The 2019 L.A. Art Show - Massive!

One of my favorite parties of the year was held last night at the L.A. Convention Center, where the kickoff party for the L.A. Art Show opening went down. We took the train and got there late, as usual, so we had our work cut out for us if we wanted to see even a fraction of the huge amount of art that is on display this weekend. MASSIVE amounts of art. You belong here.

We've learned our lesson in years past, and skipped the long lines for drinks that gobble up all your art viewing time, and the food is always gone by the time we get there (we always end up getting street dogs after), so this night was all about the art. And the very excellent people watching that always happens during this opening party - SO good. This is L.A. after all, so there are all sorts of creative artist types walking around, and it's as fun to see as all of the art.

The massive hall is kind of split up into more contemporary/cool art on one side, and the more corporate/law office type of art on the other. There was so much art that when I split up from my brother in the interest of dividing and conquering and seeing the most art in our limited time, when we compared notes later we had almost no overlapping. I hadn't even seen several of his favorite works, and vice versa. It's a LOT to take in, and probably warrants a trip back downtown this weekend to see the things I missed.

The highlight for me (and everyone, I think) is always the Littletopia section, curated by my friends at the Red Truck Gallery from New Orleans.

My favorite art of the entire show is pretty much always pieces from Red Truck, and last night was no different. There were china dishes with irreverent messages ...

There was even a diorama of Jumbo's Clown Room!

I always enjoy catching up with Red Truck owner, Noah Antieau, who told me that they've also opened up a Red Truck Bar in the French Quarter, so now there's even more incentive to get back to the Crescent City and see all of their cool art in person at the source, and throw back a few cocktails with this great bunch of art lovers. Awesome.

There are always crowd pleasers at this show, that you can detect from the crowds of people gathering around to take photos. One of the big ones this year was a prism thing that created infinite angles when you looked inside of it, the Portal Icosahedron, by Anthony James. It was trippy and reminded of my brother Paul's paintings.

A lot of art these days is about its attractiveness for selfies, sadly, and I stopped to look at the great work by Adah Glenn, particularly a work that said "Trust The Process". Great message. On another wall of her booth, there was a piece that said, "Black Girl Magic", with a gorgeous, fancily dressed black girl taking her photo in front of it. Glenn was happy that her work is popular for that, but at the same time wondered if her real message gets lost in the quest for likes. Interesting to consider. Hey, trust the process, right?

There was plenty of performance art this year, and another crowd gathered around a purple painted woman rolling around on the floor with laundry, underneath hula-hoops also strewn with laundry. Sarah Trouche's You Should Wear Your Revolution was meant to symbolize women's emancipation in the tradition of the French movement of "Sans Culottes" - basically "without drawers". Word.

There was an interactive rainforest made from paper that involved all the senses, and even featured Smellavision. When you stuck your head in the little holes that featured butterfly vignettes and things, it smelled like Febreeze or something - or what I like to call "Eau de Lyft Ride". The message was to save nature though, and I'm all for that.

Also on that tip was the lovely (and one of my favorites) work by Cha, Yun Sook, her beautiful Homage To Nature. It was stunning, and it was a delight to meet the artist, who also made her matching outfit. Loved it.

Another favorite was The Lady Of Arlington, 2018 by Mike Stilkey. It was a portrait of a woman done completely on used books. Fantastic!

If you know me, you know I LOVED Prince, by Craig Alan. It was a portrait of Prince, made up of a whole bunch of tiny people.

If you zoomed in, you could see that all the tiny people were different ... like one in a wheelchair, one with a dog, etc. All combining to make the iconic face of our beloved Prince. Wow.

Another kind of performance art/art piece was by Kate Groobey, with her Places Unknown, 2017. It had a work of art on the wall, that the artist then brought to life by dressing in a costume like the piece ... pretty cool.

David Hockney was representing L.A. for the art show, and was showing a gorgeous screen in his classic style that we all wanted for our homes ... Caribbean Tea Time, 1987. The color and style are pure Los Angeles, and it was nice to see this more main stream artist there among all the rest of it.

