Critical Catchup 02

It's not on Amazon or the OTIS or LA Louver websites yet, but I can state with near certainty that the beautiful catalog for "Don Suggs: One Man Group Show" is real. The cover shows a detail from "Black Cross, New Mexico (Matrimony Series)" (2006), currently on view as part of the artist's solo show Concentric at Louver. Part of the Patrimony/Matrimony series, it is a translation of one of a dozen or so archetypal art historical paintings, sampling each band of color from the original's formal or psychological center outward. In this case, the source image was Georgia O'Keefe's 1929 masterpiece.





Curiously, the work can also be seen in the background of this grainy surveillance photo of a homeless crazy man being interviewed by Homeland Security. Clearly their vertiginous qualities have a variety of applications, both aesthetic and practical.

Critical Catchup 01

I keep forgetting that I'm an art critic. But here's a link to my previous piece for the LA Weekly, a round-up of gals at Bergamot Station, including Marnie Weber, Karen Carson, and Shirley Tse, whose sculpture "Sink Like a Submarine" includes the carved jade heart pictured above.


My current piece is a review of the Hammer's "Eden's Edge" which includes Elliot Hundley's seminal styro-palette "Deathless Aphrodite of the Spangled Mind" from 2003.


Marnie Weber's Spirit Girls gave a typically coffin-rattling performance Friday night in conjunction with the Hammer's screening of the artist's film and videographic oeuvre. Above, a homeless crazy man prostrates himself before Lead Spirit Girl. Weber's exhibition at Patrick Painter has been extended through June 2nd.

Gold Country Log Phase One

I spent the better part of a week with filmmaker Lee Lynch travelling to Oroville CA for the 6th Annual Ishi Gathering and Seminar held there on May 11th and 12th. Lee and I are working on several projects detailing the 1870 murder of local Indian hunter Hi Good, including our contributions to the Gathering: a multimedia Living History presentation (I did sound and the shadow puppet show) starring and presented for Oroville high school students at the Butte County Historical Society. Our other actors included seminar mainspring anthropologist Richard Burrill (“By socks, but the spirit of Hi Good will rise tonight, and celebrate! He was the fellow that made the sons of roosters hunt their holes, and when they finally plugged him, there was mighty few of them left to rejoice, mighty few.”) and "Nuggets" who played Ishi in a flash-forward sequence. The Monster Indian costume modeled by Lee in an earlier post was a personification of the dehumanizing mechanism at work in the young narrator of our story as he shoots a Native American burglar, and was worn by one of the student actors.

"Nuggets" spent most of the weekend in character. Here he poses catatonically on the lawn of the BCHS for several minutes with excited schoolchilden puzzled at his lack of response. Seconds later, he leapt forward with a loud cry, scattering the thrilled and frightened 4th-graders in every direction.


Unfortunately, this is one of only two shots I got of the Feather Fiesta Days Parade, as I was in costume handing out fliers for "An Evening in Ishi's World Through Film and Drama." Missed shots include the Christian preschool aerobics float, the giant Taco Bell taco proclaiming 'Thinking Outside the Bun Since 1969' and the mature and Rubenesque exotic belly dancers on an unadorned flatbed truck. But this shot captures the spirit of the event nicely. I thought I was getting hot in my Indian Fighter get-up, but I saw Mr. Team Mascot about a half hour later stripped to his jogging shorts. It was hot!

More photos to come and up now at flickr.

"Who Doesn't Like Owls?"

As contemporary philosopher C. Clerc observed in the title of her seminal text "Who Doesn't Like Owls?," who doesn't like owls? This cunning turn of phrase returned to me recently while I was guest-juring the annual student exhibit at the righteous Pasadena City College. It was a chore, with over 220 works to sort through. The painting above, "If the Waking Life Fell Asleep" by Heber Rodriquez caught my eye immediately, and I kept returning to it. Another work that attracted and held my attention was Marcus Anthony's intricate carved wooden wall relief portrait of DJ Kool Herc, though I could do without the text panel plunked in the middle of the negative space. I'd be pleasantly surprised to come across either of these works in a gallery or grad school. These kind of gigs are sometimes a radical challenge to preconceptions about the supposed function of The Art World as qualitative filter -- not only do you see a vastly wider range of unprocessed creativity in play, but many of the works are equal to or better than anything out there.

