Edwin Ushiro at the Project Gallery

Edwin Ushiro “While the Tides Guide You Back Home”
ProjectgalleryLA.com

I chanced to stumble upon a fantastic show at Project gallery in Culver City a couple weekends ago. While it’s quite possible to get completely lost in the murmur of happenings within the Culver City arts scene, this show very much stands out. Ushiro is a young artist already possessing extreme technical prowess, and after he’s done pouring it into his works it’s nearly impossible to tell how they were created. Using some combination of drawing, digital coloring, printing, mounting, painting, antiquing and varnishing, the pieces achieve a strange translucent depth, creating a foggy window into the seemingly intangible. Some of the larger works achieve a complexity that initially feel almost abstract as the denizens of the paintings break into fractal muted tones, and swirling, tidal compositions.

Conceptually the works leave a bit to be desired for me, as the titles, which tend to read more like bad poetry, evoke a wretchedly sweet sentimentality. It’s obvious that the paintings are of old friends from Ushiro’s native Hawaii, done with the intent to create some sort of sensation of longing or time-invoked loss. Not knowing any of these people, and not giving much of a crap, the conceptual center of she show comes off completely emotional instead of even remotely conceptual. The whole show feels like some Hallmark card from your grandmother. I can only hope that at some point the well of old acquaintances and childhood memories runs dry for Ushiro and he’s forced to look some place else for inspiration.
--Snowflake

"In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor" at the Laguna Art Museum

After seeing the show twice at the Laguna Art Museum, but as a non-reader of Juxtapoz, I must say: I get it. The question remains: do I care?

See, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to think about a show that has over 150 artists in it, and yet still refuses to say anything terribly new, for fear of seeming to engage in the mainstream art conversation; that, it seems, would be selling out to the idea of being lowbrow. As a whole, it says a lot about what we as consumers covet: easily recognizable figures, marketable object images, surreal landscapes in which we can loosen ourselves from the adult body and return to the non-existent utopia of our collective childhood. Scat and scars and Godzilla and pop-eyed girls reign.

The statement for the show asserts that “there has been a huge, but unacknowledged art movement taking place in this country for the last 40 years” and the artists represented in the show are supposedly a collection of the shirked set. I’m baffled by the “unacknowledged” part, because even though I don’t read Juxtapoz, I am very familiar with most of the names on the show’s lineup.

I’m going to pose a factor: the reason I know a lot of these names might be because I have seen the artists show in a number of prominent galleries, but it more likely the fact that so many of them have a commercial element to their work. Take Gary Baseman for example. He collaborates with Harvey’s Seatbelt Bags to create an Artist Series of purses that ratchets the price tag up twofold for a sack with his images sewn or, recently, printed onto it.

But, when standing in front of his painting in the show, I couldn’t help but feel cheated. Canting my eyes slightly to the left, I compared his thinly painted canvas of bobble-headed figures with the superealistic painting of an ass-view of a cow with human in the distance. It wasn’t the photorealistic nature of the other painting that made it so much more interesting to me, but the skill with which it was executed.

But when I looked in the giftshop at LAM, I found not one reproduction of the ass-end-cow on a t-shirt or coffee cup. I DID find, however, a huge number of tchotchkes and doodads with other characters stripped from the paintings in the show. There’s a theme here: if you need a coaster with a low-brow image, you’ve got it. If you need a change purse with a funky figure floating on its surface, you’ve got it. If you need an action figure of your fave huge-eyed borg, you’ve got it. What you don’t have, however, is art.

And as I fingered through the mounds of commercial offerings, I chuckled at the dichotomy: do you want art, or do you want stuff? It seems that there is no room for the big questions that Mark Ryden, Seonna Hong, Date Farmers, The Clayton Brothers, Jim Houser and others were exploring. Their works seemed the least “lowbrow”, whatever that means.

But, it seems, there is plenty of room for the ubiquitous female borg with the balloon head and outsized eyes. This image is repeated to the point of absurdity across a number of artists’ canvases. Who is she; what does she represent? Is she the modern us, looking hugely full of information and commercial plastic junk, and yet still somehow perpetually surprised that she’s supremely unhappy? Is she that missing innocent childhood we’re supposedly nostalgic for? If so, tell her this for me: it never existed.

This is a show of dazzle and wow, of eye-popping images (often with popping eyes of their own), of impressive works representing a genre that is struggling to be dangerous and different. The viewer senses that struggle. And while they grapple with the images swirling before them, they might also consider saving up for that Baseman Seatbelt Bag which will set them back three hundred bones. Because if you can’t own a real piece of art, I guess you might as well settle for a piece of the lowbrow pie.
--The 925

Ground Us -- Huntington Beach Art Center

The pamphlet for this show says "Three large scale site-specific installations will amuse, engage and imagine a new and improved world." I will begin my critique here buy suggesting that these works were not "large" and they were by no means site-specific. Okay, they were pretty bigish, but, but by no stretch large--Serra is large!

I say not site-specific because all three of these works could be re-installed
elsewhere pretty much exactly like they were presented in these spaces so
that removes all aspects of site-specificity. And what is the direct object of amuse, engage, and imagine? Is the author of this statement saying that these three works will amuse, engage, and imagine a new and improved new world? Sorry, I don't get it.

That is where my negative critique of this exhibit ends. The performance of
P. Williams' "The Finishing Touch" is thought provoking and contemporary to
the minute. Yes, the work itself performs; in fact, it self-destructs. When the airplanes first start flying over this city made of garbage and cardboard one feels a sense of foreboding (a 9-11 type of nostalgia).

But then when the large building itself starts to move and subsequently begins to demolish the city, one is suddenly aware that the fear is not from above (from the other), but rather from within (from the self). Point taken, we have nothing to fear but ourselves. Great job P.

