Laugh Riot - Banksy

I'm a late comer to the art of Banksy,
an artist in Europe who's medium is spray paint
and who's canvas is the city.

He is a man who paints a sense of humor where there forgot to be one.

Some of my favorites:













But please visit his website yourself.

BANKSY

He's got tons more art there.

California, Seen: Landscapes of a Changing California, 1930-1960

September 26, 2008 - January 11, 2009

The Long Beach Museum of Art will be showcasing California, Seen examining the important California Scene painting movement through paintings depicting the rural, urban, and changing landscape of southern California. Featuring artists Emil Kosa Jr., Phil Dike, Millard Sheets, Rex Brandt, Leon Amyx, Charles Keck, and Loren Roberta Barton - some of the most well-known California Scene practitioners.

As opposed to the often dark and brooding realist styles from other parts of the country, many of the works in California, Seen were painted in vibrant watercolor. The medium, owing its popularity to the radiant climate of southern California, allowed artists to work outdoors and capture their "scenes" at specific moments when the natural light was ideal. (Oil paints being generally too messy and unwieldy to transport and use away from the studio). Although often dealing with heady issues of social realism, urbanism and industrialization, California Scene painters generally portrayed their environments as fresh, energetic bastions of natural beauty and American ingenuity.

from: http://lbma.org/exhibits.html
for more information: http://lbma.org

Free / Tonight -- COILHOUSE Launch Party / Group Art Exhibit

COILHOUSE is launching its real-world print version tonight in Los Angeles, with a group show featuring work from Zoetica Ebb, Roxy Contin, Hans Haveron, and others. Promised events include:

• Art, photography & fashion exhibit
• Refreshments, with Mer’s “special” Electric Lemonade
• Incredibly strange music
• Photo booth with weird medical props, straight from Zo’s cave
• Wall projections of Issue 01 art
• Your first glimpse at the actual magazine!

The COILHOUSE website -- already home to the COILHOUSE blog, soon to be purveyors of the COILHOUSE magazine -- describes its mission thusly: "COILHOUSE is a love letter to alternative culture, written in an era when alternative culture no longer exists. And because it no longer exists, we take from yesterday and tomorrow, from the mainstream and from the underground, to construct our own version. We cover art, fashion, technology, music and film to create an alternative culture that we would like to live in, as opposed to the one that’s being sold or handed down to us."

(Coilhouse is also active in producing reader-submitted content, for those of you who spend your time doing more interesting things than writing blogs about other people's parties.)

WHEN: Tonight (Saturday, August 9, 2008) @ 8pm.
WHERE: Hans Haveron Studios, 122 Glendale Blvd. LA, 90026.
PRICE: Free.
MORE INFO: Coilhouse.net.

Art for a cause...

Prestes Maia
The photography of Tatiana Cardeal

Opening Reception
Including Food and Refreshments
August 9th from 6pm to 8pm

The Salvation Army Alegria | Art for Shelter
2737 W Sunset Blvd Los Angeles CA 90026
T:323.454.4201 F:323-454-4226

www.salvationarmy-alegria.org
www.artforshelter.org

Great art... great cause!

Matt Wignall will be exhibiting some INCREDIBLE PHOTOS from his series in support of Water Wells for Africa. This exhibition will be hosted at DDR Projects in Long Beach. The opening is on August 1st and will feature DJ Pete Deeble spinning wax.

For more about Matt Wignall - go see MattWignall.com
For more about the gallery - go see DDRProjects.com
For more about the cause - go see WaterWellsForAfrica.com
And for more about DJ Pete Deeble.... well... just take my word for it!

Some of you may also know Matt Wignall as the local Long Beach music scene trailblazer: from Scouts of Saint Sebastian, Matt Death and the New Intellectuals, and Havalina; man behind the mix for many a local record made at his "Tackyland" studio; and man behind the cameras for Long Beach music stars the Cold War Kids. He is also co-founder of Matte Black clothing designs. And when he's not mastering art, music, or fashion... he is quitely plotting to conquer the world!

