Snips and Snails: Let the Fall Art Season Begin!

Comments (0) By Doug Harvey Tuesday, Sep 8 2009

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Arcim-who-do? Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593) was that Italian dude who made paintings of heads created from fruits and vegetables, and was adopted by the Surrealists as an early precursor. His strangely specific strategy also permeates the work of Constance Mallinson, whose recent paintings are the subject of a Project Series exhibit at Pomona College Museum of Art, opening Saturday night. It’s a bit of a haul, but if you missed Mallinson’s January show at Angles, it’s worth the trip to see these meticulously crafted oil-on-paper memento mori, re-creating art historical images of the human body — from Donatello’s Mary Magdalene to Manet’s Olympia, as meticulously representational accretions of dead and dying vegetative scraps. Haunting.

There are plenty of interesting shows to check out closer to home — Kevin Appel’s new modestly scaled works on paper wouldn’t have looked out of place in his former teacher Don Suggs’ OTIS survey (which, incidentally, I co-curated with Meg Linton. I also went to grad school with Appel. ... And I’m pretty sure I once saw Willem Dafoe riding the trolley in Disneyland.) Superimposing his disintegrated cubist architectures on vintage landscape and wildlife photographs, Appel’s first solo show with ACME adds a welcome layer of conceptual tension to his elegant geometric abstractions.

Roger Herman, Auditorium

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Doug Aitken’s hypnotic animals-in-hotels video installation migration will screen at Regen Projects II. Another selection of Lorser Feitelson’s late curvilinear abstractions is up at Louis Stern Fine Art — I have yet to tire of these blasts from L.A.’s endangered past.

As for L.A.’s shaky future, Saturday also features openings at two of the new model of artist-run collectives. Charles Irvin — most recently featured in the Hammer’s “9 Lives” weirdness buffet — is kick-starting his Chinatown commune WPA with a solo show titled “Four Baboons Adoring the Rising Sun,” opening Saturday, from 7 to 10 p.m. Back out West, at Godawfulist, artist Steven Hull’s newly hatched Las Cienegas Projects, emerging artist Nikki Pressley is sharing the space with up-and-comer Daniel Hawkins, a recent UCLA undergrad who has been producing some of the most interesting painting/sculpture/performance/engineering hybrids. His new piece is a sort of fun house diorama of an infinite stretch of railroad tracks, with the bells and whistles exposed. The great technological agent of manifest destiny collapsed into an obvious fiction. Say, maybe this shit is all about 9/11 after all. Never mind.

From the Streets of Iran
Crewest, 110 Winston St., L.A.
(213) 627-8272
Sept. 10-26

Ry Rocklen
House of Return
Parker Jones, 510 Bernard St., L.A.
(323) 227-0102
Sept. 9-Oct. 17

Roger Herman
Paintings of the 1980s
Jancar Gallery, 961 Chung King Road, L.A.
(213) 625-2522
Sept. 12–Oct. 10

Allen Ruppersberg
You and Me or the Art of Give and Take
Santa Monica Museum of Art,
Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica
(310) 586-6488
Sept. 12-Dec. 19

Bruce Nauman
Skywriting Over Pasadena
Armory Center for the Arts,
145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena
(626) 792-5101
Sept. 12, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

Brian Bress
The Royal Box
Cherry and Martin,
2712 S. La Cienega Blvd., L.A.
(310) 559-0100
Sept. 12-Oct. 24
Reception: Sept. 12, 6-9 p.m.

Charles Irvin
Four Baboons Adoring the Rising Sun
WPA, 510 Bernard St. (Chinatown), L.A.
(213) 503-5762
Aug. 29-Sept. 19
Reception: Sept. 12, 7-11 p.m.

Nikki Pressley Contemplations and Actions
Daniel Hawkins Railroad
Las Cienegas Projects,
2045 S. La Cienega Blvd., L.A.
Sept. 11–Oct. 7
Reception: Sept. 10, 6-9 p.m.

Kevin Appel
Drawings
ACME, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.
(323) 857-5942
Sept. 12–Oct. 10

Doug Aitken
migration
Regen Projects,
633 N. Almont Drive, L.A.,
and 9016 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A.
(310) 276-5424
Sept. 12-Oct. 17

Lorser Feitelson
The Late Paintings
Louis Stern Fine Arts,
9002 Melrose Ave., W. Hlywd.
(310) 276-0147
Sept. 12–Dec. 12

Constance Mallinson
Project Series 38
Pomona College Museum of Art,
Montgomery Art Center
333 N. College Way, Claremont
(909) 621-8283
Aug. 25-Oct. 18
Reception: Sept. 12, 6-8 p.m.

Sandow Birk
American Qur’an
Koplin Del Rio,
6031 Washington Blvd.,Culver City
(310) 836-9055
Sept. 8-Oct. 30
Reception Sept. 12, 6-8 p.m.