“Put Yayoi Kusama on the line. I think someone is trying to bite her dots thing.”
Monthly Archive for January, 2012
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This will be a tough piece to watch come together: Suzanne Lacey is doing a reprise of a 1977 work in which she tracked rapes in Los Angeles for a period of three weeks. This year, the artist, with the assistance of the LAPD, will do the same for the rest of the month of January. The L.A. Rape Map will come together in Deaton Auditorium at police headquarters in downtown as part of the Los Angeles Goes Live series of performance art exhibitions presented by LACE. Seems like a must-see to me. Get the details here. (Image courtesy of the artist and LACE.)
- S.F.: Skewville, Playground Tactics, at White Walls. Opens Saturday, at 7pm.
- S.F.: An American Language, at Guerrero Gallery. Opens Saturday.
- L.A.: Daniel Richter, A concert of purpose and action, at Regen Projects. Through February 18, in West Hollywood.
- San Diego: John Banasiak, George Brown’s Bar, at Joseph Bellows Gallery. Opens Saturday, in La Jolla.
- NYC: Giles Thompson, New and Used, at Pandemic Gallery. Opens Saturday at 7pm.
- Plus: Get my latest New York picks over at Gallerina…
Testimonio, 2003, by Isabel Ruiz, from Guatemala. Painted on 23 handkerchiefs are testimonies of violent incidents during Guatemala’s Civil War, from 1960-96. (All photos by C-M.)
The Museum of Contemporary Art & Design (MADC) in San Jose, Costa Rica is the single biggest, most important center for contemporary art in Central America — with a permanent collection that is focused on the region. I’ve been to the museum countless times, but this time I was lucky enough to stumble into a show of works from their permanent collection. (It’s a small institution, so display areas are usually occupied by temporary exhibits.) Always refreshing to see work by artists operating outside of the Bermuda Art Triangle.
Colección MADC is now on view.
Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: Works from the collection at MADC, Costa Rica.’
An image from Gusmano Cesaretti’s East Los Angeles series, 1974. Part of the photographer’s solo exhibit at Roberts & Tilton. This is a show I most definitely want to see. Opens Saturday at 6pm, in Culver City. (Image courtesy of the artist and Roberts & Tilton.)
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
- Portland: Body Gesture: A Group Exhibition of Feminist Art. Through January 28.
- NYC: Rather Unique, at the Woodward Gallery. Opens Saturday at 6pm.
- Plus, find my latest NYC picks over at Gallerina…
Rebels in Paradise, by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, a look at the SoCal arts scene of the 1960s. The book is a hot mess at the narrative level and it’s a bit of a Ferus Gallery retread (as in: non-white, non-male artists are virtually non-existent). But it’s laced with plenty of funny interviews and tasty anecdotes.
One bit on Robert Irwin versus a critic from Artforum on page 58:
The early 1960s was the apotheosis of reverence toward the automobile in Los Angeles; the new Corvette convertible had a role as memorable as any of the stars of the TV series 77 Sunset Strip. Irwin took the critic out to the San Fernando Valley to introduce him to a kid who was working on a 1929 roadster. “Here was a fifteen-year-old kid who wouldn’t know art from schmart, but you couldn’t talk about a more real aesthetic activity than what he was doing…The critic simply denied it.” Irwin tried to explain, but the critic refused to acknowledge the possibility that such an activity could be considered a form of art. Finally, an angry Irwin pulled his car over. “I just flat left him there by the road, man, and just drove off. Said, ‘See you later, Max.’ And that was basically the last conversation we two ever had.”
I’d love to hear the critic’s version of this story.