Lucrecia Troncoso's "Tree of Life..." is visually intriguing, technically sound, and large enough within this gallery space to captivate its viewers. I am afraid that it has been too long since I saw this show to speak overly intelligent about this work. And I don't want to simply try to respond to her statement in the brochure. However, I do remember enjoying the metaphor and environmental sensibility that this piece was trying to communicate. It engaged me so it must have been a successful piece.

Kiel Johnson's insanely intricate drawing "Survival Mode" is captivating in
a Schiele way. Again big enough for the space and the work definitely draws one in to his comical depictions of urbanity. Not really my style but still, amazing work.

So overall, other than the pamphlet author's poor introductory paragraph, this exhibit is worth a visit--especially now that P.'s piece is "finally finished" as the artist proclaimed at the conclusion of his work's performance.

--ART

Peter Saul, OCMA

Peter Saul, OCMA

Peter Saul currently has some large paintings very nicely arranged on some well-lit walls in Orange County. Who is this guy, and how did he manage to get a museum retrospective? These are questions that didn’t exactly plague me, but that I could by no means answer as I walked through the space. Large and beautifully colored, the paintings run the gamut of depiction from old popish cartoons to grotesque twisted forms vivisecting, chopping, conquering and converting each other. It’s difficult not to like a guy who paints heads being chopped off and liberally uses fluorescent paint, but his subject and color choices are far more sophisticated than merely testing the limits of the visible light spectrum. In the newer paintings he has traded the surface intrigue of his earlier works in oil for rhythmically daubed acrylic, building stylized, freakish humanoid forms in rich colors that seem to provide better than the usual color yield acrylic has to offer. He has weighed in on a variety of subjects, his illustrative approach creating a feel for the paintings that rests somewhere between editorial and satirical, whether it be cops fighting punks on a subway, or conquistadors doing their genocide thing.

Most telling for me perhaps is a quote on one of the placards from Saul himself: “It’s the intellectual dignity of modern art that upsets me, excites me to paint like I do.” There must be some sort of dignity someplace in a man to motivate him to invest so many years into so many large-scale works. With his fantastic proclamation, Saul seemingly attempts to separate himself from the rest of the art world at large, and indeed it’s easy to imagine that for a great many years his stylized, representational works were likely at odds with what everyone else was doing. But here he is, hanging in a museum, with the likes of Baldesarri and Burden across the hall, so he must not have been all that removed. In fact, he is at his best lampooning the established, accepted art stars, his “Francis Bacon Descending a Staircase” and not one of the larger works in the show, is possibly the best and most poignant piece that Saul has brought out of storage. At once a reference and an acknowledgement of Duchamp’s destruction of objective painting, which Saul is still sore about, and Francis Bacon who Saul apparently looked at a time or two. Pretty much says it all.

I also revisited the “Art since the 1960’s” show across the hall, While the first time I walked through the show a couple months ago, the show served mostly as a back drop to the Disorderly Conduct show, something to fill the space, and definitely not a destination in and of itself. It sat quietly and confidently in the corner, smug as it knew something that Disorderly Conduct didn’t. Seeing it again, reminded me how truly progressive art can be, and makes one long for the humor, insight, and challenge of other times. Sure, some of the work is almost 50 years old but it still feels as engaging as anything new. Ok, so it’s also pretty much just stuff from OCMA’s permanent collection and most of the works are second string, oddly arranged, and dusty at best, yet put together it adds up to create a representation of a community of individuals, however loosely linked, attempting to understand, document and affect their time. Which lets face it, is pretty cool.
--Snowflake

“In The Land of Retinal Delights, the Juztapoz Factor”

“In The Land of Retinal Delights, the Juztapoz Factor”
Laguna Art Museum

Before I roll up the sleeves and get the shovel, let me say that I thoroughly enjoyed the Juxtapoz show and I recommend it to everyone, artists and philistines alike. The work is a fun, accessible, not to mention gigantic formation of artists whose work and names will be familiar to anyone who has ever picked up a copy of Juxtapoz and indeed many that have not. It’s almost too much imagery to take in all at once and I suspect that there may be a lot I missed, what did manage to permeate the thickness of my skull was challenging and rewarding on many levels.

I think first we need to discuss the context of the work in Laguna. According to it’s own mythology, the lowbrow, underground, pop-surrealist, graffiti, punk art movement was born from the custom culture, counter culture, underground comic scene of 1960’s California, and has struggled ever since to get into the ivory towers of the established art world. You know the art world I’m speaking of right? Uptight, minimally or non-representational, overly conceptual, boring, stuffy, opaque, challenging, educated. It looks like they’ve finally managed to crash the party. With Juxtapoz (the magazine) as the nucleus, several of the older artists in the show and their friends have meticulously constructed an alternate art world all their own. This show feels a bit like a cross between a smorgasbord and a retrospective. But it’s far too soon for a retrospective, two thirds of the artists need to die off, and the surviving ones need to labor in obscurity for years while some ignorant, unskilled young upstarts overshadow their careers before we can even begin to figure out which of them were visionaries and which of them were imposters.

The other main problem I have with this show is the notion that all the art is part of some intentional movement. Yes, it is a snapshot of what is happening at the moment, yes it all fits into Baseman’s notion of “Pervasive Art” however in their rush to glorify the visual, there seems to be a lack of the conceptual, each artist laboring away with their own ideas (hopefully) with rarely an intersection between any two of them except the occasional referencing of the same pop culture sources. The pervasive part ends up feeling populist, swapping the clever for the cool, and critique for mass appeal. Someone wiser than me, when discussing the antics and repercussions of Duchamp and Warhol once said: “They did as much harm for art as they did good.”

I think that statement fits snuggly around the neck of Robert Williams and friends, while they have brought the promise or representational art back from the dead; it’s still missing something like a reanimated Frankenstein’s monster. A tiny quote on Jim Houser’s painting says it best: “This defines us, this flatness in the eyes.”

