My Los Angeles trip was limited to a few galleries and museums that had new and exciting shows. I was extremely dissapointed to find out I was missing the Dennis Hopper show by three days, but luckily I was able to see Ryan Trecartin's new collection of seven videos - yes, 7! The videos were great - I wish he would upload them to Vimeo as they are almost always better at home than in the gallery. I only had 45 minutes, but that was more than enough as the craziness of Trecartin can only be taken in small doses - at least by me.
I also made it to the opening of the Resnick Pavilion at LACMA. The building housed a mix bag of exhibitions, including "European Dress in Detail: 1700-1915" as well as Masterworks of Ancient Mexico and then selections from the Resnick Collection - it was an odd mix. The Pavilion was open earlier then the other buildings and I totally missed both Catherine Opie and The Sporting Images of Thomas Eakins - sometimes being impaitent is a total downfall.
Then it was off to a quick pop-in to Michael Kohn to see Simmons and Burke "If not Winter". The best part about this show was three large collages that included vocal accompaniment. Under each piece was a pair of headphones that contained another collage of sorts with different sound bites mixed with well-known audio scores from what I believed were mainstream movies. The pieces reminded me of Trecartin, although they were not moving images, the combined chaos of the images and the audio was total overload for my minor jet-lag.
Other pieces in the show included altered photographs, story paintings using words and the first image below which seemed etheral and dream-like - the total opposite of the other works in the show.
I was lucky enough to have a business lunch at Century Park and finally made it the Annenberg Space for Photography. It was a lovely little jewel perched in an oasis of an office park - an urban planners nightmare, but the space was totally alive with pedestrians. The gallery was intimate and clean. The current exhibition was the Pictures of the Year - a great collection of emotional and sometime disturbing works. My favorites are below and more info, including the entire collection on view can be found here
I surprisingly found a parking meter and was able to pop into the Gagosian in Beverly Hills to see Taryn Simon's Contraband - a show of grouped photographs of items seized by the US government at JFK over the artist's five day stay. It includes everything including counterfeit luxury goods, dead animals, pills and everything in-between. The show required a lot of attention but really seemed simple in the end and again I usually turn to Gagosian for powerhouse shows that blow you away. But after Dan Colen in New York and this show in LA, I am left disappointed. http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-22_taryn-simon/
Finally, I kept going back and forth if I should attend a lecture at the Hammer by Yoshua Okon, a Mexico City-based artists who has ties to Los Angeles thanks to a MFA from UCLA. In the end, the lecture was much longer than expected but it was wonderful to hear the artist talk about his work and see the interaction with the audience, which was mostly engaging with intelligent questions. I think I just found a new favorite artist -
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