The New Normal

We thought the world would end in fire, or possibly in ice. And now we know it can end with a virus. As a child growing up in Taiwan and then later in the US during the Cold War, I often imagined—and literally dreamed—how the world would end. Earthquakes and nuclear holocaust were my usual Apocalyptic scenarios. I did occasionally imagine a strange, contagious disease, but not one quite like COVID-19 where the entire world would be held hostage, so widespread and for so long.

Now as we slip back into public life, we realize that we have changed, and so has the world we return to. Many people will continue to work from home, in full or in part. Students have gotten trained in online classrooms. As someone who’s been teaching on Zoom, it’s clear that online education can’t match the real-life one, though it can certainly supplement it. Museums and galleries have run virtual exhibitions and presentations, and are now reopening at limited capacity. By the time this is published, they could be at increased or full capacity. However, in the past year programming has undergone a radical shift—with more, deserved attention paid to POC and women artists. The world we return to is not the world we left last March. How could it be? Which changes are to be enduring and systemic remains to be seen.

“Shattered Glass” show at Deitch Projects

Painting

Painting is coming back, and in a big way, but the painters being featured are not the ones highlighted in the past. There was the extraordinarily exciting “Shattered Glass” show at Deitch Projects, curated by Melahn Frierson and AJ Girard, with 40 POC artists, many of them young and emerging and based in California. I went on the closing day, and there were a couple hundred people there—the largest event I’d attended in a while. And what an energy, what a charge as the artists mixed happily with family and friends, old and new, mostly masked but not able to keep distances. Girard was giving tours, there was a fashion show, and lots and lots of photos were sent to Instagram.

There was also some excellent painting. La Piedra Negra by Vincent Valdez, was one that stopped you in your tracks: a very large painting of the head of a woman, resting sideways on a rock as if listening to something. Her background is a city on fire or perhaps an especially flaming sunset—hauntingly beautiful and not a little unsettling. There were paintings by the Finley brothers: Kohshin Finley’s monochromatically toned Marque and Tiffany shows a young couple in a quiet moment of tenderness, while Delfin Finley’s Rumination portrays the back of a young man with loops of colored ropes slung over his shoulders—a real tour de force of photorealist painting.

The two-woman show at L.A. Louver with Rebecca Campbell and Heather Gwen Martin was a good pairing, featuring two painters with dramatically divergent aesthetics. I thoroughly enjoyed the first show for Brooklyn-based abstract painter Patricia Treib at Overduin & Co.; her lyrical shapes are part Matisse cut-out and pure whimsy.

Sister Corita Kent’s studio in Hollywood

Comings and Goings

Galleries continue playing musical chairs. Luna Anaïs has moved from a downtown space to Tinflats in Frogtown—and launched with an opening party drawing a lively, multi-generational crowd for a show featuring Gloria Gem Sánchez and Tidawhitney Lek. Owner Anna Bagirov (full disclosure: Bagirov also helps Artillery with its marketing) is very happy with the bigger space, though it’s leased on a temporary basis, so who knows how long they will be there.

Von Lintel has made another move. They were in Culver City for years, then moved to DTLA, and on May 15 reopened in Bergamot Station with a show by Christiane Feser. “Sadly downtown has suffered immensely from the pandemic,” said Von Lintel via email. “Closed store fronts and countless homeless seem to dominate the scene. I decided that easy access and parking were important for this next post-COVID phase, all of which Bergamot Station in Santa Monica offers.”

Earlier that month, on May 1, I visited Bergamot for a group show opening at Craig Krull, and it was heartening to see how many people showed up. The reception was out in the parking lot, and it was like homecoming week, with lots of longtime-no-see greetings, and people announcing, “I’m fully vaxxed, too.” Even so, we mostly kept our masks on when not drinking.

In recent years Bergamot has been gutted by departures and the uncertainly of development. I recall that at one time there were two competing projects, one that included a hotel and other retail, but right now nothing seems to be underway. There are quite a few empty spaces, and it would be great if more galleries could find their way there.

Hauser & Wirth is adding yet another gallery to its well-feathered cap, with a second LA location. Their current spot in a former flour factory in DTLA is already an art destination, and now they’ve leased a new space at 8980 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood, scheduled to open fall 2022. The 10,800-square-foot space will be designed by Annabelle Selldorf of Selldorf Architects, designer of their DTLA location. And yes, there will be a restaurant.

Something that is not coming or going, but staying, is Sister Corita Kent’s studio in Hollywood, which she used for making her activist art and teaching from 1960 through ’68. It’s now in private hands, and the owners were planning to tear it down for a parking lot. (Hmm, remind you of a certain Joni Mitchell song?) On June 2, the LA City Council voted unanimously to approve the studio as a Historic-Cultural Monument, thus saving it from demolition. Eventually, the Corita Art Center, which started the petition to save the building, hopes that it can be made into a cultural center. It is plain, even drab, in appearance, but it is historical, and a very small percentage of sites related to women or POC have achieved Historic-Cultural Monument status. Kudos to the preservationists!

LA Art Show—coming soon!

Art Fairs Return

And they’re baaack! The LA Art Show had to back out of its usual January slot, but it has rescheduled itself into the LA Convention Center for July 29–August 1. They’re billing a “European Pavilion,” which I’m looking forward to seeing. https://www.laartshow.com/

The Felix Art Fair is also returning that same weekend, and to their old venue, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. This time they’re taking up only the first floor “cabanas” around the pool and focusing on just 29 Los Angeles galleries. Get your tickets early for this one—it’s always crowded. https://felixfair.com/