In this show, the heavy hitters, while easily recognizable, are not where the party is. Sure, Robert Williams and his old pals have some deservedly prominent space but their skills reveal their bluntness when hanging next to some of the fresher work. Sylvia Ji who is the artistic equivalent of a fetus knocks them dead while in contrast, a giant work by the Clayton Brothers, looks like everything you’ve ever seen them knockoff and makes you wonder why we ever cared. Mark Dean Veca’s “There is no spoon” (acrylic and ink on canvas) looks like acrid wall paper with pop culture images woven into the floral motif. Is it décor as art, or art as decor? It makes me wonder about the way that representational imagery is tied into everything, and how we mitigate and decide the value of each. In his piece, Veca poses questions that the rest of the artwork in the show seems up against: Are we offering new ideas and challenges, or merely creating trendy decoration? As we parody or pay tribute to pop culture, to old comic characters and sci-fi, do we bring any new meaning to the table or do we merely float along on nostalgia? If we reference crap-culture, do we risk becoming more of the same?

I’m just going to say this once and for all, I can’t stand the “work” of Shag, totally hate it! It’s boring, formulaic, and suffers from flatness visually, emotionally, and conceptually. His ingenuity and energy is obviously taxed in the marketing, and merchandizing aspect of his career, for there seems to be nothing left for the art. I hold him in the same regard as I do Thomas Kinkade: With wonder and amusement that he has managed to last this long, that there is someone out there culturally bankrupt enough to find the so called art interesting and worthy of adorning a set of beer coasters, matchbooks, mouse-pads, martini shakers or even the walls of a house, gallery or a museum.

One of the most interesting pieces for me was “Sleeping by day” by Ray Cesar. Born of what seems to be an entirely digital process, the giclee print of a girl with narrow Appalachian eyes is initially uninspiring but offers up a lot of questions. The piece blends in among the paintings, looking from a distance, a bit like the efforts of some uptight egg-tempera painter, but unlike painters which at some point have to reconcile their own abilities, Cesar has instead used a 3-D modeling program offering infinite focus, complete control of lighting, texture and opacity. He has managed to create a hyper-real fantasy world as convincing and eerie as anything I’ve seen in a movie theater. With such control at one’s disposal, it’s a wonder why more artists have not jumped on the digital bandwagon. More to his credit, I think it’s one of the only prints in the show that is a piece of art that no human hands need ever touch. While that fact might negate the importance of the piece hanging in Laguna for some viewers, considering the shameless promotion, capitalization and salesmanship of some of the other artists in the show, Ray Cesar comes off looking like the smartest guy in the room.

Up stairs from the Juxtapoz show is something that for me capped off the whole experience, it’s a relatively small piece with a relatively long name: “The miniature reproduction of the old Laguna Beach art gallery recreated by Margaret and Stanley Sheppard, with sculpted figures by Gail Hindman”. This was in an exhibition of miniature signed canvases by Laguna artists. How do I explain this thing? It’s basically a diorama of what was apparently the old Laguna Beach Art Gallery but looks more like a miniature Unabomber shanty complete with six-inch versions of some dead artists.(presumably) This is a lowbrow work of art of the highest order. Unapologetic and classically kitsch, it glorifies the early cultural pioneers of Orange County who unknowingly created the cradle/grave in which art in The O.C. has attempted to scratch its way out of, for so many years. The piece is a unique representation of the very Orange County art prejudice that the curators, purveyors, and patrons of the Juxtapoz show are trying to break, perched quietly above like a well-mannered monkey on a proverbial back. The tiny plein air painters of waves and hillsides, trapped behind glass in a miniscule purgatory might have a thing or two to tell the artists of the Juxtapoz show about the way the cutting edge inevitably ends up dull.
--Snowflake

Huntington Beach Art Center -- GROUND US

Huntington Beach Art Center
GROUND US
Artists:
Kiel Johnson
Lucrecia Troncoso
P.Williams

When I first arrived at the space I picked up the flyer with general information about the show, which included the three artist statements. On this flyer above the show title it read, "Three large scale site-specific installations will amuse, engage and imagine a new and improved world."
... a new and improved world??? Unfortunately for all living creatures on this planet, this work does not show us something new but forces us to see what we have already done to ourselves and the horrors that could come of it. Certainly to my eyes nothing I saw even remotely improves on our world. Of course we are already living part of this nightmare and these works force you to accept that reality.

I love the way the artist's all ignored the curators bullshit description that sounds like something that was used to sell the concept of the show to some bonehead who doesn't want the art at this once-great art center to offend anyone. If it's one thing that gets me worked up, it's the idea of a curator or gallery owner telling the artist what their work will be about. When did this idea start? If the idea and inspiration for the artist are provided by the curator, what is the artist? Then there's the "artist" who comes up with the idea but lets someone else make the work.
What? I'm confused. See I thought the artist was supposed to do both, but what do I know?

These three works are harsh warnings of what is going on and what's to come.

Troncoso’s, "The Tree of Life (antimicrobial)”, and “Breath" piece is half brilliant and half useless. First the brilliant. Troncoso made a tree out of cellulose cleaning sponges. She says we are all trying to remove ourselves as much as possible from our great-great-great grandfathers the microbes. To me her tree symbolizes a planet of man-made sterilized environments that suck any organic pleasures right out our asses.
Being the father of two daughters myself, I am completely aware of the tendency today to control all aspects of our children's lives. All danger must be avoided, no contact with anyone who has not been given CIA clearance and don't play on the street because we all know that's when the molesters and rapists will get you.

