Shana Nys DambrotLegendary Cool School artist Larry Bell has been a central figure in contemporary West Coast — and specifically Venice Beach — art for over 50 years. He’s not necessarily a religious man, unless you count worshipping the properties of light, but for the past several years, he’s kept a sculpture studio at the Twentieth Church Christ Scientist on Brooks Ave.
It’s there he makes the highly reflective, illusionistic, high-art futuristic works he calls “Church Studies,” and it’s there where he welcomes folks on Saturday evening for an intimate conversation about his sculptural as well as more performative, smoke, and photo-based practices.
Given that his most popular works trade in optical illusion, this rare opportunity to speak with Bell at the place where the magic happens reveals the very analog, tactile, material experiments behind the quiet dazzle of the work.
Twentieth Church Christ Scientist, 132 Brooks Ave., Venice. Saturday, August 17, 7pm; free.
eventbrite.com/e/art-talk-with-larry-bell-acclaimed-venice-artist-and-sculptor-tickets.
Larry Bell, Complete Cubes at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, 2018 (Jordan Riefe)
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