Milton studies vs. the few verses in the Bible [covering the same story—Satan tempting Jesus in the desert with wealth, power and cheese logs], the less panels seemed required. The action is very limited and the text, aside from the moral teeter-totter quiz, is a show of what Milton knew— texts, places, scholars, kings, myths, and it was not interesting to try to draw everything he mentions.

    Can you break down the technical aspects of your comic art in general, and SoP in particular?
    I work with archaic simple tools. No computer. I use use dip nibs made by Deleter in Japan—the G series. I work on 3-ply Strathmore kid finish bristol drawing paper, though the paper today has more pores and is more problematic than in the past. Pelikan tusche is what I like to ink with—I sometimes leave the cap off to thicken the ink, but you can overdo that. Drawing with these tools makes the work look old-time. Maybe from the early 1800s.


    I draw panel boxes with long narrow blunt-tipped striking brushes. The pencils are very tight, drawn and erased over and over and then trying to be better laying down the ink line. I try to never use wite-out and sometimes cut mistakes off the surface with a sharp blade. And I leave a lot of mistakes and try to not make them, but I am not a perfectionist. I want to get the idea across and go on to the next project.

    A lot of literary comic art seems very much contained in the traditional textual literary culture. Would it be right to say that you see narrative, character, dialogue, etc.,  from more of a painter’s perspective?
    A lot of the comics I have done are formalist procedural strategies that I am exploring or playing out, which sometimes makes for unreadable comics. So it’s good to also do comics like this one that also try to entertain while following some rules to produce them. Larry Poons used systems to arrange the dots on his early ’60s work—that made an impression on me. And also the ever-transforming work of Paolozzi and Fahlstrom. So those are models out of fine art for my comics.

    Comics are different from paintings typically because they are trying to trap your attention for a while and take you on a little trip and maybe make some aphoristic point or joke. Painting is more of a shorter, arrested, indeterminate moment. A painting is a mood-influencing experience. The history of painting seeps in and the formalism of making and the abstract view and the processing of figuration if there is any, so painting doesn’t seem as linear to me. Though one can take strategies and apply them however you want.

    And candle making

    And what about Pee-Wee?
    It was a childhood dream come true, but Hollywood is not my thing. I don’t want to make movies or TV, just handcrafts. Making a lot of candles for the past six months! I love making them.

  • 2017 California-Pacific Triennial

    2017 California-Pacific Triennial

    “Building As Ever,” the 2017 California-Pacific Triennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, investigates the economic, political and social forces that affect the built environment. Themes of gentrification and dislocation, meditations about home and displacement, and discursive considerations of architecture emerge in works from 25 contributors, who live and work in 11 countries along the Pacific Rim. Many of the exhibitors are trained architects, and the contributions blur distinctions between art and architecture.

    Estudio Teddy Cruz + Forman, the political/architectural practice of architect Teddy Cruz and political theorist Fonna Forman, produced Mecalux Retro-fit: Framework for Incremental Housing (all works 2017).  Adapted from industrial shelving produced in a maquiladora in Tijuana, Mexico, Retro-fit is a small-scale, flexible structure that can function in a variety of uses, including housing. ETC+F position Retro-fit as a low-cost solution for the bedroom communities of Tijuana that house Mecalux’s workforce.

    Displacement figures in The Community/The Museu, a series of photographs, DVDs and didactics from Nancy Popp, in which she documents the struggles of the Rio de Janeiro community of Vila Autódromo to resist eviction in advance of the 2016 Summer Olympics. Also addressing displacement and discrimination in Southern California, Pilar Quinteros’ China House Great Journey documents a durational performance with a video projection and wood model.

    Michele Asselin, Clubhouse Turn – Composition 2 (Dave; North End Bench; Horsemen’s Lounge Wallpaper; Sandra; Phone List; Media Room), 2013 – 16. Five archival pigment prints with artist’s frame. 38 x 106.5 in. Courtesy of the artist and OCMA.
    Michele Asselin, Clubhouse Turn – Composition 8 (Samuel; Saul; Playing Cards; Exit to Grandstands; Iggy Puglisi), 2013 – 16. Five archival pigment prints with artist’s frame. 38 x 99 in. Courtesy of the artist and OCMA.