Pardon Our Dust!

Okay, TSM3 went swell, thanks to everyone who participated, and don't forget Noel Lawrence of the JX Williams Archive will be delivering his full presentation on the great man's work tonight (Friday the 25th) at Showcave, and Found Footage Festival will be screening an entirely new side-splitting program of found video at M Bar tonight and tomorrow. Now I have a few minutes to catch y'all up on what's what in the greater Wilmington district...

Mongo Video

Still from safety film "Life is For Living" rescued by Found Footage Festival, who will be presenting new material at TSM3 on Wednesday

Please note: The event is on Wednesday the 23rd, NOT Thursday the 24th, and it has now been moved to Gallery 6 instead of the Wilder Theater.

JUST ADDED: a short program of lost work from the cult director J.X. Williams!

7 p.m., Wednesday May 23

Thrift Store Movie Night III

UCLA Department of Art Event at
UCLA Hammer Museum, Gallery 6

FREE!

For the third year, the UCLA Hammer Museum and the UCLA Department of Art welcome L.A. Weekly art critic Doug Harvey and other archivists of found media for the presentation of films, videos and slides rescued from the obscurity of thrift stores, swap meets and dumpsters.

The evening includes excerpts from recent and upcoming programs by the Coalition for Cinematic Conservation and Preservation at the Echo Park Film Center, possibly including an educational filmstrip on the wonders of the banana, "20 Minutes to Go," vintage Asian and Indian music videos, and the classic "ABC of S*x Education for Trainables," and a selection from NY artist Brian Bellott's DVD collection of found photographs!

This year's guest curators include Animal Charm, whose disturbing and hilarious video jams bring Bruce Conner's loopy aesthetics into the digital era with such mind boggling deconstructions as "Slow Gin Soul Stallion," "Pet Programming" and the amazing "Stuffing." Animal Charm will debut several brand new works at this screeening!

Also presenting will be Brooklyn's Found Footage Festival, hosted by curators Geoff Haas, Joe Pickett and/or Nick Prueher, who will provide their unique observations and commentary on found video obscurities ranging from the world's worst telemarketers "John & Johnny" to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's scintillating take on Brazilian culture in 1983's "Carnival in Rio." FFF will also be presenting a new full length program at the M Bar 1253 N. Vine Street (at Fountain Avenue) in West Hollywood on May 24, 25, & 26.

Harrier Still

I just came across this pretty good little documentary about Harry Smith, and since the Harry Smith Anthology Remixed show is still up in at alt.gallery in Newcastle, I figured what the hell. Poke around on the altgallery site - there's a complete full color online catalog with all 84 pieces, including awesome works by Jad Fair, Yamantaka Eye, dearraindrop, Christian Cummings, and many others!

Ishi Madness in Oroville

Just got back from a week in Gold Country giving multimedia living history presentations to high school kids, among other things. Full report shortly, plus several overdue posts when I've caught up on my chores.

A Hinterland Who's Who

For Cinco de Mayo I managed to finagle a seat on 'Hinterlands Redux,' The Center for Land Use Interpretation's tour of the high desert east of Los Angeles organized in conjunction with Andrea Zittel's mid-career survey at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary. I was probably the only non-CLUI staffmember aboard that had been on the original 'Hinterlands' tours 10 years ago -- one of the watershed "artworks" of the 90's IMPO. So I may have been the only person to miss roadside artist Moby Dick's carved entities (though I still have mine from the first trip -- see fig 02) and being able to approach Giant Rock (though we did make it to the Integratron)



The trip included a visit with Ms. Zittel at her A-Z West compound, where the artist was deep in preparation for next weekend's High Desert Test Sites extravaganza. Here are a couple of snapshots I snuck in one of the artist's shipping container studios of what I believe to be a prototype of her Wagon Station modular living breadbox units -- this one customized for the planet Kashyyyk.




