Pst....

PST tally so far: 5 exhibits

I haven't been visiting as many PST exhibits as I have wanted to. I plan to rectify that problem very soon. Hopefully this upcoming weekend if the wind doesn't stick around. Or if it does it may help me get places faster. I am usually no match for the wind in very embarrassing ways. One day I'll probably be blown up into the sky like Remedios. (I digress to magical realism, as always, but again has nothing to do with Los Angeles, contemporary art. etc.)

LACMA: (not in the order I saw them in, but in order of their closing)

1) Asco-December 4th
Firstly Asco, (Aah sko) -which is one of my favorite Spanish words, means disgust. Me da asco-You disgust me. You probably already know that, because you live in Califas, but just as always wanted to impart some knowledge, because if you can learn one thing today, it should be how to say the word disgust in another language.

I guess I left not knowing the contributions of Asco on the art scene, mainly I felt it was a photo series of them in Bonnie and Clyde style outfits, staring into the camera as a group. We are here I guess.

I understand taking the stereotypical and making it yours. (Space Lucha Libre) I understand wanting to acknowledge your place in a medium in which you are marginalized. (making an awards ceremony for your own movie because you will never be awarded for your accomplishments as an artist as a Latino/Chicano)

Maybe it was a curatorial problem or maybe because the night before I had spent to much time in Tispangatron, but I just didn't get it. I felt lost in that gallery space. I felt that it came off a little narcissistic. I am not sure if that was supposed to be the point. But isn't art in its nature narcissistic. (chew on that)

Here is what I am loving about this PST movement, is that a lot of these artists are still alive and they can talk and they do talk about their art. A lot of them are talking on the website, in handheld devices in the galleries, talks at the art institutions. I wish that I would have heard Gamboa jr talking about these pieces earlier, than just right now. I would have not been so very perdida.


2) California Design- closes June 3 (My birthday)
It is amazing to see the history of mid-century modern interior design pieces. A personal design era favorite of mine. This movement was so all encompassing, the clothes you wore, the music you listened to, the car you drove, whether you surfed or not. And it is all here in this exhibit the Avanti , the long boards, the shelves, pottery, sterocabinets, textiles.

The highlight of this exhibit of course is the Eames' living room re-created in a class box to get a 360 view. To see where they lived, created entertained.

I love really everything about this exhibit. Especially the thought of throwing a dinner party in these outfits, where I would serve Lobster of course. There is so much to digest, pardon the pun, I need a few more hours to listen to all of the video and sound commentary that comes with this exhibit.

I didn't have time for 5 car stud, I hear it is very polarizing, makes you feel emotionally beat up. It closes January 15th.

(a picture of me at the Getty talking about LACMA, I guess I will have to take a picture of me at LACMA and talk about the Getty exhibits, but for now, I am tired of talking about art.)

Wrong. (on the cheap)

If you aren't aware, this weekend marks the kick off of Pacific Standard Time all around the SoCal area. Sunday is also free, so if you don't take advantage of it, it is completely your fault.

And they event have free shuttles going from museum to museum, so again, no excuse.

Asco exhibit=free
3 Getty exhibits=free
Eames exhibit @ A+D= free (did you know Ice Cube is a big collector of Eames furniture, well know you know)
Mexican Modernism in LA=free

Scroll down the website to free admission and see all the wonderful FREE.

I promise it will be great.

reconciling the truth

(a photoless post because I would probably be fined for copyright infringement)

Believe me there was a time when photography was focused on something other than catching celebrities with Starbucks in hand. There was a time when photography exposed you to worlds never seen... ring elongated necks of the Masai, fish with no eyes, moments captured in ironic juxtapositions that helped you think about the world just a little differently.

Right now at the Getty is one of the best photography exhibits I have had the pleasure of seeing. Engaged Observers is a 200 piece exhibition of documentary photography that has a artist list that reads like a dream team of thought provoking masters.

It captures what it is like to be a adolescent girl (shout out to the girls getting ready for a dance in Edina, MN) exposes you to the corporate irresponsibility of the Chisso plant that wiped out residents of a fishing village in Japan by taking away their only way of life and to add salt to the wound crippled them physically, shows you the face of homeless children in Seattle, a and a German's view of the deep south and separation of the races pre-integration.

These are not pretty pictures, they make you speechless all the same.

The most controversial piece being James Nachtwey's 60 photo montage "The Sacrifice" a collection from a medi-vac unit in Iraq in 2006. My recommendation is to really visually digest these photos for yourself, all 60, step back and watch people for a while as they start computing images 1-8, they perhaps linger just a little more, before it becomes a little too much for them and they walk away. I think this is part of the experience of this piece. It is one thing to have an idea of something that is far far away in a distant land and it is another all together to see it. The blood, the tubes snaking from frame to frame, a hole in stomach, the concentration tinged with fear.

I guess I don't make it sound like the most uplifting sell of this show, but sometimes things aren't meant to lift you up, it is meant to take you in and chew you up a bit.

It is hard to reconcile the truth.

(now until November 12th)

LA on the cheap-oil barons really know how to do it up

There is a white city on a hill, a hill you can only get to by taking a train into the sky.

Sounds like the beginning of a puff-esque children's story, but in actuality it is just the Getty Center, which by far is one of the greatest places to see in LA on the cheap. Sure the cost of parking goes up and up, but if you bring friends it isn't so bad.

When you get to see the views of ocean, mountains, city it is worth it. When you get to see the Irises it is worth it. When you see something made by hand in 1100 a.d. it is worth it. The blueberry apple pie is worth it. Then you forget the $15 for a car full of your friends.

I highly recommend spending a couple hours devouring the 200 piece "engaged observers", by far my favorite photo exhibit I have seen and it is so much to digest that it will get its very own post.

This weekend the Getty continues with their Saturdays off the 405 with a free concert from Bomba Estereo

cost: $15 for parking, but after 5:PM it is Freeeeeeeeeeee! (coincidentally the concert starts after 5)
Also on the 761 line, (but this is consistently inconsistent)

Strip malls

After spending any time in Los Angeles and its greater la area it isn't hard to believe that the Strip Mall was invented in California. Sometimes when you are standing on street corners you are surrounded by them. Nail places, sushi, dry cleaning, cell phone carriers, mom and pop falafel joints. The best strip mall concentration is on La Cienega between 3rd and Beverly.

I don't frequent them. They look rundown, dirty and generally unclean. Something about being served food in a strip mall gives me the general heebs. I know I shouldn't feel that way and have heard that there are some excellent restaurants like Lou that resides in a strip mall and there is always a line outside of Mario's Peruvian Seafood on Rossmore. (which is by far the dirtiest looking strip mall I have seen. They should just bulldoze the Popeye's and Radio Shack and just put in a Mario's restaurant)

Many Californians laugh at my strip mall phobia, but is it Californian to love something so Californian?

Related exhibit: Urban Panoramas at the Getty Center
You will notice that one of the strip malls in Opie's portion of the show has recently been torn down, possibly to add more lofts to Loftopolis located along Wilshire in the Miracle mile.

My Minnesota counterpart: Dumpy Strip Malls