GLOW - "compelling, enchanting and effervescent"

Glow is a major all-night public art event taking place this Saturday evening throughout downtown Santa Monica and around the Santa Monica Pier. Running from 7pm-7am the website promises that it will be "compelling, enchanting and effervescent" among other things.

Now I don't know about you, but I've never experienced an "effervescent" art installation... So, I'm in! ;)

Besides... it can't be all bad...
The event has some great art-event funders behind it like KCRW, the NEA, The Peter Norton Foundation, The Durfee Foundation, and Starbucks (...of course)!

See more details at glowsantamonica.org.

(RAR) The Happy Show, Spitting Images, and something special

I received an invite for a show called "The Happy Show" at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. A friend of mine, Jaime Uretsky (who's work I really respect and enjoy), was included in the show and so I was interested in going to check it out if for no other reason than to encourage and support her... so I visited the GCAC website to find out details...

Well... I happened to know several other people exhibiting in The Happy Show, as well as some artists showing in a concurrent exhibition ("Spitting Images") in their main gallery! And the project room installation looked REALLY EXCITING! (Note: "Spitting Images" is the correct title for the show despite the typo on their website)

So now I had to go... and I did.

It was all enjoyable, and worth the trip...
But nothing turned out quite the way I expected.



On display: July 5 - July 27, 2008
I generally found The Happy Show... not so happy (with notable exceptions).

In general, I expected something very uplifting and whimiscal... but this seemed in short supply. One of the notable exceptions, from Jon Ginnaty and Diana Donaldson, was a rack of about 25 small ceramic puppies (as seen in the promo image above), each with a tag around its neck that reads "I will love you forever." This little installation with so many little puppy faces begging for attention, each with a promise of affection, was definitely a "Happy" highlight. Also, worthy of your time is a whimsical painting by Alyssa Cordova, and a very fun little animation/video piece by Jaime Uretsky (You'll have to look for this new work from Jaime in the front window facing the street).



On display: July 5 - August 24, 2008

Spitting Images was proclaimed to explore "unique interpretations of the photo-making process within a group dynamic"... but it seemed surprisingly traditional. Though not as unique as promised, I still felt this was over all a pretty strong showing of work by photographers and printmakers.

The real standout work of the show were a series of digital images from Neil Sharum. Utilizing his unique images (originating from clubs that cater to teens) as source material, he then uses digital imaging technology to merges images together, create the illusion of a seamless continuous space where his "cast" of very real characters appear to be interacting with one another in narratives of his own devising. In this process Neil becomes a story teller or director of sorts, creating cinematic narratives and building relationships into scenes that in truth do not exist.

Elsewhere in the show... Mark Chamberlain, Chris Moore, Sandra Green, and Mayra Alford all had strong showings of work that seemed to involve fairly traditional methods of image making. Not ground breaking, but strong nonetheless. (The work of Scott Angus could also fit into this category, but the 2 small pieces on display do not do adequate justice to his greater body of work.)

There were a few people who seemed to be genuinely bucking tradition and working in new or hybrid ways, including Janelle Morte and Leonard Correa, but I didn't necessarily find that work particularly engaging. Elizabeth Tobias as a possible exception had beautiful large scale and colorful visual representations of music... but they were at root fairly straight forward depictions of audio waveforms... (for a more innovative approach to visualizing music go see the "Sound!" work of Andy Carey, currently on display at Open Bookstore in Long Beach).

p.s. - I hate to be negative, but people need to stop exhibiting the work of Robbie Miller! His self portraits are thin on concept (sorely lacking, derivatives of Cindy Sherman and others), and from a photo craftsmanship-quality standpoint they are poorly executed prints. Yet somehow I have found his work exhibited in numerous small So-Cal galleries. (Someone has to stand up and say "NO!" when bad stuff is catching on.) STOP IT PEOPLE!