Although 'Hinterlands Redux' was a little long on the high cluture and short on the industrial slag heaps, it did afford me the oppurtunity to finally visit the late Noah Purifoy's remarkable and inspiring assemblage environment in Joshua Tree, which people have been telling me I would love for years and they were right. Here's a shot of one of several performative environments that stud this unique site. For more complete information, why not contact the Canadian Wildlife Service in Ottawa?

Pachyderms in the Irish Mist

Here is a photo of your humble moderator at the podium at the Getty expounding briefly on the links between Alcohol Withdrawal Delerium and the work of Tim Hawkinson. Here is a portion of my address. (Photo by J. Chertkow)

"Zoopsia is a rarely used clinical psychiatric term referring to animal hallucinations during severe alcohol withdrawal – a symptom of Alcohol Withdrawal Delirium or delirium tremens. This very serious condition -- which can include sleep disturbance, heart palpitations, disorientation, sweating, panic attacks, multisensory hallucinations, seizures, and ultimately death – is thought to result from the desensitization of the nervous system to inhibitory neurotransmitter Gamma-aminobutyric acid or GABA, and typically affects heavy-drinking long term alcoholics. While literature pertaining directly to this specific symptom is surprisingly rare, I managed to track down a film segment from the early 1940s documenting a particularly severe incident of alcohol-induced Zoopsia. [Roll Clip]"

Hawkin' Bubbles

Just a friendly reminder of Sunday's afternoon discussion of Tim Hawkinson's work with Margaret Wertheim and Chris Miles at the Getty:

Figuring the Art of Pink Elephants
Sunday April 29, 2007
4 pm
Harold M. Williams Auditorium, Getty Center

And if you're on that other coast, Wednesday, May 2nd Mayor Koch hands Tim the keys to the city at

Tim Hawkinson: How Man is Knit
PaceWildenstein
545 West 22nd Street
May 3, 2007 — June 9, 2007

Reception 6-8pm

&
Tim Hawkinson: Sculpture
NyeHaus, 15 Gramercy Park South
May 3, 2007 — June 16, 2007

Reception 7-9pm

Above: Egg, 2007 Courtesy PaceWildenstein Photo by Josh White, corrected by the MGT

Action Pegasi Are Go!

Karen Carson's new body of work conflates such disparate visual domains as fantasy art, Abstract Expression, Western art, and the history of her own work and that of late 20th century painting into a utterly contemporary Pop-Apocalyptic landscape. "As close as fine art can get to van art without blowing the whole deal for everybody."

Ride the Wind
Artist’s reception on Sat. April 28, 2007 from 5-7pm.

Rosamund Felsen Gallery
Bergamot Station B4
2525 Michigan Ave
Santa Monica

April 28 — May 26
Gallery hours are 10-5:30, Tuesday-Saturday.

For her upcoming show, Karen Carson presents new paintings in acrylic on wood-framed tycore panels, accompanied by a selection of framed large-scale studies in acrylic on paper. Spending half the year on a ranch in Montana, where almost every painting is a wild-west cliché, Carson swore that she would never paint horses. Perhaps it was just a matter of time. Now, with all of the dripping sensuality of gestural abstraction, winged horses descend like a firestorm on wooded, rural landscapes, populated by the hauntingly blasé black silhouettes of oblivious urbanites. As much a biting commentary on the myopia of urban cosmopolitanism as a battle of painterly clichés, it is a testament to the depth and intensity of her commitment to painting that Carson can rend the torrential complexities of the world as deftly from the fury of expressionism as from the blankness of silhouette.

In the third gallery will be works from her previous series of landscapes inspired by the wind, including a large scale, two-panel painting in silk dye and acrylic on silk, titled Currents, as well as several studies in watercolor on paper.

Suggsomania Redux

Click here for my LA WEEKLY colleague Holly Myers' insightful profile/review of Don Suggs' ' "One Man Group Show"

XXX-Large Trump-et

As promised, here is a photo I took of Tim Hawkinson's Uberorgan in the IBM Sculpture Atrium in Manhattan in 2005. In this first image we see the sculpture reflected in the black monolithic facade of Trump Tower. Observe how it appears to be beckoning us to the Dark Side. It's as if Donald Trump is Darth Vader as a building and the inverse Uberorgan is his junk. Below, the Uberorgan appears in its normal, relatively benign form, although this homeless crazy man seems perturbed nonetheless.