We are all so worried about not dying we forget to live. A huge part of what has shaped me as a person is the fact that as a kid I played almost every day on the streets of our block with a variety of other kids. We created our own games, made our own rules, picked our own teams and found ways to always challenge ourselves. Yea, we got into some trouble and got into fights, but we also learned how to deal with it without some parent in our face saying, "it's ok honey, everyone's a winner", and bullshit like that. My oldest daughter didn't do any of that and I doubt my younger one will either and that, I fear, will be too bad. I don't know why this tree made me think of all this but it did and that to me is good art.

The "Breath" part I don't get: a four and a half minute video of the same trees blowing in the wind. Well, real trees still exist, just go outside, however faux sponge trees are a new one on me. It seams a lot of artists just want to use video because they think it's still edgy. Maybe it still is, but if you’re going to show me a moving two dimensional image on some kind of screen it better be good, because now you’re competing with the billions of dollars spent making images using the same tools, that most of us then watch at least for some period of time daily.

Kiel Johnson's "Survival Mode" is bloody beautiful but a bit much. It is something like getting two steaks for dinner. It was a little overkill.
His world has roads that led nowhere or in circles with buildings built on top of one another until the whole thing becomes a huge surprise ball.
Chaos, where too much is still not enough. We are burying ourselves in our crap! On second thought maybe he wants you feel like you just ate two steak dinners and stopped by Coldstone on the way home.

Now on to Mr. P. Williams' and his "The Finishing Touch".
I was circling the show a second or third time trying to let the work of the three artists sink in when I came upon a group of three ladies. I was in something of a trance looking at the P.Williams work when the conversation of the ladies became impossible for me to ignore. This was not because they were loud; they were not. It had more to do with how I like to let whatever is going on around me flourish and become part of my world. Or you could just say I was nosey. Anyway, I heard one of the women discussing how some of the materials from the show that were not needed for the eventual piece were still in her garage. With that, I had to introduce myself as a friend of P. The nice woman introduced herself as Becky Williams, none other than the artist's mother.
Now I had already been looking at "The Finishing Touch" for some time before this encounter and the interesting part for me is how my perception of the piece grew and expanded in unexpected ways after meeting Mrs. Williams and her two friends.

Before this twist of fate occurred I was noticing how drab, dark and expressionless this city made of trash, cardboard and wood was. Williams took a lot of time to carefully make dozens and dozens of buildings and cars, but he made them all without any character, only using black and grey paint with just enough detail to make it very clear what one is looking at. This is a jammed city of high-rise towers, with a road splitting the middle, with cars and trucks driving on this road going only back to where they started. The only words I could find on the piece were painted on the sides of the trucks that said things like, "dirt, shit, stuff, booze, body hair, bullshit and flesh". Grey airplanes dangled from clear wire above this nightmare. Now as if things weren't bad enough, there is a huge cardboard box with eyes, screaming mouth and claws painted on it, that is unmistakably one of P. Williams' characters. The combination of this sad downtown madness and this nutty looking giant was quite funny and depressing at the same time. This beast I will call The P. Monster. The P. Monster seams to be enjoying the fear he brings to this city. Perhaps The P. Monster has been there for years and that is why no one cares to bother to make life colorful or cheerful in any way. They all know they are doomed, so what is the point?

Now I missed the big performance part of this piece that happened a couple weeks ago so I have been very curious as to what happened. Well as luck would have it Mrs. Williams had the answer... she recorded the whole thing! Before we met, I noticed that she was showing her friends something that was recorded on her small pocket camera. I, of course, loomed in to look, and what took place after that was sheer joy. Now I'm not saying this is on the level of seeing my children born, but it was damn close. Human beings and the things they do fascinate me more than anything else in life.

There are times in our lives that are so great that if we are aware of them, as they are happening, it can make all the hell of this life worth getting through. Here I was at an art exhibit space, where I have exhibited my own work, which is located in the city I grew up in. I'm looking at a small screen of moving images that I'm told is of a performance piece, the very performance piece that I was so bummed out that I had missed. The camera is held by the mother of the artist above the actual artwork and accompanied by very sparse, but telling comments from my three new friends. Mrs. Williams was very careful not to explain what she thought was the meaning of the work. She said that everyone should come to their own conclusions. She was very proud of her son and was not the least uncomfortable with the work or how her two friends or I might feel about it.

Somehow as we watched the screen I felt a strange connection to these women. The art joined us in some way. This grainy film and tiny screen required that we all stood well inside each other’s personal spaces. This unique presentation of a performance began with a pan to show the considerable crowd and then for a while nothing happened. We were still huddled together, not sure what to do, just as the audience in the film was, then finally something began. Smoke started coming from several of the buildings. The planes started moving in erratic and senseless motions. Suddenly The P. Monster slowly came to life, moving in a most sinister and deliberate way. Finally this city was going to get what it had coming, and what it had feared for so long! Gasps were heard as The P. Monster began to destroy the city by kicking and pushing down buildings. Several high-rises were shredded and squashed in a way that would make King Kong or Godzilla jealous. The congested but orderly highway of cars and trucks became a scene much like Hot Wheels and their ramps dumped from a barrel.

I'm told that inside The P. Monster box was no monster at all, but a nice girl who is a senior student of P., who was nice enough to volunteer to destroy all his hard work. Now after the destruction was complete and pieces of the towers and cars are strewn all about, the hundred or more people in the audience didn't know what to do. This is the best part. A man comes over and knocks more stuff down. A woman starts franticly picking up things and trying to repair the devastation. One of the ladies watching this with me said that P. must have felt terrible seeing all his hard work destroyed. That made me laugh out loud. Her reaction was that is was sad that so much hard work should be ruined. The irony of that was priceless.

After the performance piece, someone did in fact put the whole city back together and this was the version I first saw when I came to the gallery.