On display: July 5 - August 24, 2008
Lastly, the project room's installation ("This used to be real estate, now it's only fields and trees")... WAS EVEN BETTER THAN EXPECTED!

I can't really describe this installation by Amy Caterina. You have to experience it for yourself. Suffice it to say that it is an all-encompassing experience, very much enjoyed, and an excellent pairing to The Happy Show (or rather the whimisical intent of The Happy Show). You need to see this!

One Crabby Photographer...

Corey Arnold photographer/crab-fisherman/artist extraordinaire...

So this guy is a legitimate friend-of-a-friend (he went to high school with a good friend of mine). And I was first introduced to his work over a year ago when my friend said... "Hey! I know that guy on TV!" while we were watching the Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch. Soon after, she found a webpage that had some of his amazing photos from crab fishing. It was cool, then I forgot.

Here's his fellow crewmates from the Rollo:


Well...
Now Corey has gone and made a name for himself!

No longer just a cool guy playing around and being goofy on a crab boat, his work has matured, and he's gotten noticed by corporate clients, publishers, art galleries, and curators!

This season The Discovery Channel hired Corey to photograph all the crab boat captains that they are featuring this season (you may have seen the billboards or and other ads). He has several current and upcoming gallery exhibitions, and he even won a major grant to help him pursue his project of photographing the modern commercial fisherman.

He recently got a new website and blog up and running where he has broken down his projects into 4 categories: Fish-work Behring Sea, Fish-work Norway, Arcticness, and Human Animals.

All his work is pretty amazing, so you should check it out.

It is beautiful:



Difficult:


Funny:


Absurd:


Joyous:


And much, much more!

Corey currently has work up at Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica as well as a show in New York and some public art works in Canada.

To what else Corey is up to...
Check out his website's info page.

Also, he recently did a piece for another blog where he talked about his years long adventure getting into the industry and making it onto a crab boat (It's a good piece... you should read it).

Design won't change the world...

Click on image for more info.
Also, check out Frank-C's designs on Flickr...

Each beautifully simple design comes with some fine nugget of wisdom!
Most are not this blatant or crass, but I think he makes his point effectively!

Here's a less intense sample...

(RAR) Germans rule the (photo)world - 1929 to present

As evidence I present this pair of exhibitions from The Getty:


August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century
May 6–September 14, 2008


Bernd & Hilla Becher: Basic Forms
May 6–September 14, 2008

If you're into photo-art, you probably know: Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Candida Hofer, and/or Andreas Gursky. And likely you know several folks listed here: Catherine Opie, Rineke Dijkstra, Richard Ross, Chris Jordan, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Edward Burtynsky, Joel Sternfeld, Robbert Flick, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and/or Richard Avedon.

The truth of the matter is that most of the important conceptual photographers of the past 2 decades owe a major debt to August Sander and (more directly) to Bernd & Hilla Becher. Together these avant-garde German photographers pioneered a new method of using creative photography as a means of systematicaly studying their subjects. And both Sander and the Bechers had expansive life-long projects that are both socially important and aesthetically inspiring.

Sander worked in the late 1920's and through the 1930's to document all archetypes of the German every-man; and the Nazis burned his images for not buying into their agenda of racial superiority, due to his honest and uncritical depictions of all people. His expansive project of vocational archetypes laid the groundwork for the Bechers to build upon when they entered the art scene and began their own projects photographing architectural archetypes from about 1959 through to the near-present (Bernd just passed away last year).

Fortunately for you...
You can go see both of these major projects on display now at The Getty!
This is the best way to see either Sander or the Bechers' work, and to see both together is absolutely amazing!

Returning to my list above...
Gursky, Hofer, Ruff, and Struth are all German photographers who studied directly under Bernd & Hilla Becher in Duesseldorf. Collectively they have defined a distictively "Becher school" style. Subsequently this distinctive approach to photography has had a significant influence on photographers world wide, as evidenced in the work of the other ten important artists listed above.

