Shana Nys DambrotIf the exhibition names and themes of this weekend’s gallery offerings are any indication, it seems the Los Angeles art world has embraced the advent of mainstream cannabis culture — or at the very least, the popularity of the 4/20 “high holiday” — with enthusiasm. From a black-light gallery tour to a stoner-friendly sewing circle, a menagerie of clay characters, shows called things like “The Reality of Illusions,” “Further,” “Chemtrails,” “Peripheries,” “Collapse,” “Sway” and “Consumed … well, you get the idea. It’s time to get your open-mind art game all rolled up.
Bitchen Stitches; Credit: Courtesy Art Share LA
Stoner Stitch at Art Share L.A. in the Arts District, 1-3 p.m..
Hosted by Cait Goss of Bitchen Stitches, learn tips and tricks of the craft. Come stoned or bring your own vape — they’ll have discount certificates for all attendees from event sponsor MedMen. All levels welcome, no previous embroidery experience needed. You can bring your own embroidery supplies or purchase a $15 starter kit when reserving your space online. Free event and free parking.
artsharela.org/event/stoner-stitch
Larry Bell and The Los Angeles Tapes; Credit: Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Larry Bell and The Los Angeles Tapes at Hauser & Wirth in the Arts District, 2-4 p.m..
Larry Bell, James Turrell, Robert Irwin and Craig Kauffman are among the pillars of American and especially Californian art history as pioneering practitioners of the Light and Space movement. Part and parcel of an expanded field of inquiry into the mechanics of sight, natural light and the NASA-inspired materials of the “future,” these men and their compatriots took contemporary art to other dimensions, literally. Art historian Alan Solomon interviewed these four in 1969, at the height of the era, but sadly died and the sessions were never published — until now. Join Matthew Simms, editor of The Los Angeles Tapes, in conversation with gallery artist Larry Bell at Hauser & Wirth for some on-the-record insight and, if we're lucky, some extracurriculars from what was surely a mind-blowing time.
laweekly.com/event
The Wax Apple; Credit: Courtesy ICA LA
Taiwanese Tea at ICA LA with The Wax Apple, downtown, 2-5 p.m..
The Wax Apple is a project by Juliana Hung. Responding to Patty Chang’s The Wandering Lake, 2007-2019, and the theme of geographic instability, pop-up shop Days will explore a place still existing in political uncertainty — Hung’s native Taiwan. Join an afternoon celebration of Taiwan with a tea cup made by Hung for ICA DAYS, traditional Taiwanese oolong tea and Zi-ong tzi tamales, as well as utilitarian Taiwanese objects and clothes from the Wax Apple shop.
theicala.org/en/events
Debbie Korbel, Passion Flower; Credit: Courtesy Shoebox Projects
Debbie Korbel’s Strange Circus at Shoebox Projects in the Brewery Arts Complex, 3-6 p.m..
“Humor, love, beauty, vulnerability, heartbreak — just a few of the emotions that pulse through us on the daily. If I can get you to see or feel emotion from something I have created, then I have succeeded in making that human connection. We are no longer strangers, we are of like mind — if even just for a few moments.” — Debbie Korbel
facebook.com/events/427238118051207
Adonna Khare, rEVOLVEd; Credit: Courtesy Lora Schlesinger Gallery
Adonna Khare: rEVOLVEd at Lora Schlesinger Gallery in Bergamot Station, 4-6 p.m.
Adonna Khare’s style has been compared to the photo-realistic illustrations of Audubon, but the surreal worlds and strange inhabitants she creates spring from her imagination. Khare’s life-size works possess the scope of a painting but with enough detail and realism to give viewers the impression they can step through the paper and into imagined worlds. Though she stays steadfast to her chosen mediums, pencil and paper, her work spans in size from 8-by-11-inch sheets of paper to massive murals covering walls.
loraschlesinger.com
Black-Light Talk & Tour at the Landing Gallery in Culver City, 4-6 p.m.
An art-meets-science talk that examines a wide range of scientific phenomena present in the fluorescent paintings of Northern California artist Richard Bowman (1918-2001). Exhibition curator Patricia Watts will lead a gallery tour and discussion with astronomy curator Jay Belloli and physicist Dennis Harp using a black light to identify and contextualize scientific abstractions in Bowman's painting practice.
facebook.com/events/1021925491327357
The Family Room Collective: “Paper Over”; Credit: Courtesy Tiger Strikes Asteroid
The Family Room Collective: “Paper Over” at Tiger Strikes Asteroid at the Bendix Building, Group session noon-5 p.m., opening reception 7-10 p.m.
In “Paper Over,” the Family Room Collective presents a series of durational performances over the course of four weekends. The Family Collective explains: “These performances comprise our working methods, which, in this iteration, combine theatrical improvisation with automated online tools. This structure allows us to quickly process visual and textual debris as we progressively fill up the space with cut-up texts, collage and physical material. Each member is linked through a live video chat room as an 'information gleaner.' Our movements within TSA, the Bendix building and the surrounding streets downtown are fed into the space, continuously projecting images and sounds we encounter. We are processing phrases we read and overhear into cut-up texts and Markov chains to build sonic loops through our speaker system. At the same time, we are using the collected physical materials to build an ever-changing diorama that live performers will reference to act out dramatic scenes. Using live looping cameras, we expand, contract and distort the scale of all material inside the installation. The audience will thus inhabit our echo chamber of information overload, as we investigate what it means to collectively record the present moment.”
tigerstrikesasteroid.com
Brian Gillis; Credit: Courtesy A-B Projects
Brian GIllis: “Further,” A-B Projects in the Bendix Building, 6-9 p.m.