Here's a recording of the astounding improvisational passage from the middle of the Uberorgan's piano-roll program, made at the Getty getty.

And this should be a pretty free-wheeling discussion on Sunday afternoon. I'm focussing on the DTs. Stick with what you know, I figure.

Figuring the Art of Pink Elephants
Sunday April 29, 2007
4 pm
Harold M. Williams Auditorium, Getty Center


L.A. Weekly critic Doug Harvey, Margaret Wertheim, acclaimed author and director of the Institute for Figuring, and Christopher Miles, theorist and professor at Cal State Long Beach, explore the art and science of Tim Hawkinson's work on view in the exhibition Zoopsia: New Works by Tim Hawkinson.

The End of the End has been Postponed! Mark your Calendars!

I forgot to take my camera to the openings last night so no shots of Jack Black ogling the Johanna Went collection at Track 16. Wouldn't want to mess with The D anyhow. You know, I had a band in the late 80s called Tenacious Mucoid Exudate - I just wonder if perhaps Mssrs Black and Guss didn't stumble across one of our legendary performances at the King Eddy or our highly coveted limited edition cassette recordings. Listen to this and tell me I'm crazy. Then go out to see A Warning Shouldn't Be Pleasant which has been extended until May 11th! (And keep an eye peeled for The D's new punkadelic "Explosion in a Thrift Store" couture.)

Bishton Bubbles

Speaking of Saturday Ginny Bishton's opening at Richard Telles is also occurring on that night. Above is a revealing glimpse of her new soup-based works, and here is my LA Weekly piece about them.

Last Chance for Armageddon

If my calculations are correct, today - Friday the 20th - is the last day for seeing A Warning Shouldn't Be Pleasant, High Energy Constructs' EOTW show at West LA College Gallery in Culver City, where dangle my crime scene marshmallow clouds of Damocles. I was at the opening but forgot to take any pictures of the work, though I did get this awesome shot of Marnie Weber drinkin in the boys room! Marnie's first solo show with her new dealer Patrick Painter opens Saturday.

Checking Out the Cup-etition

Tim Hawkinson pursuing his investigations Saturday at the opening of "Don Suggs: One Man Group Show." He is inspecting the Feast Pole entitled "Cone" Below is a detail of "Feast Pole of an Ideal" Both works were completed last week. Here is David Pagel's insightful LA Times review from this morning.

Suggsomania Saturday Night!

Don Suggs: One Man Group Show
A survey exhibition spanning 35 years of the work of Los Angeles-based artist Don Suggs co-curated by Doug Harvey, Artist and Art Critic for the LA Weekly, and Meg Linton, Director of the Ben Maltz Gallery.
Exhibition Dates: April 14 – June 23, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 14, 5-7pm. Free and open to the public.

The first of several curatorial chickens is coming home to roost tomorrow. Even if you think you're familiar with the work of Don Suggs, I can guarantee you'll encounter at least one body of work (if not half a dozen) that you haven't seen. Above and below are examples from one of my favorite discoveries during the curatorial process -- a remarkable series of altered found images from the early 70s. Apologies for the photo quality -- my bad. From my catalog essay:

"The early painting Lady (1975) prefigures how Suggs -- on his own terms -- would later allow geometry to resurface as a tool of semiotic interference. But the most exhaustive roadmap of these future concerns was laid out in his Decodes, a little-seen but remarkable group of small, playful collagey interventions. Also known as “Paint Ons”, the Decodes overlay an extensive array of found and appropriated imagery – often from magazines or other commercial reproductions such as postcards – with various painted configurations of the nine geometric forms*. The Decodes prefigure much of Suggs’ later work involving obscured vistas -- as well as the signature found-image obliterations by John Baldessari which they predate by a decade. These small works set the template for Suggs’ multivalent use of ideal geometric forms superimposed on (or otherwise conflated with) stock pictorial representations: they interrupt the trompe l’oeil conspiracy between the viewer and the ground image while delivering a formal structural translation of the picture’s mechanism – simultaneously destabilizing and reinforcing the image; diluting its authority while corroborating its essential authenticity as a picture.