Mrs. Williams informed me, after her presentation was all over, that I could see the whole thing on YouTube. So when I got home, I did. On YouTube is P.'s version of what happened and it is great but doesn't even come close to how much I enjoyed this wonderful gift of a moment with his mother showing me her personally captured, unedited version, as we all huddled together in fear of the wrath of The P. Monster.
Art gets no better than that.

--The Fish

LACMA

LACMA has a new building which is fantastic for LACMA and just sort of OK for the rest of us. It is a large box shaped structure, hilariously sheathed in what appears to be rock dug from the same hole in the ground as that wrapping the Getty. The lighting is mostly from a sun harnessing system of one type or another which even at dusk works very well and seamlessly switches over to regular lights as we spin away from the sun each evening.

The stairway/escalator is placed on the outside of the building and there is a giant elevator in the center of the building, the shaft of which is visible and sheathed in a Barbra Kruger installation (Remember her? Nazi colors, pseudo propaganda that has been recycled by the graffiti artists/criminals du jour like Shepard Fairey and Spazzmat) the installation again challenges the “less is more” ideology, asking if less concept is actually more concept? The art and subsequent viewing experience at BCAM is so much better than anything LACMA had to offer before, but the structure’s content and it’s inception made me contemplate the nature of contemporary art collecting and the role of the wealthy in taste making and declarations of an artist’s importance. But that’s a topic for another lengthy and thoroughly researched review.

Let’s talk about art: I had seen almost all the work few years ago at Broad’s private stash in Santa Monica, and I must say that that it all looks much better in the new space. Unfortunately a Koons is still a Koons no matter how you light it. The work is a virtual who’s who, and a, who gives a crap of contemporary art, giving musty old LACMA some much needed relevancy. That having been said, seeing the work is like visiting old friends that have been telling the same jokes for the last 20 years.

Richard Serra owns the first floor with his giant rusty metal intestine/vagina/whatever sculptures. They definitely have the scale to impress, though I have enjoyed interacting with his other works outdoors a bit more where they have the feel of remnants of some ancient civilization with slightly questionable taste. The placard on the wall stated something to the effect that the sculpture is specific in it’s tolerances and measure down to the millimeter, but you will notice it doesn’t sit flat on the floor, so either it’s not really that exact or the building is off slightly (Ok, I’m nit-picking, but this is the type of stuff I notice) also enjoyed an oil stick piece of his hanging at a slight angle on the back side of the elevator shaft. (Wish I had taken a picture). I couldn’t figure out if it was created on a giant slightly angled piece of fabric or if it was hung incorrectly, or was perhaps even working it’s way off the wall and onto the floor.

John Baldessari’s work is still the most poignant; his blank-except-words paintings did the most for me. One is is emblazoned with the text: “Everything is purged from this painting, but art; no ideas have entered this work”. This acutely sums up my feelings of BCAM and most contemporary art yes, all of my feelings.

After 5pm they have a “pay what you want entrance fee” or lack there of, which I think is fantastic, the cost of admission for myself and a friend wound up being a buck, but only because we were feeling generous. I think they should alter the entire admission fee system to be “pay what you want-as you leave.” If a show was particularly interesting a person might be moved to pay more, not such a good show, you could walk right by the arrogant looking cashiers.

--Snowflake

Disorderly Conduct, OCMA

Disorderly Conduct, OCMA

I could say a lot about this show but here’s the short of it. It was an ok show over all, some of the work was great, most of it was acceptable, and a couple pieces were bad. This however, is usually the way that multi artist shows seem to work at museums. Over all, the work didn’t seem terribly cohesive but some was interesting. Then I started reading the placards and the statements about the artists and the curatorial direction of the show.

For a Show titled: Disorderly Conduct, the work seemed pretty predictable and in no way disorderly. Perhaps pieces lampooning Dr. Condoleezza Rice and the war in general (Karen Finley) felt provocative for the board of directors of a small museum in Orange County, but fails to bring up any points the rest of us haven’t already considered. The statement for the show claims the work is about conflict, war, violence, racial tension, urban strife and environmental disaster, which one might think would make for a grotesque, visceral, and perhaps even offensive viewing experience. The work however, while it does address these omnipresent issues, does it in the most orderly means imaginable, creating a feeling of the predictable and almost polite.

The show comes off less like the sum of its parts and instead like a bunch of parts lacking a summation. So I chose to view the show as a lot of individual works that just happen to be temporarily housed in the same location. Here’s my break down of the artists:

Robin Rhode’s digital animation is a quick read, which is unfortunate because it moves slow enough that one quickly loses interest but not before wondering why there was so much use of the Ken Burns effect from iMovie and longing for the aptly filmed pixilation of Jan Svankmajer instead.

Karen Finley got a chuckle out of me, just one.

Pilar Albarracin is the Spanish Cindy Sherman.

Pearl C. Hsiung, I enjoyed standing very close to her paintings, I wish they were abstract. I also liked the irony of her “Site Specific” installation which was small enough to be specific to almost any location.

Glenn Kaino deftly combined intrigue and disappointment with a very cool one-liner of a chess board piece and his apparently related “One Hour” paintings which I think was intended to illustrate the point that it doesn’t take long to figure out you are not proficient at something, or perhaps that we all spend a lot of time on things we should either give up or never show to people. His spinning rock and house piece is a great metaphor for missing the mark or just going around and around and never getting to the point. Which I think is what this show is all about.

Mike Kelley was interesting as usual and managed to get his own room (don’t miss it, it’s removed from everything else)

Martin Kersels knows something you don’t; you should try to figure out what that is.

Daniel Joseph Martinez takes up a lot of space with very little.

Rodney McMillian didn’t inspire me to write any notes.

--Snowflake

Are we lucky to live in Southern California or what?