“Further” considers landscape, migration and the social and cultural contributions of adolescents through the relationships of two narratives that are tens of thousands of years apart. By positioning a series of objects within a diorama space, this project conflates the theory of paleolithic migration down North America’s West Coast with movement up the West Coast by legendary graffiti artist CHAKA, a teenager who painted walls and signs from Tijuana to British Columbia in the early 1990s. Adding to long-held beliefs that the Americas were first populated by familial bands migrating across the Bering land bridge, some evidence suggests that small groups of drifting, unattached juveniles also made these treks without the responsibility to support a kin group, or the need to find new resources. The body’s capacity to imagine unseen places and ability to walk 30 miles in a day, despite a lack of direct necessity, may have motivated massive journeys across unknown landscapes. Gillis questions how legends, theories and histories have contributed to an intangible nascence that culture carries as a vital part of its existence.
facebook.com/events/320938621945136
That Not Said at 515 in the Bendix Building, 7-9 p.m.
Lynda Pizzuto, Mira Schnedler, Julia Schwartz.
515 projects
Culcita at Monte Vista Projects in the Bendix Building, 7:30-10 p.m.
That Not Said at 515 in the Bendix Building, 7-9 p.m. Lynda Pizzuto, Mira Schnedler, Julia Schwartz. 515 projectsAnthony Campuzano, Chris Oliveria, Jeremy Rocine and Anne Seidman. In “Philosophical Investigations,” Wittgenstein discusses the “concept with blurred edges” of language games. “These phenomena have no one thing in common, which makes us use the same word for all — but they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships that we call them all ‘language.’”
montevistaprojects.com
Mi Kafchin; Credit: Courtesy Nicodim Gallery
Mi Kafchin: “Chemtrails” at Nicodim Gallery in the Arts District, 6-8 p.m.
The artist’s research is otherworldly in every sense and very much one of exploration. She has embarked on a journey of the self, the mind and the physical plane to discover places that human fantasy has only vaguely articulated. Her ideas are naturally uncomfortable in the way new information can either cause a sickness or inoculate the people. She points to a future of transhumanism, alchemical arithmetic and esoteric realms where her creative mind scries freely into architectures of the unknown.
facebook.com/events/1489405384529986
Michelle Kingdom; Credit: Courtesy BG Art Dealings
Michelle Kingdom: “Peripheries” at BG Gallery in Santa Monica, 6-9 p.m.
The latest body of work by accomplished embroidery artist Michelle Kingdom.
bgartdealings.com
“Collapse” at Quotidian, downtown 6-9 p.m.
Collapse is the investigation of materiality, challenging tradition with innovative approaches to composition — extending the language of landscape, reimagining the canvas, or the value of paint, and dissolving pigment into surfaces to sublimate artifice with dimensionality. These works coax the sublime out of the ordinary, collapsing our ideas of the hierarchy of media, objects and meaning. The exhibition also highlights artists who fold time and space in their narrative practices to make new work that merges the past, present and future.
facebook.com/events/407063786759788
“Sway” at the Brand Library in Glendale, 6-9 p.m.
An expressive group exhibition curated by Chenhung Chen, featuring work by Debbie Carlson, Chenhung Chen, Gina Herrera, Echo Lew, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, Linda Sue Price and A.M. Rousseau. Each artist, through their particular medium, interprets the fundamental element of line to indicate movement. They create sensual art works out of ordinary materials and extend the dimensionality of their work through the interplay of shadows, negative space and color. They weave wire, plastic, rope, color and light in immersive, undulating experiences that provide physical and aesthetic momentum to unite the diversity of materials into a singular language.
glendaleca.gov/Home
“The Reality of Illusions” at Giant Robot in West L.A., 6:30-10 p.m.
Life is but a dream, and in the group art exhibition “The Reality of Illusions” four artists create their own worlds by turning boring old reality into a fanciful and fantastic place infused with magical realism.
laweekly.com/arts
“Don’t Dream It’s Over” at ESXLA in the Brewery Arts Complex, 7-10 p.m.
“She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been molded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.” — Marcel Proust
facebook.com/events/802988030086017
Vida Liu; Credit: Courtesy Open Mind Art Space
“Consumed” at Open Mind Art Space in Santa Monica, 7-10 p.m.
Featuring works by Vida Liu and Erika Ostrander, “Consumed” explores the notion of excess produced through the domestic environment. Piles of clothes that slowly take over the room, the never-ending buildup of printed paper under the car’s windshield wiper, or the weekly recycling dump of Amazon cardboard boxes and bubble wrap; all materials so present in our life, we almost don’t see them.
artsy.net/show/open-mind-art-space-consumed
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