If you live in L.A., absolutely, positively go see Do Ho Suh’s pieces in Your Bright Future, the exhibit of contemporary Korean art at LACMA, up through Sept. 20. Above, an installation view of Fallen Star 1/5, and in the rear, Home Within Home. This image doesn’t do justice to the details inside the building. (See the photo large. Image courtesy of LACMA.)
Detail of Nibelungen (Nibelung), a triptych by Lutz Dammbeck. (Image courtesy of LACMA.)
Take a culture. Fill it with the desire to build empire. Then put it through a vicious trench war. Follow this with a period of cultural openness and decadence. Afterwards, hand control over to a bunch of genocidal maniacs. Bomb it to a rubble. Divide it between East and West. Then put it back together. That, in an oversimplified nutshell, is the history of Germany in the 20th century. We are all familiar with the political implications of this back-and-forth. But what kind of art is produced by a nation that is built and destroyed and built again, each time in a somewhat different guise? The answer to that question lies in the jaw-dropping exhibit, The Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures, at LACMA, in Los Angeles.
This sprawling show, curated by Stephanie Barron, covers 44 years of 20th century German history, from 1945-1989. It begins in the immediate aftermath of World War II, taking viewers through the eras of the Nuremberg trials, its Solomonic split, as well as the subsequent periods of tumult and soul-searching. There are artists famous (George Baselitz, Gerhard Richter, Martin Kippenberger, et al.) and unknown (Hermann Glockner) — many of them struggling to come to terms with who and what they represent. It is heart-breaking, appalling and totally edifying all at the same time.
This will be the exhibit’s only U.S. showing (it travels to Germany afterwards), so if you are anywhere near the L.A. area, it would be a crying shame to miss it. You’ve got ’til April 19.
Persepolis Part II by Sadegh Tirafkan at LACMA. (Photo by C-M.)
There is something about the crunch of boots on gravel that I find indescribably appealing. It’s something I associate with being a kid, when, every evening, I’d hear the sound of my dad’s pick-up pulling up outside our house, followed by the percussion of his boots all the way up our gravel driveway — and I knew that it was time to eat. (I was born hungry.) Which is why I was so excited to run into Sadegh Tirafkan’s video piece, Persepolis Part II in the Ancient Iran galleries at the L.A. County Museum of Art.
The piece consists of two monitors, each with video of Tirafkan walking silently through the ruins of Persepolis, the ancient Persian capital. The video is rather dreamlike: the two images of the artist continually walk deliberately towards each other, but never meet. And all that is audible is the scraping sound of his feet on dry rock. It transforms the gallery, which is filled with lifeless shards of ancient pottery, into something more dynamic (if nostalgic).
If you happen to be popping into the museum to check out Art of Two Germanys, a detour to the Ahmanson building to check this out is totally worthwhile. The installation will be up through March.
In other news: I’ve got a lot going on workwise, so I’m cutting The Digest back to four days a week, Monday through Thursday. Thanks for reading, xox, C.
The NYT weighs in on the L.A. MOCA mess. Says former trustee Susan Nimoy: “My main complaint to the board was that none of you would run your household budget the way this institution is run. I think every one of those trustees should resign and [director] Jeremy [Strick] should resign.” Related: NPR reports on Eli Broad’s rescue effort. (Interesting fact: Koons’ balloon bunny makes him “smile.”)
The Day in Art Merch: A shower curtain by Sam Flores. The staff here at C-Monster is waiting for an artist to make a fluffy toilet lid cover. Our pooper is cold. (Juxtapoz.)
Andrés Duany, designer of Seaside, Fla. (one of the creepiest places I’ve ever been to), spanks British architecture for being ego-driven and “heedless of technical and social dysfunction.”
In the conference room at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with ceiling wallpaper by John Baldessari. (Photo by C-M.)
Hey Folks:
Due to the crazy schedule on this fellowship (today is the last day), the Digest is a bust. In lieu of something informative, please enjoy the view of John Baldessari’s ceiling installation inside LACMA’s boardroom. It’s what I was looking at while museum director Michael Govan was coyly leaving the door open to a merger with MOCA.
Visual Molasses: A figure comes into focus very, very sloooowly in a Kevin Hanleyvideo piece at MoCA. Hang around long enough and you’ll wonder if you’re seeing things. (Photos by C-M.)
Just because one L.A. museum is in the middle of a financial freefalldoesn’t mean that there isn’t buzz-inducing art to be seen. At MoCA, in a corner of the Conceptualism in California show at the Geffen Contemporary there is a meltingly slow piece by Kevin Hanley, as well as a black-and-white, super-fast Bruce Conner number that has a total 2 a.m. music video kind of feel. Better yet: it’s comprised of three monitors. I coulda hung out there all afternoon.
Across town, at LACMA, there’s Chris Burden’s Urban Light installation. I know that this piece is far from new (it debuted in February), but I managed to spend a bit of time hanging out with this sculpture at dusk today and it was damn beautiful. The best part: anybody can wander around this thing, 24 hours a day. Perfect for a late-night hangout, especially if you’ve got a Slurpee in hand.
Eve Ray Forever, 1965-2006 by Bruce Conner. Quick cuts. Lots of nudity. Yeah.
Chris Burden’s Urban Light. Lampposts all in rows. Duuuude.
Late addition:
How could I forget? Marcel Duchamp’s Roto Relief: Optical Discs, at the Norton Simon. You are getting sleepy… On view through Dec. 8.
Shaun Leonardo’s Bull in the Ring. There’s nothing like the sound of crunching bones at a museum opening. (Photos by C-M.)
Sometimes sport is art. And other times, art is sport. In the case of LACMA’s newest exhibit — Hard Targets: Masculinity & Sports — it’s a bit of both. The show’s opening last week got off to a rousing start with a performance by Shaun Leonardo, in which the artist, dressed in black football gear, was rammed repeatedly by a bunch of real-deal players. Indoors, a video piece by Joe Sola broadcast a similar exercise: Saint Henry Composition showed the artist, wearing a button-down shirt and slacks, getting repeatedly tackled by members of a high school football team. (Both pieces led me to wonder if both Leonardo and Sola weren’t beaten up quite enough in their youth.)
The show, curated by LACMA’s Christopher Bedford (who has played rugby and American football and still has all of his original teeth) takes a look at how contemporary art addresses the subject of organized men’s sports. The sneaker sculptures of Brian Jungen examine athletic regalia. Photographs of high school wrestlers by Collier Schorr look at issues of team dynamics and male adolescent sexuality. And a giant soccer ball sculpture by Mark Bradford, hangs like a nutsack in the corner. It’s a small, but potent show, that looks at a subject that is omnipresent in our culture, yet almost absent from contemporary art. The only bummer was that not a single work was devoted to curling. So, get on it all you Yale MFAs. It’s time you stopped gazing at your navels. And started watching ESPN.
The show is up until Jan. 18th, 2009.
Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.
