Showing up to gallery openings in Culver City promptly at 6 p.m. looks a lot like stumbling on the early bird special at your local Denny’s. It’s a quiet scene mostly made up of graying hair and Keds for comfort. This is the OG La Cienega crowd and they’re probably going to buy something tonight. At least this was the case at Honor Fraser’s opening of default which we attended on the early side last Saturday evening. 

Curated by Eden Phair, the artists in default utilize mass-produced objects, found images, video or basic computer software default settings as readymades, raising questions about the status of images and the concept of the unique art object in the broader culture. In other words, the show is heavily “new media” which made it that much more refreshing to see an older crowd genuinely interested. The image of Adam Parker Smith giving his walker-bound uncle a tour of Blowout featuring brightly hued dolphin-shaped balloons, jump ropes, and pool noodles will melt our hearts forever. 

Other artists in the show not seen guiding the elderly around included Trisha Baga, Morgan Canavan, Cheryl Donegan, Victoria Fu, Guthrie Lonergan, Miami-Dutch, Erin Jane Nelson, Jesse Stecklow and Mungo Thomson. All of Miami-Dutch’s members came out for the opening including twins André Lenox and Evan Lenox who still creepily insist on heavily coordinating their outfits to one another. An hour in and the crowd went on to include curator Edwin Romoran, Mike Vessel, Brandon Seckler, Michael Manning, Morgan Mandalay and Rickey Kim to name a few. 

Feeling full on video art we headed down the street to Anat Ebgi for the opening of “Quote Unquote” where we arrived just in time to hear artist Jason Bailer Losh in conversation with Amie Dicke about her work and manipulation of found images. In this new series of work, Dicke interrogates the language of visual culture through breaks, spaces and intervals of absence. She spoke about the way she often lays hundreds of images out on a table and arranges them until they make sense or can talk to one another.  The results of this are truly stunning and many of the same suspects that followed us down the street including Andrew Philip Cortes seemed to agree.

Being able to hear Dicke’s talk felt like our own little version of the early bird special paired with wine instead of half-priced country fried steak. We’ll take it!