No Region Would

Anyone else notice that LA's junior college galleries are becoming the Kunsthall alternatives to to the top-heavy markademic fArtworld? Kio Griffith's been curating a series of awesome shows at the West LA College Gallery - a hidden gem of the west side/Culver City scene, just off Overland & Jefferson. His latest is the best yet, and closes Friday.

In an LA art season that offers more exceptional painting shows than any Fall I can remember, No Region Would has a number of very strong, overlooked local talents, including father/son abstractionists Dan and Ryan Callis, and three powerful Burchfieldesque landscapes in extreme (but intermittent) impasto on large unstretched canvases by Nick Brown.

 

There are some very interesting sculptures and painting/sculpture hybrids, like Nicholas Shake's two-part work pairing a wretched albino clump-entity made from "friendly" plastic casts of tire treads and what looks like a basketball hoop with a circular monochrome black painting; your basic dog/moon kind of relationship, filtered through Rauschenbergian irony.

Rema Ghouloum and Satoshi Saegusa both offer up successful experiments in painting/object confusion, while Shigenori Ebata's Waltz consists of a radical poetic reconfiguration of the artist's apartment door, which he lived without for a month during its deconstruction. Noise legend John Wiese contributes an multi-screen display of Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin performances with interactive soundtrack mashup capability.

There's lots of other cool stuff, but it's only open two more days, Thursday and Friday Oct 3 & 4, from 12 Noon - 6 PM, so hustle on over to
WLAC Gallery
Fine Arts Complex
West LA College
900 Overland Ave

Culver City, CA 90230

Here's a map and directions on the gallery's new website.

Images: Dan Callis, Kio via Shigenori Ebata, Nick Brown X2, Ryan Callis, Nicolas Shake (install shot photoshopped by DH), Rema Ghuloum, Satoshi Saegusa, Shigenori Ebata, John Wiese