Shana Nys Dambrot
Be an art tourist in your own home town, as Gallery Weekend Los Angeles returns with three days and nights of exhibition openings, closings, and special events at what seems like every gallery in the city. Find local and international shows with painting, new media, performance, video, photography, textile, installation all heartily represented. Plus, as befits the hot summer nights, outdoor theater and spoken word events inspire the imagination, and tours of an industrial scale intervention in the course of the river inquire about what’s possible in art.
Urs Fisher: Database, algorithms, and LED cube, 141 3/4 × 141 3/4 × 141 3/4 in (Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery. Photo: Stefan Altenburger)
Thursday, July 27
Gallery Weekend Los Angeles, Citywide. An eclectic cohort of art galleries from across the city band together for a regional exploration of the current scene. This year is extra, with a litany of local expansions and out of town outposts that opened just this year. The Gallery Platform LA site has divided the expanse up into three community days. Thursday, July 27 focuses on the Westside (Santa Monica, Venice, Beverly Hills, WeHo); Friday, July 28 is Central (West Adams, Mid-Wilshire, Highland, Hollywood, Melrose Hill); and Saturday, July 30 it’s Koreatown, Downtown, East L.A., and NELA). All galleries are free, and many of them have extended hours on these days, and/or openings, closings, performances, readings, signings, tours, and other special events for their nights. Even or especially for locals, it’s the perfect chance to get caught up with the art word bustle. 2023.weekend.galleryplatform.la.
Mary Lai and Jenny Chandler at Keystone Art Space
Mary Lai and Jenny Chandler: Momentum, at Keystone Art Space. Art is expression. Both Lai and Chandler use emotion to emphasize the movements in their lives as an inspiration for their art. Lai creates movement through a new iteration of her Abstract Dancer series while Chandler creates movement through brushstrokes, textures and layers of paint. These complimentary bodies of work come alive with the ebb and flow of color between their different mediums, formats and compositions. 338 S. Avenue 16, downtown; On view July 27 – August 6; Artist reception: Sunday, August 6, 2-5pm; free; keystoneartspace.com.
Jen Stark: Rainbow Meltdown at The Hole
Friday, July 28
Jen Stark: Rainbow Meltdown at The Hole. For Gallery Weekend Los Angeles, The Hole (whose La Brea location centers them on its Central L.A. night) presents a one-night activation by Jen Stark, sharing chilled drinks from her Wave Wine collaboration inside a video installation of her iconic Drip Cascade animation. Within the gallery’s current show Storage Wars—an absolutely epic summer group show featuring contributions from artists and fellow galleries installed inside hundreds of the wooden shipping crates that are ubiquitous in the art world—other one-night vendors include CBD tinctures and balms, desserts, books, vegan ice cream, and mocktails. 844 N. La Brea, Hollywood; Friday, July 28, 5-8pm; free; thehole.com.
The Improvised Shakespeare Company
The Improvised Shakespeare Company at The Ford. With nothing more than a title shouted from the audience, The L.A.-based Improvised Shakespeare Company creates an entire play on the spot—comedy, tragedy, or history in the Shakespearean mold, all of it delivered in the “thee” and “thou”-laden English of The Bard. Nothing is planned, nothing is rehearsed, and each play is completely new and starts with one audience suggestion to kick it all off. 2580 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood; Friday, July 28, 8pm; $32-$38; theford.com.
Grand Performances
Poetry Night: L.A. Stories at Grand Performances. Featuring influential voices from all over Los Angeles, the second of three curated poetry nights reflects the diverse neighborhoods that make up our city. A focus on singular voices in an intimate setting that honors the resilience, strength, and beauty of this city’s many communities creates an opportunity for love, understanding, and acceptance. DJ Post No Bills kicks off the night, along with colorful art installations by Obed Silva. Beloved 3rd-generation SoCal poet, professor, journalist, historian, and tour guide Mike Sonksen hosts a roster of nearly 20 original literary voices. 350 S. Grand Ave., downtown; Friday, July 28, 6-9pm; free; grandperformances.org.
Suchitra Mattai at Roberts projects
Saturday, July 29
Discussion: Transgressive Materiality, at Roberts Projects. A panel talk in conjunction with the gallery’s current exhibition of mixed-media paintings, tapestries, and soft-sculpture installation by artist Suchitra Mattai. Evoking the artist’s Indo-Caribbean heritage, Mattai’s work engages with the subject and form of European pastoral landscapes and figuration as well as Indian miniature paintings. Linking craft-based processes, sumptuous weavings and traditional techniques, the artist portrays resolute brown heroines, replacing heroes and colonizers and reclaiming a patriarchal past. Using the framework of “Transgressive Materiality,” a select group of curators and academics discuss Mattai’s practice as well as other contemporary artists and how these aspects intertwine and inform the contemporary art landscape. 442 S. La Brea Ave., Mid-Wilshire; Saturday, July 29, 4-6pm; Exhibition continues through August 26; free; robertsprojectsla.com.