Not remotely in the main stream was the performance piece by Dorian Wood, Nodrissx/Narcissx. This work won hands-down for the most out there situation of the evening. There was a dark room with a big Pan's Labyrinth meets Saw looking character wrapped in gauze with a hole for its nipple, intoning monk-like chants with a man-servant type guy sitting there. My friend said, "Why are there so many wet wipes scattered around?" Well, we soon found out why ...

The sign explaining the piece invited viewers to come forward and kneel to suckle at the breast protruding from the hole, and to "feed on the artist's breast for as long as they choose." What. The. Hell?! I guess the point was to challenge the artist/audience separation, but I was not down. We saw no takers for the suckling, but I heard later that artist Gary Baseman had a suck. No, gracias.

The past several years of the L.A. Art Show have always featured a hyper-realistic head sculpture by Kazuhiro Tsuji, and this year's marvel is Jimi Hendrix! It's too crazy how these things look so real, from every angle. Another highlight in a year full of highlights, too many to even see in one outing.

The loudspeaker guy was chiming in to kick everyone out while we still raced about trying to see more and find more friends before we got the boot. Near the front entrance where we were all meeting back up, there was a great neon sign, giving encouragement to all artists and those who love them ...

Everything you need is inside you (I believe a Burning Man installation, by Olivia Steele). I love that, and once again left the L.A. Art Show opening with a spring of inspiration and happiness in my step. I encourage one and all to get down to the L.A. Convention Center this weekend to take it all in. You will leave feeling better about the whole world, knowing that there is so much creativity and talent still in it. Art Saves, and we need it now more than ever.

L.A. Art Show 
L.A. Convention Center
January 23-27, 2019
11 am - 7 pm

The 2018 L.A. Art Show - Art Galore!

I got back to town just in time for the opening night celebration of the L.A. Art Show, and as usual, it did not disappoint. There is just SO much art that you really almost need to attend every day if you think you might be able to see everything ... and you probably still won't. There is truly something for everyone, and as I heard a dude say to his friend, "Dude, aren't you getting inspired?!" You can't help but be.

Margaret Keane (of Big Eyes fame) was an honored with a lifetime achievement award this year, and it was very cool to see her work up close and personal - especially after watching that film and knowing her back story. Whoa. I loved her Girl From Kaanapali, 1971 the most. It's happier than anything I've ever seen from her.

I'd never seen any of her work with adults in it, and it's really something. Her characters (as in the above Escape, 1962) draw you in with their eyes, and make you want to know more. There are also very recent works, like up to 2015 by the now 90 year old artist. The trip downtown was worth it for this alone, but oh boy, was there ever SO much more.

Littletopia is always my favorite section of the L.A. Art Show, and always the most interesting. Curated by the fine folks at the Red Truck Gallery (from New Orleans), they have the best stuff, in my humble - and honest - opinion. Red Truck is so cool, and I made their Rachael Cronin pose in front of the wonderful Albino Deer piece by Chris Roberts, whose work I simply must own one day. She's incredible - and the mother of gallery owner Noah Antieau. Awesome.

I loved the works by Vance Lorenzini, with an entire booth featuring his work. There were the 12 stations of the cross, with words like "Truth" and "Love" emblazoned across the tops.

There were assemblages with pop culture icons embedded within, like the excellent pieces featuring lyrics by David Bowie (as we pass the two year mark since losing him).

Everywhere you look there is something great to look at, so much so that it almost gets overwhelming, especially when you're running into friends and trying to get something to drink. (*Forget about getting food on opening night unless you're there lined up the second it starts. In all the years I've attended this wonderful event, I've never made it to the food section in time to taste a single thing. Oh well, it's about the art. Eat first.) The good news is that near the food area is the L.A. Arts Online booth, so we got to see and compliment the wonderful Paige Petrone on all of her hard work for this event every year. Venice representing! In this time of strong women (like Paige), there was a piece by Kim Dong Yoo showing off some awesome women.