For about ten years, while in my 30's, I ran from one museum to another, soaking up every detail of what I saw. I wanted to see firsthand the work of all my heroes.
I felt that looking at great art was as important as making it and that one required the other. I enjoyed looking at the work of the truly great painters more than looking at anything I was doing. Furthermore, my own paintings were hard work, so looking at these paintings became an excuse for not making my own stuff as much as I should have.

Then something happened and everything changed. Most of the work I was seeing just stopped having the same effect and just didn't look that good anymore.
So for the time being I decided I had seen enough. I felt I could learn more by studying my own work. Then paintings started coming to me easier and I was having more fun at it, so I stayed in the studio.

Then last Thursday I went to LACMA/BCAM. I was so moved by what I saw that I now feel I have entered yet another chapter in my appreciation of other artists.
Instead of comparing what I am doing to the work at the museum, I just slowed down and enjoyed. What a privilege to get to spend a day surrounded by hundreds of incredible works of art. The experience will inform what I am doing now, not replace it or be a source of envy.

What a total success the new layout is!
Chris Burden’s, "Urban Lights" makes you feel like you are entering a Temple or place of worship, which of course is appropriate. I really had my doubts driving by one day, before it was done, but now I am a believer. I can only imagine it at night! Jeff Koons, "Tulips" was ugly and garish but as I moved I loved the way when I looked into the piece the colored reflection in the mirrored surface made fantastic convex images like a fun house mirror. Charles Ray's Fire truck did little for me and I understand it will be removed soon because of damage from weather exposure. Robert Irwin is doing something interesting by trying to exhibit most or all varieties of palm trees.

I went first through the old buildings to see what had changed. The best change in the old buildings is the relocated American art wing. It starts with paintings done during our country’s infancy all the way to the present. All the work on this floor was shown with furniture of the same period. Great Idea. Others museums have done the same but this was done better. They found ways to keep the paintings close and not let the furniture get in the way. I am a total sucker for work done in the last part of the nineteenth century.

Right now art gets no better for me than Eakins, Sargent and Whistler. They lowered Sargent's "Portrait of Mrs. Edward and son..." so a guy like me can stand in front of it for fifteen minutes and examine every mark. The blood red walls framing Whistlers, "Blue Bonnet" portrait and Eakins, "Wrestlers" was brilliant. I was drooling. I enjoyed the chairs and tables from the period almost as much as the paintings.

Over to the Europeans. The Giacometti stand of sculpture was breathtaking with the lighting over the work creating a haunting scene of ghost-like images. Rembrandt, always a must see, never disappoints. Much of what is considered great work by Matisse still eludes me. His, "Tea"(though a great title) is a fucking mess and the only reason I can think of, as to why it is so revered, is that a lot of bad painters (who have most likely became curators or something other than artists) see it and it gives them hope.

Now...some lunch and on to BCAM. Wow...incredible!
A perfect way to display that kind of work, in most cases each artist gets his own room. Jeff Koons is growing on me in a disturbing way. In the past I have been almost physically sick looking at his work and now, somehow, it's like it's from an earlier time and has weight. Perhaps society has thrown so much stinking crap at us that his work now seems almost meaningful. I also noticed that Bubbles has 5 arms and hands, the origin of the fifth is uncertain.

I got to see many pieces I have never seen. Damien Hurst is a brilliant artist. The Kingdom of The Father is stunning! The idea of beauty in death strikes me as a profound concept in his hands. It's one of the most beautiful, and disturbing works, I have ever seen. It looks like a stained glass and the craftsmanship is second to none. This museums setting is ideal for his work.

Eric Fischl's, "Haircut" is a very strong painting. The effect of the forced light, though poorly painted up close, works really well from the vantage points BCAM provides.

How lucky we are to have this fantastic space so close to us all. Add to this the two Gettys, the Norton Simon, The Hammer, OCMA, all the galleries and the list goes on and on. I don't think the art scene is better anywhere else in the world. There is nowhere I would rather be than right here in the big So. Cal.!
Go enjoy-
--The Fish

A Day at the Broad

Excellent!
That was pretty much my universal response as I entered each gallery of Renzo’s house of art worship. Devoted galleries allow the viewer to become completely immersed in the work of each artist. And they did a superb job of matching the scale of the gallery to the scale of the artist’sbody of work.

The huge gallery space provided for Jeff Koons reifies the commercial didactic that is the intention of this artist (one has to love the security guard who is always present guarding his Rabbit).

And then there is Cindy Sherman (an artist whose work is dearer to my sense of aesthetic expression) who was provided with another large gallery where one becomes completing encased within her self-other portraits.

What makes this exhibition so successful is that seminal works are included for every artist shown. And in most cases there are multiple important pieces for each artist. There are too many names to mention, but a few of my highlights were: Damien Hirst’s butterfly wing stained-glass paintings (they look like paintings), Jasper Johns Flag (nice to see it up close and personal), Chris Burden’s oversized LAPD uniforms (possibly my favorite), Leon Golub’s large scale figurative works (again, surrounding you in a single gallery), and of course Serra’s Band (don’t ask why, just walk through them and submit to the aesthetic).

Only one standout disappointment was the display of Burden’s lampposts. I would have preferred if these had been integrated into a transitional colonnade that everyone would have to traverse while commuting between the old and the new museums: clustered together like an art object did not seem to fit with the social didactic that we have come expect from Burden. I hope that he would have preferred to have had these integrated these into the museum in a more subversive fashion.

Anyway, this exhibition nicely links many of the most significant American modernists with some of the more critically acclaimed contemporary artists of our times.

This is a blockbuster show in my book.

--ART

OCMA "Disorderly Conduct" Art Review

Photo: Glenn Kaino's "Learn to Win or You Will Take Losing for Granted"

If we’re living in interesting times as it is said, then by extension creations of that time must be equally interesting. With that in mind, perhaps the present is not so interesting after all.