Andrés Monzón-Aguirre at Stars Gallery
Andrés Monzón-Aguirre: Égida at Stars Gallery. Interlocking bodies of work exploring the artist’s personal and familial narratives across ruptures and displacements, as Monzón-Aguirre accrues and reimagines culturally-specific images from across time, creating a personal archaeology of the present, a material genealogy of objects and symbols. Referencing historical depictions of male standing figures, their ceramic Jovenes, or Youths, appear as almost archaeological finds. However, instead of finishing them with a standard glaze, Monzón-Aguirre coats them with nail polish, toying with the artifice of gender and the unstable boundaries between the modern and the ancient, the original and the reproduction. 3116 N. El Centro, Hollywood; Opening reception: Saturday, July 29, 6-8pm; On view through September 9; free; stars-gallery.com.
Felix D’Eon at Artbug Gallery
Felix D’Eon: Love and Marvels, at Artbug Gallery. Enraptured by various art-historical styles such as Edwardian fashion and children’s book illustration, golden-era American comics, and Japanese Edo printmaking, D’Eon attempts to make the illusion of antiquity complete. Using vintage papers and careful research as to costume, set, and style, his goal is perfect verisimilitude, subverted and expanded through queer sensibility. D’Eon treats vintage illustrative styles as a rhetorical strategy, using their language of romance, economic power, and aesthetic sensibility as a tool with which to tell stories of historically oppressed and marginalized queer communities. 2441 Hunter St., downtown; Opening reception: Saturday, July 29, 5-9pm; On view through August 26; free; artbug.net.
Kenix Liang at Le Maximum
Humans, Animals, Hungry Ghosts at Le Maximum. A group exhibition curated by Gwen Hollingsworth exploring the intersections between the sacred and what we see and experience on the material, human plane. While many religions dichotomize the sacred and the profane, other belief systems eschew this binary along with separations of the natural and supernatural. Buddhist cosmology, for instance, identifies six realms of existence within the cycle of reincarnation: gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hells. Each realm is contained in its own karmic level, yet they all engage with one another, and nothing separates the experience of each realm. The sacred is not divorced from mundane human experience, but rather fully intertwined as a hierophanic manifestation. 2525 S. Lincoln Blvd., Venice; Opening Reception: Saturday, July 29, 6-9pm; On view through August 26; free; lemaximumvenice.com.
New Arts Foundation: moving images are still images
moving images are still images at New Arts Foundation. A group exhibition of video and performance at Heavy Manners in Echo Park—formerly site of historic creative venue Machine Project—moving images are still images is curated by Greg Jenkins and contains work by twelve artists from six countries, as part of Gallery Weekend Los Angeles. The program plows through our current cultural and artistic landscape to link makers who play with absence to open urgent channels of poetry, sincerity, and romance, while still remaining critical. 1200 N. Alvarado, Echo Park; Saturday, July 29, 7pm; free; new-arts.us/miasi.
Maxwell Poth: Young Queer America
Maxwell Poth: Young Queer America at LGBT Center. Photographer and activist Maxwell Poth has traveled all over the United States, inviting LGBTQ+ youth to share their stories as part of Project Contrast, a nonprofit that amplifies these voices and connects kids and families with the resources they need to survive and thrive. Join Isis King and Maxwell Poth in conversation about the new book and exhibition. The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N. McCadden Pl., Hollywood; Saturday, July 29, 6-10pm, talk at 7pm; free; lgbtnewsnow.org.
Metabolic Studio: Bending the River
Tuesday, August 1
Bending the River Tour at Metabolic Studio. Tour Bending the River, currently in construction in the L.A. River. The river, in its current form, is a concretized flood control measure built in the 1930’s that moves wastewater from the city directly out to sea. Utilizing the principles of adaptive reuse, this project moves a portion of the water and lifts it to the Metabolic Studio, where it will pass through a native wetland treatment and be distributed to local parks, including the 52 acre adjacent L.A. State Historic Park. (Follow this link to view the live construction camera.) Safety vests and hard hats provided, there’s a waiver to sign, and construction site appropriate (steel toed preferred) boots/shoes are recommended. Downtown location details sent upon confirmation; Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday at 3pm & Tuesday and Thursday at 5pm, through September 14; free; metabolicstudio.org.
The Origin of Values at Villa Aurora
Wednesday, August 2
Discussion: The Origin of Values, at Villa Aurora. The result of explorative journeys which Sabine Scho, a poet-turned-photographer and Villa Aurora alumna, and photographer and biologist Matthias Holtmann have undertaken over the past six years. From the island of Vilm near Rügen, to Iceland, to the Pantanal in Brazil and the national parks of South Africa, in places of undisturbed nature they investigated how it is economized by what mankind considers to be of value. After the reading of Sabine’s poem, The Origin of Values and a short presentation, hear about local projects that expand the discussion with guests Bob Ramirez (Kuruvugna Springs) and Lauren Bon (Metabolic Studio). 520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades; Wednesday, August 2, 7:30pm; free w/ rsvp; vatmh.org.
Lauren Bon/Metabolic Studio: Photo collage, 500 analog photos shot over six weeks during construction on the alternation of the flow of water in the L.A. River
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