    Other projects explore similar territory. Alex Slade’s photographs identify building projects in Los Angeles produced by an influx of foreign capital. Michele Asselin’s elegiac portraits of the defunct Hollywood Park recall Roland Barthes’ assertion of photography’s memorializing function. Haegue Yang’s An Opaque Wind—Humbled Gray #2, a sculptural assemblage of ubiquitous materials, addresses the endless building cycle, and the digital prints and video installation series the story of my early life by another mountainman (Stanley Wong) document abandoned spaces in Hong Kong.

    Beatriz Cortez, The Lakota Porch: A Time Traveler, 2017. Welded steel, sheet metal. 144 x 192 x 96 in. Courtesy of the artist and OCMA.

    Home seems transcendent in Lakota Porch: A Time Traveler, Beatriz Cortez’ magnificent life-size welded steel and sheet metal reconstruction of craftsman vernacular porch. The materiality and craft in Cortez’ work finds echoes with Trong Gia Nguyen’s reproductions of French colonial architecture window grates from Vietnam and Cybele Lyle’s meditative wood plank, sound and video installation.

    Trong Gia Nguyen, Double Rainbow, 2017. Oil on wood. 46.5 x 46.5 in. Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Quynh, Ho Chi Minh City, and OCMA.

    Nguyen’s oil pastel and photo-collage works embody personal memories attached to home. This reminiscing about place comes fully into play in Patricia Fernández’ installation And Still (facing north), and other works, that include photos, watercolors and ephemera; they represent a history, to which Fernández is inextricably linked through her father, of the exile Spanish printing press Ruedo Iberico, during Franco’s regime.

    Patricia Fernández, And Still (facing north), 2017. Beechwood staircase with aluminum poles, porcelain, Ruedo Ibérico books, French newspaper, stamp, photographs, and watercolor drawings. 108 x 66 in. Courtesy of the artist and OCMA.

    Yuki Kimura’s installation, Wardrobe Extensions (Version 3), similarly represents objects as personal touchstones. Olga Koumoundouros moves this idea into the realm of institutional memory as oral history, with her installation, Neither Liquid Nor Solid But Amorphous; differently ordered bodies flow under large stresses, creep or remain stationary under smaller stresses, and have complex, history-dependent behavior. 1 (2017), which is a kind of memorial for a janitor who passed away on the museum’s premises.

    Yuki Kimura, Wardrobe Extensions (Version 3), 2017. Site-specific installation. Three reclaimed wardrobes, 35mm color slides, projector, DVD, monitor, framed C-prints, mirror, glass, metal, and benches. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, and OCMA.

    Lead Pencil Studio (architects Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo) addresses land use and transportation systems with Void Promise: Last Tract A and Void Promise: Last Tract B. Each piece is a set of six lead crystal blocks etched with scale models of Southern California parking lots. While the medium evokes wealth and exclusivity, these exquisite landscapes conjure thoughts of heat islands, pollution, traffic congestion and consumer culture. Less convincing, LPS’s works on paper could depict locales ranging from Northern California to British Columbia; juxtaposed with the etched lots, they seem fictitious and anonymous. Contrasted with the luxury of the lead crystal, Carmen Argote’s fabric murals that respond to artworks previously exhibited at OCMA, and which through the course of the exhibit will be turned into clothing that museum visitors may try on, offer art as interactive and accessible.

    Lead Pencil Studio, Void Promise: Last Tract A and Void Promise: Last Tract B, installation view, 2017, ©Lead Pencil Studio, photo by Chris Bliss, courtesy of the artists and OCMA

    In OCMA Senior Curator Cassandra Coblentz’ exhibition essay, she invites readers to reconsider the permanence ascribed to architecture. Discussing the museum’s original design, location, construction and renovations, she sets the stage to evaluate its suitability. Her writing functions on one level as a meta-narrative of the museum’s own aspirations for growth. Its plan to sell its campus—to a luxury condo developer—in order to relocate, beyond provoking considerations of the museum’s mutability, also invite critique of the implicit link between the museum’s future plans and real estate speculation.