Art means so many different things to everyone, and there truly is something to appeal to everyone at this massive show, representing artists from all over the world. There was a bike covered with fish from Japan that was probably someone's favorite piece there.

There are always fun installations at the show, and this year was no different (if a bit less dramatic than the live naked lady in fresh flowers from a couple of years ago). The big crowd pleaser this year was Left Or Right - A Healing Project (1998-2018) by Antuan, rows of red punching bags adorned with the most punchable faces in the world. There were particularly long lines to punch Trump, of course, and it was very personally satisfying to me to smack George W. Bush in the kisser, but I was a little disappointed there was no Paul Ryan or Steven Miller there. OOH, are they punchable! Kim Jung Un and Putin were also popular to punch. And rightly so.

Interactive exhibits are always cool, and this time around they had a thing you took off your shoes and walked on and looked at stuff (I didn't have the luxury of time to do so, so might have to go back this weekend) that people seemed to like ...

... as well as Brainstorming: Empathy by Victoria Vesna and Mark Cohen - a thing where you could don alien heads and have your brain waves communicate through color and sound to the other person. Trrrrrippy.

I was happy to see a booth featuring the works of Dan Eldon, the young journalist who was killed in Somalia in 1993, and was the author of The Journey Is The Destination - a personal favorite of my brother's and mine. Eldon's mother and sister have taken on his mission of storytelling to influence hearts and minds.

To that end, this was also an interactive situation, where you could fill out postcards with your personal thoughts and missions to add to a wall to create insight as to how "Connection is the solution." Very cool, and also very, very important to our global village in times like these. Seeing Eldon's personal journals there was also very moving and great.

Right after that I walked by a piece that summed that all up ... Matt Smiley was right. His Lessons In History, 2017 tells us the truism, that the world is just not that simple.

Many works made their statements, as all the best art does. I particularly enjoyed Mass Incarceration by Ryan McCann, showing a weed life in what looked like prison cinder blocks. Good one, as L.A. legalized marijuana as of January 1st, just as the little weasel Jeff Sessions is trying to make it the same as heroin again. Please.

This re-cap is all over the place, as were my meanderings around the massive Convention Center. I'd bump into someone and they'd tell me I just had to see the butterflies made out of international currency, so off I'd go ...

Someone would say to go check out the bedazzled punk rock buddhas, and off I'd race in an entirely different direction.

Inevitably, in my travels back to the other side, I'd pass by some other thing that would stop me in my tracks, like the statue of Rocky punching the side of beef that changed dimension as you circled around it. (I'd often be racing so fast that I didn't catch the name of the artist. Sorry if I did!)

There was a fantasy "Spaceboat" installation that looked like something a Wes Anderson type kid would sail away in, brought to us by Bunnie Reiss at the Superchief Gallery in L.A. Loved it.

Jeff Gillette created a hood out of Hollywood, with a Hollywood sign disintegrating into a shanty town that was pretty heavy.

I loved the needlepoint pieces by Suchitra Mattai, with idyllic scenes featuring people with lasers coming out of their eyes. Why not?

For What It's Worth was a mixed media guitar by Victoria Roberts, inspired by the Buffalo Springfield song that was pretty cool.

This year's crazy realistic head by Kazuhiro Tsuji was the artist Mark Ryden. Not as recognizable as the previous years' Frida Kahlo, Warhol, and Dali, but still as trippily real as ever.

The L.A. Art Show lets you know that art can be a sculpture of a pile of thousands of pennies ...

... an archway made out of wood (that you could probably build yourself for loads cheaper) that I loved and wanted for my own pad one day ...

...random words and shapes (by David Buckingham) ...

... or even a clipboard stating that one will no longer draw flying penises in class.  Again, why not?

All in all, art is awesome. The L.A. Art show itself is awesome, in every sense, including size. Thank goodness that so many people still care so much about art, as it and its creators are needed in the world now more than ever. To shape culture and life, to question it, and, ultimately to celebrate it. And as long as this is, it only scratches the surface, so you really gotta get there yourself if you also love art.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to every artist, every gallery, and everyone who loves ART.

