William Pope.L--Art After White People: Time, Trees, & Celluloid...
Until 8 December
Santa Monica Museum of Art
Bergamot Station, Building G1
2525 Michigan Avenue
Santa Monica, California
T: +1 310 586-6488
www.smmoa.org
'Art After White People' is the first major West-Coast museum exhibition by William Pope.L who ironically calls himself the "friendliest black artist in America." The large-scale installation presents: 'The Grove'; a set design and video, 'APHOV (A Personal History of Videography)'; as well as a set of digital collages in light boxes entitled 'The Semen Pictures', created specifically for the museum. Though at first glance the white painted palm trees in The Grove - which are dying due to their toxic outer coatings - recall recent TV visions of Hurricane Katrina, the work is not necessarily in direct response to any particular natural disaster. It speaks more to the ongoing natural, environmental, social and psychological disaster of man's will to bend nature and its ensuing results. The best aspect of Pope.L's impressive exhibition is the work's ability to be multi-layered, moving from the overtly political as seen in 'APHOV' where a masked man resembling Donald Rumsfeld appears weeping fake blood to Pope.L's title of the piece "The Grove", which also riffs on a popular and upscale shopping mall close to Beverly Hills.
Ruben Ochoa: Recurring Amalgamation
Until 20 October
Vielmetter Gallery
5795 West Washington Blvd
Culver City
CA 90232
T: +1 323 933 2117
Ruben Ochoa wowed crowds at LAXART last summer with his urban ode to freeways, by placing a sculpture of what appeared to be a giant chunk of freeway diagonally across the gallery. The dialogue about the collision of urban terrain and nature is continued at Vielmetter Gallery, where Ochoa shows a series of photographs of Ficus trees whose roots terrorize sidewalks all over LA. They bust up pavement and shift concrete in their search for water. Ochoa also shows an awesome site-specific installation using the rebar steel that provides the structure for poured concrete in building works.
Jessica Stockholder: Sex in the Office
Until 20 October
1301PE Gallery
6150 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles 90048
T: +1 323 938 5822
Using everyday life's detritus - plastic bags, electric cords, traffic cones, even a child's day-glow chair - Yale's director of graduate studies in sculpture, Jessica Stockholder, turns art on its head by gathering unlikely objects to create new superstructures. These created forms delight with slick and sometimes uneasy marriages of colour and texture, juxtaposing materials that create interesting chemistry - for instance, painted fur, plastic, steel chair frames to a glass surface - that provide an oddly provocative tension. Some might even call it sexual tension.
John Espinosa: Odd Sympathy
Until 13 October
Sandroni Rey Gallery
2762 S. La Cienega Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA 90034
T: +1 310.280.0111
John Espinosa is an artist who traverses the supernatural highways and delves into weird phenomena to find inspiration for his work. For his efforts, he has been rewarded with his first solo show at Sandroni Rey Gallery this month. With an exhibition titled 'Odd sympathy', a term coined by 17th-century physicist Christiaan Huygens for inexplicable natural synchronicity, the last great piece I saw by Espinoza entitled 'Infinite Collapse' held 50 gallons of water from the Bermuda Triangle. 'Odd Sympathy' features two new sculptures, maintaining the artist's fascination with the paranormal. Espinoza's debut has plenty of Eastern promise and a bucket load of his trademark juju.
Gordon Matta-Clark: You are the Measure
Until 7 January 2008
MOCA
250 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012
T: +1 213 626 6222
If you missed the Whitney Museum's full-scale retrospective for Gordon Matta-Clark earlier this year MOCA has a repeat performance of this highly influential artist known for his skewed architectural interventions and radical investigations of space - both public and private. One of the artist's most famous, 'Conical Intersect' (1975), is a torpedo-shaped hole sliced through two 17th-century Parisian buildings slated for demolition close to the famed Pompidou Center, which was already under construction. The conical hole, which exited through the roof, provided an unusual glimpse of the machinations and structure of a house, while making a bold statement about civic ruin.
Cris Brodahl: The Yellow Tree
Until 13 October
Marc Foxx
6150 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles
T: +1 323 8575571
Belgian artist Cris Brodahl uses monochromatic paint to heightened effect in her second solo show at Marc Foxx. The images are both religious and sexual - the work simultaneously reminded me of images from Alfred Hitchcock movies and gothic religious imagery seen in High Church from countries like Spain or Italy - compelling and gripping.
Kelly Nipper
Until 27 October
Anna Helwing Gallery
2766 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034-2642
T: +1 310.202.2213
Los Angeles-based video artist Kelly Nipper, who is having her first solo show at Anna Helwing this fall, is having a BIG moment in 2007. With "Floyd on the Floor", showing at Performa07 in New York, and 'Perspectives 158' at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, curated by Toby Kamps, opening in late September, many people may well be asking just who is Kelly Nipper? For her debut at Anna Helwing the artist will show 'Circle Circle', part of a larger series of works where the artist examines the hurricane as a form of unmeasured movement presented in relation to clock time. The meditative two-channel video presents a projection of a dancer, whose hips move in circular rotation analogous to the movement of a hurricane in formation. The dancers bodies slowly roll and move out of synch with one another until they finally circulate in lock step and move powerfully as one.
Benjamin Butler: New Trees
Until 13 October
Karyn Lovegrove Gallery
6150 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90048
T: +1 323 525 1755
Kansas native Benjamin Butler continues his exploration of the natural wonders of the world, namely trees. Though the investigation seems more about paint than nature, these canvasses are beautiful to behold. The eye moves rhythmically through the paintings, led by Butler's sinewy brush strokes, geometric shapes and colours which oscillate against each other, making the trees appear anew, just like the title suggests.
Dash Snow: God Spoiled a Perfect Asshole When He Put Teeth in Your Mouth
22 September - 10 November
Peres Projects
969 Chung King Road
Los Angeles, CA 90012
T: +1 213.617.1100
Though Loisaida hipster royalty/documentarian Dash Snow may need no introduction, his first LA-based show will no doubt turn a few heads and bristle a few shoulders as he debuts his chemically inspired collages, photographs, video and sculptures at Peres Projects at the end of September in Los Angeles' Chung King Road.
Bill Kleiman and Chris Pate: State Line
29 September - 27 October
The Jail Gallery
965 N. Vignes St., #5A
Los Angeles, CA 90012
T: +1 213.621.9567
www.thejailgallery.com
The newly established Jail Gallery presents an interesting proposition with its late September show entitled "State Line," featuring artists Bill Kleiman and Chris Pate who use their art to question and navigate America and its global status. Kleiman creates a sculpture using red, white and blue squeeze toys to create a star of David inside an intricate Arabic geometric pattern, while Chris Pate shows collaged and altered maps on burlap, which speak more directly to the question of state lines.
London native Emma Gray writes about the arts in Los Angeles and was the former West Coast Editor of ArtReview magazine. As well as being the LA correspondent for Saatchi Online's magazine, she writes the L.A. Confidential column on Artnet.com.
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