    Cesar Cornejo, Raizing, installation view, 2017, ©Cesar Cornejo, courtesy of the artist and OCMA

    Cesar Cornejo’s sculptural /architectural model Raizing appears to respond directly to this idea. Built from plywood and acrylic scavenged from museum storage, it could be a model of the site’s future as a luxury high rise. By opening a previously blacked-out window that looks into the gallery, Cornejo literally and figuratively invites transparency. Also in this mix, Cedric Bomford’s sheathed construction scaffold, The Embassy or Under a Flag of Convenience, outside one of the galleries, projects a work-in-progress aura. Though it offers different vantages of the museum as a site, meant to invoke considerations of redevelopment, materially, it’s a let-down, given the range and complexity of projects for which he is known.

    The most sobering political note is struck by Ken Ehrlich’s laser-cut archival photographs that document the double history of an American scholar of Persian architecture, Donald Wilber, who was instrumental in organizing the CIA-sponsored coup against Mossadegh.

    Santiago Borja, This is Architecture, 2017. Site-specific installation. Cut cement, dirt, woodblocks, and xylographic prints. Dimensions variable (approx. 3 x 6 ft.). Courtesy of the artist and OCMA.

    Among the more speculative works in the show, Santiago Borja’s This is Architecture reads as a grave cut into the museum floor. It references a 1910 Adolf Loos text on the symbolic nature of architecture. It also can be read as institutional critique. Ronald Morán’s thread construction and drawings overlaid on photos of modernist architecture (Intangible Dialogues 1-21) throw architecture into the realm of pure thought.

    Leyla Cárdenas, OCMA Stratigraphy, 2017. Site-specific intervention. Peeled paint from walls of the museum, steel, dirt from under the museum, marine deposits (Late Pleistocene). Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist, Galeria Casas Riegner, and OCMA.

    The museum is even more explicitly the subject in Leyla Cárdenas’ OCMA Stratigraphy, which suggests an incursion of a rammed earth wall into its interior. Built with sediment layers mined from soil underneath the museum dating to the late Pleistocene, it creates an illusion, as if the Earth were subsuming the body of the museum itself. Cárdenas casts the idea of a museum’s permanence—and culture, with it—into the cauldron of geological time.

    Imprint, Bryony Roberts’ resin cast of the museum’s corrugated concrete exterior, suggests a death mask. Renee Lotenero’s installation, Stucco vs. Stone, is a riot of photos, depicting portions of buildings, mixed with broken concrete to convey a sense of ruin. Thoughts of ruin take comedic turn with Wang Wei’s Slipping Mural, which imagines the mosaic from the Aldabra Tortoise enclosure of the Beijing zoo sliding off the wall in one piece.

    Performance art collective Super Critical Mass (Julian Day and Luke Jaaniste) introduce a light-hearted tactile, audience-activated, sonic installation in Common Ground, where you can kick cups and saucers across the floor and listen to them skitter in the unnatural silence of the museum.

  • Guest Lecture: Lynda Burdick

    Guest Lecture: Lynda Burdick

    Lynda Burdick is Artillery’s staff photographer. On her frequent visits to art openings, she often encounters dogs as well as gallerygoers. Rosamund Felsen of the eponymous gallery has been quoted as saying that dogs are usually better behaved than the children who accompany their parents to openings. Can it be true? Has the art world really gone to the dogs? Here is a sampling of the furry beasts of the Los Angeles art scene. See if you spot your cultured canine friend seen at our local galleries.