The Exhibition “Disorderly Conduct” at OCMA is paired against OCMA’s collection show “Art Since the 60’s, California Experiments”. The collection show documents the radical end of Modernism as it twisted and turned its way out of formalism and pushed conceptual concerns to the fore.

The era was challenging. One had to find footing as an artist and as a citizen. Nothing was taken for granted. The test was rigorous.

The “Disorderly” exhibition by contrast knows what art is and knows its era. It’s loud, it’s about lifestyle, and its not so much concerned about ideas. It just wants to assert itself. The viewer is more consumer than beholder. That’s not to say that there aren’t some interesting objects and some good ideas. But, even the best works just add to the din, the scream that pulls on us to look, to buy, and to pay ... attention. Where is the engagement for the viewer beyond the spectacle?

These two exhibitions side by side are like an evening of television, “Entertainment Tonight” followed by “Masterpiece Theater”. I think we are living in a Mannerist era and the “Disorderly” show typifies that style. It is studied, manicured and mannered for an effect. The organic response of Late Modernism was difficult but engaging. The “Disorderly” show leaves me passive, unengaged.

So, what’s so bad about the mannered? Nothing really, as long as you’re just looking for entertainment. Pearl Hsiung’s paintings are fun, bright spray paint and stenciled, large enough to capture you for a moment. Glenn Kaino’s stop-action montaged photos of a confrontation between color-coded individuals is the best work in the show. It’s inventive and more metaphoric than all the other works combined. It gets my vote as the keeper in the show.

The pairing of these two exhibits is actually quite brilliant. The more historical show is still difficult. It still challenges you and makes you active with the ideas and forms. The contemporary exhibit is entertaining but eventually empty of deep issues, save the Kaino piece. Give it a walk through but then cross the hall to spend your time in the permanent collection exhibit.

--A Wonderful Chap

"Disorderly Conduct" at OCMA Appears to be Disorganized at OCMA

I suppose I shouldn’t get worked up over minor annoyances… it’s a little like focusing on the water spot on my wineglass when I should be sipping the happy grapes instead. But I can’t. It’s not my style. I find metaphors in vignettes, and this review shows why art is increasingly so inaccessible for the under-40 crowd.

I managed to enter the doors of OCMA’s show, Disorderly Conduct, just as thirty OCC college students rolled off a yellow bus and into the main gallery. While they milled about looking embarrassed and lost, I took a quick loop though the 60’s show. Great stuff there. First class work. Of course, every museum or gallery seems to have a simultaneous 60’s-70’s show up right now (LACMA, MOCA, OCMA… doesn’t anyone compare notes before posting a show?) and the overload of era images was numbing. If you’ve been through OCMA at all in the last 10 years, you’ve seen all this slick before.

I took one quick pass thorugh the Disorderly Show, noting the painted house and giant chessboard. I wanted to get back to the stop-action video before that gaggle of students descended on the space.

I needn’t have worried, as it wasn’t the students that created the problem, but one of the docents assigned to give the group a tour. I overheard him (how could I not, he was speaking at decibel 170) telling one of the OCC profs that he thought he was giving a tour of the 60’s show, and not Disorderly. It should have been a sign. The poor prof grimacing behind his mod moustache should have thanked the guy, turned, and run. But he was either too sweet or too trusting or both.

What lay ahead was not a “tour” or guided study of the works, but a scattered, misinformed melee of ill thought out banter. I made the mistake of entering one gallery room and sidling up behind some aggrieved-looking students as the docent started in on Daniel Joseph Martinez’s piece, “The House That America Built”

He started by pointing out that the cabin was modeled after “William David Thoreau’s” Walden Pond. The literary snob in me cringed. It was bad enough that he got the writer’s name wrong; it’s HENRY DAVID, you dork! He then remarked that Thoreau was interested in the idea of civil disorder (um, don’t you mean disobedience?) and made a dismal attempt to describe what Thoreau was looking for by writing in his tiny cabin out on that pond. Never once did he mention the idea of utopia.

What he docent did manage to master was the fact that the cabin was painted using Martha Stewart colors in lavender and yellow squares, with uneven teal plywood slabs hung at skewed angles covering most of the portals. He then went into a rant about Martha’s insider trading debacle, and listed some the people involved.

As the poor prof tried to reign in the wandering docent with a gentle nudge towards metaphoric inquiry “Hmm, do you think the misshapen plywood hung oddly reflects the skewed mentality of Kaczynski?” The docent blinked. Blankly. Then, ducking the gentle lob of sanity’s grenade, he bumbled on with the group into the next room.

I couldn’t take it anymore, and felt bad for the students shifting uncomfortably in their UGG boots, flip-flops, and vegan-approved flats. The few that were contributing to the “conversation” seemed determined to make the most of what appeared to be a joke. Was this a joke? The museum sent out a docent that didn’t know most of the works’ titles and knew even less about actual verifiable history? What message does that send to “the kids” when they’re treated like holes to shovel bunk into?

------
As for the art, a few pieces stood out:

Pilar Albarracin’s large-scale photograph “La Noche” of a woman strapped to the top of her car along the luggage. Woman as object, foreign women as strange and objectified, the ocean as journey and subconscious, scenes of domestic disorder and absurdity all sprung up in my mind when this piece caught my eye. Good work.

Glenn Kaind’s “Learning to Win or You Will Take Losing for Granted” was a brilliant piece made up of fruit crates and ammo boxes cut down and assembled into a chessboard. The Kings and Queens and Pawns et al we all replaced with bronze hands in suggestive poses (Fuck You, Come Here, Power to the People) and I wanted badly to touch it. I know I REALY like a piece of art if I want to touch it. There was so much layered under here. Violence, sex, gesture (all important to an artist, but even more important in this volatile world) and the futility of “winning” something that seems lost before the game begins.

