Fragmentary castoffs and debris from the LA River texturize Jennifer West’s current show, “Future Forgetting,” whose title was inspired by Norman Klein’s 1997 book The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, a treatise on how Los Angeles perpetually constructs and demolishes infrastructure and myths. The dim installation is suffused with a reflective, slightly surreal ambience. On one large wall is projected 6th Street Bridge Film (frame pictured above, all works 2020), a scratchy 16mm film constantly punctuated by spots, discolorations, and other interference caused by the artist having performatively dragged the film through the LA River. Faintly apprehensible behind the interference is footage of Angelenos sentimentally bidding farewell to the Sixth Street Bridge, which at the time of West’s filming in 2016 was soon to be demolished. Her intentional damaging of the film three years later betokens the bridge’s destruction as well as the gradual disintegration of memory. On the floor nearby is a video installation, Archaeology of Smashed Flatscreen Televisions Thrown off Bridges, comprising nine flatscreen televisions overlaid with tiny shards of flotsam that West collected during walks at Arroyo Seco Confluence. Inspired by TVs she encountered shattered in the riverbed, this layering of objects and moving images conveys a dreamlike sense of motion and displacement, like swimming through somebody else’s daydreams. But perhaps her most concise ode to preservation and erasure is a set of hand-blown glass jars filled with river water, filmstrips and objects found in the riverbed. Probably the water will ultimately destroy the encased items; but for now, they appear as treasures that could last forever.

JOAN
1206 Maple Avenue, Suite 715
Los Angeles, CA 90015
Show runs through Apr. 26
Gallery closed until further notice, but hoping to soon reopen by appt.