Catherine WagleyEverything's social this week — jokes with friends spur a pop-up shop, a four-course meal becomes an exhibition and a group of artists tries to figure out why time can terrify.
5. Dinner-party graveyard
In late March, Jason Kraus invited 12 people to dinner. Everyone had to commit to come seven nights in a row and eat the exact same four-course meal. Each night, Kraus set a new, specially constructed wood table with identical but different china, glasses and silverware. After the final dinner, he cut up the tables and turned them into cabinets. All seven tables-turned-cabinets now hold the stained napkins and cleaned plates, cups and utensils. They're on view in “Dinner Repeated” at Redling Fine Art. It's like a shrine to a party you missed. All you can do is spot the anomalies — the red wine stains on one shelf, the lipstick marks — and guess at what happened. 6757 Santa Monica Blvd.; through May 12. (323) 230-7415, redlingfineart.com.
4. Cadillac christening
“The squares don't know who the heck she is,” says the bio of performer Ann Magnuson, who took Samuel L. Jackson's on-screen virginity (he'd never done it in front of cameras) and once was president of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Lower East Side. She's also a longtime friend of outlandish graffiti artist Kenny Scharf. When Scharf's solo show at Honor Fraser opens this weekend, Magnuson will christen a Cadillac Scharf customized with a performance she calls “Finism.” That's apparently “fin” as in “the end,” but also “fin” as in “tail fin” — so both apocalyptic and extravagant. 2622 S. La Cienega Blvd.; Sat., April 14, 6 p.m. (310) 837-0191, honorfraser.com.
3. Anxiety art
Curator John Knuth covered the walls of “The Paranoia of Time,” the show he organized at Carter & Citizen in Culver City, with thermal survival blankets. That sounds rugged, but the blankets are gold and glistening, so the room looks almost flamboyant. In the gold-walled gallery, there are inside jokes (like Heather Cantrell's image of artist John Baldessari as “Father Time”), adolescent experiments (Cody Hudson changing the “Fair” in “Vanity Fair” to “Fuck”), narratives about unrealized suicide and meteors on a table. Altogether the work, supposedly about the anxiety time causes, is actually anxiety-inducing, which must mean it hit its mark. 2648 La Cienega Ave.; through April 28. (213) 359-2504, carterandcitizen.com.
2. Accidentally dazzling
Photographer Robert Adams is a moralist and a cynic with a soft spot for sheer beauty. His current LACMA retrospective starts with Adams' iconic photographs of Colorado in the 1960s, probably still his best work. They show tract homes and trailers and ranch-style churches against the stark, glorious Western landscape. They're frustrated with how manmade structures invade nature, but they also can't help reveling in how desert sunlight casts shadows on shingles and glows aggressively through living-room windows. 5905 Wilshire Blvd.; through June 3. (323) 857-6000, lacma.org.
Bettina Hubby's photo of Eagle Rock made into a Rorschach image; Credit: Bettina Hubby
1. Eagles and rocks in Eagle Rock
Forty-eight years ago, when they talked about how funny it would be if Eagle Rock had a Rock and Eagle shop, guitarist and comedy writer Mason Williams and artist Ed Ruscha probably weren't that serious about opening one. But years later they told Bettina Hubby, a friend, artist and go-getter, about the idea. She bought up 350 objects, commissioned artists and stocked a shop in Eagle Rock with a kitschy, crafty, comic collection of eagles, rocks or things related to the two (there are David & Goliath figurines and a bald eagle wig). “I was the instigator, she's the perpetrator,” said Williams of Hubby when the shop officially opened on April Fools' Day. The Rock and Eagle shop will stay in business until it runs out of merchandise. 4765 Eagle Rock Blvd., Eagle Rock; Wed.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. hubbyco.com.
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