Martin Kersels “Lover” five photographs of a fat, old, and unfortunately-dressed man doing what appeared to be calisthenics in nature. The awkwardness and uncomfortable emotion in these photos were intriguing to me. There was a fragility of human emotion implied that was palpable in his sad poses.

Most interesting of all: Robin Rhode’s “Color Chart” a stop-action video where men in uniforms (Industrial=Painter’s Coveralls and Mask; Urban=Hoodie and Baggy Jeans; etc.) brutalized each other. The ground on which they “stood” was a broken row of bricks that they often used to pick up and throw at each other. The effect was heightened by a totally different piece set on the opposite wall: Rodney McMillian’s singing “The Way We Were” in the background was a sappy, wrought counterpoint to the faceless, random violence in front of the viewer. The brilliant part was this: by slowing down the action, by stopping time and letting the viewer anticipate the next blow, the effect of anger and frustration at being UNABLE to stop the inevitable was spiked. It’s a choice literary device that was amplified by film. Truly thought provoking.

The rest of the work: Disorderly, both in layout in the gallery and in lack of impact.

--The 925

Which came first, the couch or the thought "What do We Put Above It"?

As we criticize other artists we need to criticize ourselves even harder to make sure that our art is challenging humankind to ponder its existence. Remember, any of our work might be purchased and put above the couch.

And as much as the couch has gotten a bad wrap in the minds of "serious" artists, this is nonetheless a very personal and intimate space, it is a space where humans not only try to escape the banality of daily life, but it is also often a place where they become snared by the biased junk getting fed to them from the media.

So let's make sure that our work is speaking loudly about "something" as it rests above its owner. March 16, 2008
-- ART

Disorderly Conduct at OCMA

I am going to be honest and risk sounding narrow-minded.
The show on balance was a dud. It was so boring I had to walk through it about five times praying that something would really grab me. Well I felt pinched more than grabbed. The show is very small and while that helped me focus on the few artists involved and I could therefore give them all time, it felt like an incomplete idea.

Peaal C. Hsiung painting intrigued me but she has big paintings and small ideas. Glenn Kaino's chess piece was beautiful to look at. Nice metaphores as hand signs. Gestures as Passive or aggressive, the peace and love next to the fuck you. The accompanying limited palette portraits had subdued emotion the way the subjects contemplated their next moves.

The Condolizza Rice inspired work made me curious as to why the artist has become obsessed with this woman. ( an interesting note, the artist has directly copied Bridget Burns who has been drawing on paint chip samples from home depot for a decade). The eyes falling like bombs from the fighter jet? Huuuum. It seemed lame at first but I would admit it did have some impact.

OCMA is a great museum space with very high ceilings and great lighting. They hang the work with lots of empty wall space to make each work stand out. Basically anything you hang in that environment should look good! I could hang my dirty boxer shorts on the wall and it would look profound. How is it most of this stuff still manages such a weak visual response? Is it because artists have been taking away so much that nothing is left? Less is not always more, sometimes it's just less.
Much of the text I read was far more interesting than the artwork and I see that a lot with shows these days.
Mike Kelleys "Gospel Rocket" was an abysmal failure.

A black man signing "The Way We Were" in clown makeup? Wow, there is a real profound idea! He admits in the text that he watched too many music videos growing up and that is how he came up with the idea. He was interested in how the performers would lose themselves in the songs and he wanted to do that. My daughter sings her favorite songs around the house to her I Pod and has makeup and dress far more interesting than this guy.
OCMA used real insight and some of their very limited funds to buy this piece!

We have all seen the Fred Astaire film with the turning room. This guys work is trying to be funny and serious at the same time. Huuuuum...NOT! I'll go with silly and useless.

I have talked to a few other T.E.A. Party members about the attendance at this show. When I saw the show I was the only person in the building who didn't work there and the same for the other members I talked to. Maybe they should show work that truly has value instead of trying so hard to be arcane and clever with the shows they curate.

OCMA hired a friend of mine to promote the exhibits and try to get people to see the work. He's so persuasive he could get the Pope to invest in a new Mormon Temple but he admits that getting folks to see these shows may be beyond even his considerable powers.

Perhaps there is just not that much good work being made right now that is conceptual in nature. Art is not like science, it does not always advance or get better with time.

--The Fish

Disorderly Conduct at OCMA

Overall, very good. Of course I am a sucker for conceptual and politicized work. But I thought they had a reasonable global mix of artists and a fair cross-section of ages.

Hmm, my favorites? Karen Finley's Condoleezza Rice eyes were terrific, I might have enjoyed that the best. I felt like I could be drawn in by the allure of the eyes and then pleasantly slapped in the face once I was informed who it was I was looking at. My only reservations is that I don't think the piece would communicate its message without thestatements. However it did get across its seductive charm which I think was the tantalizing point.

Glenn Kaino's chessboard was also terrific, maybe because I related to the hands. But it was very effective at getting across the idea of how life is a game and we make gestures, sometimes unpleasant, towards those on the other side of our beliefs (or what we think we know).

Of course I am always captivated by the intellectual depth of the work by Daniel Joseph Martinez. And this house has so many layers of meaning to be mined and the physical size of it forces the viewer to find out more and understand! Gee, Kaczynski's house painted by Martha!

Marin Kersel's Pink Constellation was fun and technically fascinating (and of course funny), but I am sorry, I wanted to get more of a point out of it--just me.

I guess I need to mention Mike Kelley: large scale, complex, expensive, richly conceptual, but leaves me a little empty--feeling like I am being visually teased in a contrived sort of way. I guess a little too theatrical for me.

Anyway, that is about it. I enjoyed the show.

--ART

The Birth of T.E.A. Party

We met. We drank. We lifted our pinkies.

We bashed artists, galleries, politician, and mostly, the press.

Prepare for the rebellion. 

Once a month.