Two currents seem to be dominating the L.A. art scene this month. First, the revival of an international perspective, a focus on the art of other cultures and on overtly political themes, all catalysed one would assume by the events in the Persian Gulf. The second distinguishable pulse is L.A.’s long-time love for work that wryly challenges traditional definitions of what counts as art.
At the Beyond Baroque Gallery in the beach town of Venice until 22 June, an exhibition titled “World News”, including artwork and related poetry by forty L.A. artists responding to the Gulf War.
At the Sherry Frumkin Gallery in Santa Monica, “Two from Beirut” features the work of two Middle Eastern artists.
In the south coast community of Torrance at the Minus Zero Gallery until the end of April is an exhibition called “The Price of Intervention: From Korea to Saudi Arabia”, featuring anti-war posters and original art works that take as their theme international conflict.
As for exhibition spaces that stretch the membrane of what we call art, the Museum of Neon Art - MONA - has always been up to the task. MONA specialises in neon and kinetic works typically ignored by “serious” art institutions. “This is not sidewalk art faire work”, ays Lilli Lakick, internationally known neon artist and founder of MONA. “We show well schooled artists that happen to use light and motion as their medium of choice, but we pride ourselves on having a very unique show space.” Unique indeed. Where other museums abound in “do not touch” signs, the Neon Museum abounds in buttons and levers which the viewer is encouraged to press, activating all manner of zany, moving and squiggling artworks. The current show lasts until 11 May and is titled “Still Lifes in Motion”, the play on words referring to seven prominent neon and kinetic artists who translate the traditional still-life motif into humorous and provocative mobile compositions.
400 South Hope Street Gallery in the heart of downtown mounts a show titled “On the Go: Contemporary Art Based on Transportation” until 21 April. Particularly relevant in L.A., where cars outnumber people and anything that has wheels is celebrated, this show includes paintings, sculptures, found objects and constructions related to the innumerable cars, buses, skates, bikes, planes that make up the West Coast contemporary landscape.
At the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery until 18 April is a show titled “Enclosures”. The show takes as a premise the idea that museums, in their mode of presentation, selection and dissemination of art, covertly help to determine what counts as art. The objects, constructions and paintings on view highlight this function of museums as mediators of the art experience.
Until 4 May, at Linda Cathcart Gallery, in Santa Monica, well known New Yorker Pat Steir makes a West Coast debut of her recent waterfall paintings made from composite quadrille grids of water imagery. These waterfalls break up the subject and toy with notions of originality and reproducibility in post modern art.
We look askance at shows that tout relatives of famous artists who decide to brush late in life and expect that fame and success will come by mere association. A lovely, well appointed show at the Pascal de Sarthe Gallery in West Hollywood until 8 June brings to light the work of Marie Raymond, the mother of artist Yves Klein. No latecomer to art, Raymond was a liberated female artist who came to painting in the heady art atmosphere of Paris in the mid Twenties. She counted as her colleagues, Mondrian and Jacques Villon and in 1949 won the prestigious Kandinsky Prize. Though one cannot detect a direct relation between the airy, fresh and stimulating abstractions of Raymond and the work of her son, the ambiance that the Raymond created surely influenced the course of Klein’s development.