While this is a potent formula, easily (and elsewhere) mined for an entire career, Suggs adds extra layers of playful consonance by incorporating aspects of the source material’s narrative content – often simply through his choice of imagery, as in “Ike,” a rectilinear reduction of General Eisenhower delivering a perfect 45˚’ salute – I mean like, how square can you get? Other examples undermine the order of symbolic codes by looping them back on themselves, as in "Premier Alambic w/ Monk Chartreuse", which superimposes (among other geometric figures) a vessel-shaped silhouette in the titular hue – obviously a jug of the very yellow-green liqueur presumably being distilled in the underlying image. This sort of punning subversion of the platonic idealism of the geometric overlays throws a monkeywrench into the implied dualism of the pictorial/abstract pairings and keeps the viewer on his or her toes. The visual clarity, sweetness, and wit of these works rival the best “Grafis Annual 76” had to offer (which is saying a lot) and suggest that Suggs, in the best Modern tradition, has one foot (and a phantom potential career) in graphic design."


* "the 9 underlying geometric forms of nature (the circle, cross, triangle, square, teardrop, spiral, mandorla, wave, and spire)"

22: Ruptured Rationalist Hubris Spews Glossolalia Plume!

Harry Smith Anthology Remixed
Alt.Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
8 May – 30 June 2007

The exhibition aims to create a visual representation of the Anthology of American Folk Music edited by Harry Smith. Artists have been selected who reflect the ethos of the Anthology and whose practice may explore processes of patterning, systems, music, alchemy, anthropology, social change or a ‘folk’ identity. We are interested in creating an archive to continue the collective history and human experience of the Anthology, as seen through the eyes of contemporary visual artists and musicians.

The exhibition has been organised in consultation with Rani Singh of the Harry Smith Archives and is a companion exhibition to the Harry Smith exhibition at Reg Vardy Gallery in Sunderland UK which runs from 1st May – 8th June 2007.


PS: If anyone wants to print out a hi-res copy of the image above, there's one here.

Click the Ha Ha for entertaining audiovisual presentation!

Sigmar Polke "Slimming Through Richter" 1965
Ha Ha!

Kroncong, Dangdut, Ronggeng, Langgam Jawa, AND Kerawitan?!!

The Dead Walk the Earth

On Friday, while others mourned the loss of their saviour, the hepcats at Il Coral celebrated Halloween with an array of musical acts including Fireworks, who were joined by Victorville's 12-year-old bluegrass sensation Lolo Lodot. Here's an mp3 of their entire performance.


"I just want to point out to all of you the real meaning of this holiday... because it's at midnight on Halloween that the REAL Jesus Christ rises from his grave and walks the earth, killing and drinking the blood of virgins. Are there any virgins in the house? You have two hours."
- My Cousin Clint

A Washington Post

Here are a couple of shots from my most recent film shoot -- Cecil B. Shantibugian's "Mimesis" -- in which I play the role of George Washington. Things were fine until they shut down the jukebox and wouldn't give me back my dollar. Whose face is on it anyway? Motherfuckers. Photos by James Chertkow, M.Ed.


"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. It does little to enhance your calm."
G. Washington

Dangling Participles

Having been suspended from the ceiling of the Armory Northwest in Pasadena for seven weeks, I finally got around to snapping some shots of my Limp Chandelier just before the deinstall. Them's Deb Diehl's video silhouette cameos in the background.

Poupee in the Mist

Reyna, pursuing her investigations this morning at the top of Elysian Park.

Prolegomena to Any Future Chick Art

My testy review of Connie Butler's WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution has been online for a week, but the print version hits the streets tomorrow. The picture shows a little-known portion of Judy Chicago's oeuvre, which is described therein.