Go now.

(RAR) LACMA - Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Introducing Jeff Rau...
Long Beach artist/photographer/blogger/etc...

Kicking off the Tragically Hipster Rau Art Reviews (RAR)...

Just visited LACMA today, so I figure I'll kick this off with some comments about a couple of exhibitions currently on display there...


First off...

Philip-Lorca diCorcia
May 23–September 14, 2008

This is a remarkably powerful show for the relatively small space allotted for it.

The exhibition covers several bodies of work by the noted photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia (aka "PL"). These bodies of work include the projects known as: Hustlers, Streetwork, Heads, Lucky 13, and Thousand. But the exhibition largely intersperses the projects (with the exception of Thousand).

Hustlers and Streetwork are older projects working in varying ways capturing fleeting moments (often vulnerable moments), but approaching the work in two entirely different ways. In Hustlers PL carefully stages these moments in hotel rooms or on the streets of Los Angeles casting hustlers as his protagonists, and in Streetwork he captures these fleeting moments in a more candid way on the busy streets of major cities worldwide.

By contrast, both Heads and Lucky 13 take a much more systematic approach. In Heads PL sets up a system by which he candidly captures portraits of pedestrians on the New York City sidewalks. Entirely unaware of the photographer's presence, isolated and captured in extraordinary detail, and thus left vulnerable to our observation, these pieces seem to quitely speak volumes about their subjects. Lucky 13 on the otherhand depicts lone pole dancers in the midst of their seductive act... but this is project is far more than just T&A (see more below)...

To round out the bodies of work included here, Thousand is a collection of 1,000 Polaroid images produced over years of PL's art and commercial practice as a photographer. Though 1,000 seems somewhat unimpressive by today's digital standards, the idea of producing and exhibiting 1,000 instant images was huge at the time of this undertaking. This collection of images displayed somewhat randomly on several shelves extending across 3 walls, produces an unparalelled peek into the working practice of a photographers. Test prints, lighting trials, camera experiments, personal moments, random points of interest, and curious textures all share equal billing as the work product of an active artist (akin perhaps to a painter's notebook of sketches).


I have always loved PL's Heads. I am facinated by the people depicted as well as the complicated system derived to capture them in their most natural, unsuspecting, and vulnerable moments. As a photographer, I am further impressed with his technical acuity in all of the remaining projects, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing so much of the "behind the scenes" work in Thousand. But honestly, most of the remaining bodies of work didn't resonate with me as strongly as Heads.... Until I heard PL discuss his work at LACMA earlier this month....

I attended an artist discussion with PL on June 10th, and while most of the discussion was entirely un-earthshattering, one huge revelation forever transformed my understanding and appreciation of Lucky 13...

Philip-Lorca diCorcia lives and works in New York. The events of 9/11 affected him deeply, but one image haunted him more than any others... The image of desperate persons diving head first out of the burning towers and flying through the air to their death. PL is deathly afraid of heights (afraid of falling from heights), and this image truly haunted him. Yet somehow, he was inspired to view these pole dancers as a related image, an allusion to flight, but infact a descent, often head first, spinning down to the floor.


Perhaps he sees these dancers as somehow reenacting the event, giving the victims' suffering a martyr's romatic allure. Perhaps by turning the violence of the original on it's head with the seduction of the latter, it allowed him to deal with the horror. PL didn't expound on this inspiration for the work... but it undoubtedly provided a compelling context to critically re-evaluate it.

Secondly...

BCAM - The Inaugural Installation
February 2008 - Way too freakin' long

The new Broad Contemporary Art Museum located at LACMA... I'm bored.
Why the hell does this exhibition need to be up for 9 months!

For my full rant... go read the entry on my personal blog...
I can't be bothered to copy it here... I'm too bored...