  • ART BRIEF

    ART BRIEF

    Sometimes legislation in Sacramento is rushed through with unintended consequences, an unfortunate example being a newly expanded law posing problems for art dealers. This 2016 amendment to California Civil Code Section 1739.7 was intended to broaden a law that provided sports memorabilia collectors protections from unscrupulous dealers who sold supposedly “autographed” items that often turned out to be phony. The recent amendment was intended to bring under the law’s protections buyers of collectibles from dealers in entertainment memorabilia, also subject to widespread fraud. However, the text of the amendment, in effect since January 1, 2017, was not limited to sports and entertainment memorabilia, making its draconian provisions applicable to art dealers, book dealers and vendors of other collectibles.   

    The sponsor of the amendment to the law, former Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang, maintained it was only meant to apply to sports and entertainment dealers, but while her intentions may have been the best, the amendment—enacted without a public hearing—places an unnecessary burden on California art dealers.  

    The provisions of Civil Code 1739.7 are problematic at best. The statute requires that a dealer of any collectible available for sale over $5 who markets it as signed must warrant in writing that the autograph is authentic, indicate if the item was signed in the dealer’s presence, and, if not, provide the name and address of the third party the dealer obtained the item from (a possible invasion of privacy). The statute provides for a harsh civil penalty of 10 times the actual damages suffered by a buyer who fails to receive a certificate of authenticity or who receives a false certificate.

    There are numerous reasons why this new law should not be applied to fine art transactions: The lawmakers disregarded the fact that: 1) Fine art sales rest upon the authenticity of the artwork itself—the artist’s signature is a secondary factor; 2) Buyers and sellers often rely on experts and artistic foundation boards to authenticate artworks, not necessarily the dealer handling the transaction; and 3) The law’s requirement of a certificate of authenticity is unnecessary. The Uniform Commercial Code, Section 2-313 already creates an express warranty for the seller of goods, including fine art, and express warranties are often part of fine art sales contracts anyway.     

    The law’s requirement regarding disclosure of third parties names and addresses is anathema to the art world in which many sellers demand privacy whether selling at auction or in the secondary market.

    To make matters worse, it’s not even clear whether the law applies to out-of-state sellers of signed artworks or books who sell to California collectors. Several East Coast rare booksellers and publishers of signed limited editions have publically refused to ship signed items to California since they don’t want to provide the onerous warranty provided by the California statute. This law may further disadvantage the California art auction business, already reeling from the burden of the California Resale Royalty Act.

    I mentioned the new law to a few Los Angeles dealers and none knew anything about it. I have found that California art dealers are at least generally aware of the provisions of the Farr Act, Civil Code Section 1740, which has been on the books for decades and which requires that a buyer of an art multiple, such as a lithograph, must be provided with a certificate of authenticity indicating the number of prints in each limited edition and the process used to produce the print. The Farr Act, which provides for penalties against a print dealer who fails to provide a certificate, is a necessary law and was enacted to crack down on scams in the print business such as the sale of purportedly “signed limited edition” prints by Salvador Dali who was paid to autograph thousands of pages of blank lithographic paper.

    When it comes to paintings, sculptures and drawings, the good news is that Civil Code 1739.7 contains a loophole for art dealers. A certificate of authenticity under this law is only required if the dealer markets the work as autographed. The absence or presence of a signature may not even be determinative of authenticity of an artwork. Therefore the statute gives art dealers an added incentive not to describe works of art as signed when marketing them for sale, since an artist’s signature may not be material to the artwork’s value.

    Relief for art and book dealers is on the way. Earlier this year California Assemblyman Todd Gloria introduced a bill to amend 1739.7. The bill, AB 228, would limit the statute to apply only to sports and entertainment memorabilia dealers as originally intended. It would raise the minimum value threshold to $50. The amendment would also require that dealers maintain a record of the name and address of the third-party sellers and disclose such information only in discovery in court action brought to enforce the law. The bill would eliminate the onerous penalty of 10 times actual damages, instead imposing civil penalties for failure to provide an express warranty or for providing a false warranty. It also makes dealers responsible for attorney’s fees and costs of aggrieved buyers who prevail in their lawsuits.

    The prospects look good for a version of AB 228 to be enacted sometime this year and I would urge art dealers to organize in support of it.