Both Sides Now

Here's the back side of one of the five sculptural components of my piece "Out/In," created for Jan Tumlir's 'White Album' show at Shoshona Wayne in 2000, and resurrected for this show opening this Thursday March 15th at West LA College:

A Warning Shouldn't Be Pleasant
March 15 - May 11, 2007

WEST LA COLLEGE GALLERY
9000 Overland Ave., Culver City, CA 90230

Opening Celebration: Thursday, March 15, 2007, 6-9pm
with a musical performance by Wreck of the Zephyr

HIGH ENERGY CONSTRUCTS is proud to present its second off-site project, A Warning Shouldn't Be Pleasant – a group exhibition of 23 California-based artists' responsiveness to the end of the world. The exhibition takes its title from an essay by the poet Alice Notley. Like Notely's subtly brash warning, the selected artists playfully and irreverently examine notions of apocalypse with hope and abandonment. Offering conceptually and metaphorically uncanny responses to a somewhat melancholic world-view-notion through a various range of media and visual languages, A Warning Shouldn't Be Pleasant aims at evoking a series of mercurial and illuminating narratives amongst artworks, which address, embody, and explore this very current and somewhat timelessly elusive and incalculable theme. Revealing connections to belief, doubt, and politics, the artworks here hope to contribute to a larger more realistic conversation that seems to not be happening loudly nor clearly enough, concerning and/or in response to current global obsessions with cultural stasis and battle.

Featured artists include: Jimmy Chertkow, Marcus Civin, Christian Cummings and Michael Decker, Todd Davis, Julie Dermansky, Nicholas Grider, Mark Hagen, Kent Hammond, Jeremiah Harrison, Doug Harvey, Marc Herbst, Gregory Michael Hernandez, Peter Herrmann, August Highland, Candice Lin, Jay Lizo, Katrin Jurati, Caroline Rankin, Greg Santos, Michael Smoler, David E. Stone, and Megan Whitmarsh.

March 15 – May 11, 2007
Gallery hours: Monday - Friday, 10am-4pm

WEST LA COLLEGE GALLERY
9000 Overland Ave., Culver City, CA 90230
Official Map & Directions
Unofficial directions:
get yrself to Culver City off the 10 west or something...exit at Overland...
the campus is on Overland just past Jefferson...
once you turn into the campus, take yr second right (Albert Vera Street) and follow it up to parking lot B...take a right into parking lot B and across the way is the FAC...
the gallery is in the Fine Arts Complex...


for more information email: info@highenergyconstructs.com or call 323.227.7920

Through a glass, Dorkily

AKA Retroactive Breed Parity II. Here is Al Gordon, C.D. as seen through a Pellegrino bottle.

Danceability in the Crosshairs

The other opening I made was Brad Eberhard's & Allan Ludwig's thesis shows out at Claremont Graduate University. Brad, in addition to being a talented painter, is the leader of Wounded Lion. For this evening's musical portion, however, Brad subcontracted to a remarkable act: The Incredible 2-headed DJ Scottie Vera, who regaled the hundred + revellers with such classic dance numbers as "Psycho" and "Hello Lucille, Are You a Lesbian?" These conjoined fellows are on the right track and will almost certainly go all the way!! Photo by Jun.

For Organ Security Please Wear a Vest

I actually made it out to a couple of openings. The unveiling of the Getty version of Tim Hawkinson's Uberorgan (and concurrent 'Zoopsia' exhibit) was embiggened by the gourmet hot dogs and presence of Gordon Haines. My recent LA WEEKLY studio visit with Tim is detailed here. This clipping -- from the Uberorgan's original installation at Mass MoCA in 2001 -- is reminiscent of Cecil Beaton's Jackson Pollock fashion spread in Vogue executed almost exactly 50 years previously. I'll see if I can't dig up the pictures I took of "der Ub" in Manhattan during the Whitney retrospective in 2005.

Retroactive Breed Parity

We have received complaints that Nigel the whippet has been accorded considerable exposure on this blog at the expense of his older greyhound comrades, Albert and Reyna. To begin to address this issue, we offer the above recent snap of Reyna in full regal splendor. Mess of other posts coming soon. Thankyou for your patience. The MGT.
Addendum: In response to a number of misguided comments on the 'cuteness' of this image, it behooves us to point out that it was not posed and that the crown-shaped cushion did in fact find its way into this position entirely by chance. Thankyou. The MGT.