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Reeds, by Dale Chihuly. (Photos by C-M.)

Last week, Kenneth Baker at the San Francisco Chronicle gave the Dale Chihuly exhibit at S.F.’s De Young Museum a serious inverted atomic drop. I figured that if the show was truly that bad, then I definitely had to check it out.

It was, indeed, a saccharine-fest. But it’s so over the-top that it’s worthwhile if you happen to be in possession of some Grade A Cali medicinal. There is so much color and so much light and it’s so relentless that you leave the exhibit feeling as if you just spent a binge weekend in Vegas: your brain is slightly numb and you can’t quite remember what happened, but you’re certain you had a very good time.

Chihuly is up through September 28th.

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Land of Retinal Stimulation: Mark Ryden’s The Creatrix is the painting at center, with Carlee Fernandez’s Buffalo-7200 in the foreground. (Photos by C-M.)

If you took a little Hieronymus Bosch, added a dash of R. Crumb, a pinch of California car culture, and folded in a heaping stack of late-night sci-fi, you’d end up with the Laguna Art Museum’s latest show, In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor. This all-encompassing two-story survey takes a look at the fast-rising genres of pop surrealism, lowbrow and street art/graffiti as covered by Juxtapoz mag since its founding by painter Robert Williams in 1994. Featuring the work of 150 artists (including some fake dookies by Paul McCarthy), it’s an apocalyptic vision of America’s pop culture sausage factory turned inside out, revealing lots of gory, nasty innards.

The show is up through October 5th.

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Visible from the entry hallway: A detail from Smoke, by Tony Smith. (Photos by C-M, unless otherwise noted.)

I finally got to wander around the newly renovated LACMA and it’s flashy new sister museum, BCAM, which still has that new-car smell. (Or is that formaldehyde?) Anyhow, I spent some quality time checking out the spaces and the art, though I was unable to photograph much of what I saw because, as usual, no photography was allowed inside the galleries. (Not that this matters, because far-flung correspondent San Suzie already got all the illegal flicks we needed back in February.) All of this was fine with me, because it allowed me to roam around and soak up the offerings. Herewith, a short, highly-annotated tour of some of what I saw.

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A collage composed of found stickers, by Tom Fruin at the Buia Gallery in New York in February ‘08. A few of the street artists represented include: Royce Bannon, Over Consume and Ambusch. (Photos by C-M unless otherwise noted.)

For the purpose of this blog, I spend much of my spare time photographing just about everything the art industrial complex sees fit to churn out: paintings, sculpture, video, and totally weird breakfast buffets. In the past six months, I’ve noticed a small, but growing trend: studio artists (including the late Robert Rauschenberg) incorporating street and graffiti art into their work.

This takes various guises. There are painters who incorporate graffiti art into urban landscapes, assemblage artists who use elements of real-live street art in collages and sculptures, and art photographer types who go out and document all of the beautiful decay. It’s one of those interesting art world conundrums: on its own, most street art and graffiti isn’t thought to have much artistic or monetary value. But clearly there is some potency residing in this imagery if studio artists are remixing and reconfiguring it for the pristine walls of commercial galleries.

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A whole lotta Hype. (Photos by C-M.)

Ad Deville and Ali Ha opened up their brand spankin’ new space in a former Brooklyn bodega last Friday with a packed opening night party. The gallery featured an installation of paintings and sculptures by Skewville that pay tribute to pop and urban culture. The works take their cues from the indoor space, in this case, a defunct grocery: there are crates of hype, a supermarket-cart-turned-lounge-chair and silkscreens of grocery circulars filled with bogus slogans and clever wordsmithing. The exhibit also includes elements of Skewville’s long-running themes: visual plays on urban architecture and industrial settings, plenty of slang, and various two-dimensional salutes to their wooden sneaker series. It’s a damn fine show from the shoemakers from Queens.

Stay tuned for more from Factory Fresh at the end of June, when the gallery unveils its first group show, Un Named Rottens, with Beau Velasco, Daniel St. George and Jeremiah Maddock.

We have a winner! Congrats to Bucky Turco, of NYC, who won a Skewville ‘Fresh’ crate, for writing, “I will honor it always (or until it skyrockets like a Banksy).” It was an answer worthy of Skewville.

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Eli Baxter at the The Contemporary Museum Biennial of Hawaii Artists in Honolulu, through August 17. (Image courtesy of Baxter.)

Hey Kids: As we enter the summer I’m gonna cut back on Digest-ing. Starting next week, it’s Monday through Thursday only, leaving Friday open for very important posts about goodies like chocolate Boteros. xox, C.

• The hat-twirling GIF. (Via HV.)
• Preserving art that isn’t built to last. (Via AJ.)
• Jake and Dinos Chapman vandalize Hitler paintings and are now trying to sell them (via AJ). The Guardian has an image of one of the works here. They also ask: Is this all “a bit silly?” The answer: yes.
• Rich Russians buying art at the Moscow World Fine Art Fair. Plus: The Times looks at those Russian millionaires and billionaires that Western millionaires and billionaires are being all condescending about.
• Contemporary art prices are trending downward says curator Todd Levin.
• The Woodstock Museum. Groovy fact: Richard Lacayo went to Woodstock. Rock on!!
• Jeff Wall discusses five of his pics and how they came about (via AFC). That staged battle scene kinda reminds me in its ethos to those melodramatic, staged battle scenes that Meissonier liked to paint in the 19^th century.
• Artist killed during peace pilgrimage.
• A profile of street artiste and Fulbright scholar Steve Powers, aka ESPO, in the New York Times. See the photo essay.
• Tobias Wolff’s short story Bullet in the Brain, about an art critic taking some hot lead to the head.
• A Portrait of Silvia Elena, a collaborative installation by Swoon and Tennessee Jane Watson, at the Honey Space in NYC. The piece honors one of the countless women killed in the Mexican border town of Juárez, whose murders have gone largely uninvestigated and unsolved.
• “Street art is gone…but I’m still here.”
• Book: Lost: Graffiti in the City of Angels, a compilation of ten years worth of graffiti photography in L.A.
• Enter the drawing to win a Skewville crate, covered in real, 100% authentic New York City grime!
• Our President is a douche. The Daily Show’s take here.
• Container-like, but modern: The Nomadhome by Gerold Peham.
• Keeping the footprint small: The Marfa 10 x 10 Lightbox House, which takes up only 320 square feet of land. (Via NotCot.)
• Little People. (Thanks again, TT!)
• Your moment of procrastination. (Thanks again, TT.)