The L.A. Art Show is on now through Sunday, January 14th 2018.

On The Scene At L.A. Art Show 2017!

"On The Scene In '17" is my motto for this new year, but I haven't been able to really execute because I've had this dreadful cold for pretty much the whole year so far. The show must go on though, so I headed down to the always great opening night of the 2017 L.A. Art Show at the Convention Center downtown, Kleenex in hand.

The line to get inside the hall was so long it was like we were trying to get into a Bernie Sanders rally last Summer (ahem). It went pretty fast, and there was good people watching while waiting, like this lady with a dress made entirely out of forks (who made it much easier for my friends to find me with her as a landmark - thank you!).

It's fun to attend this event with my brother, Paul, because he's deep in the L.A. art world and has a lot of great insight - but he also gets stopped every two feet to chat, so he needs to be abandoned at times if I was going to see any of the art in an already super-densely filled massive space crowded with art aficionados.

Aside from the intense line to get in at the beginning, the Art Show has figured out some things to make it go more smoothly, starting with several little bars throughout so you don't end up wasting all your art looking time in line for a drink. The whole thing seemed more spread out and manageable, even if I never figure out how to get to the food area before they close down. Oh, well.

I think I saw my favorite pieces right out of the gate when Paul showed me the sculpture works by Larry Kagan, where he bends wires in such a way that their shadow on the wall is the real image. How cool! It always intrigues me how artists come up with their art, and this one takes the cake. Like, "I bet if I bend this wire just so, it will look like a chair in the shadow on the wall." What?! Smartie.

... Or "What if I make sculptures entirely out of screws?" How do they come up with these things?! I'm actually always more interested in art like this than the classic landscape in a gold frame, but if that's your thing, there's plenty of that too.

I've always been fond of the quote from Bertolt Brecht when he said, " Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it." - because it's so true, and this show was no different. There was a ton of art that reflected our times and current events ... and the reporters from all over the world to cover it.

Much of art is derivative, of course, and there are many exhibitors who clearly have been majorly influenced by Warhol and Basquiat - like almost straight knock-offs - but then you get those bent wires and screws and the performance artists, and the relief that there is still some original thought and creativity left in the world.

The performance art was all at one end this year, and though we missed a lot of the action/performance of it by the time we got to that side, it was still cool to see what people are up to. An inflatable amoeba type thing with painted dancers cavorting around it was interesting ...

An invitation to destroy a couch had viewers sitting and watching the destruction while "Pennies From Heaven" played and pennies DID fall occasionally from the Heavens (ceiling).

There was a bloody forest where limbs were dismembered that we missed (and I'm fine with that), but we very much dug the pink carwash thing buffing out silver "LA." letters, that so perfectly matched my friend Deb's arty get-up that people thought she was part of the installation and asking her for photos. Awesome.

I very much enjoyed the live painting that featured street artists like bumblebeelovesyou (who I also love) creating one of his whimsical, happy childhood pieces ...

... and Venice's own Jules Muck there doing a self-portrait, showing this art world that she has indeed arrived.

My favorite section of the L.A. Art Show is always the Littletopia area, full of the latest, coolest stuff from artists who always seem to be the most up my alley.

Littletopia is curated by my favorite gallery at the L.A. Art Show, the Red Truck Gallery, from New Orleans. I love me some folk art, and Red Truck is probably the very best place in the country to feature that wonderful genre.

They had a bunch of new art this year, of which I think the one I most coveted was this piece that warns against the dangers of mixing Pop Rocks with Coke. Don't do it.

I loved the "Artist's Room" by the duo Dosshaus, where a couple hangs out and talks to you in an entirely monochromatic, colorless room where all of the items, including their clothes, were made from recycled cardboard. Deb also looked especially great here in her pink.

There was a surreal installation of stretched out, super-realistic people from Yi Hwan Kwon, that was also very popular with the Instagrammers in the house. To stand in front of them was to question your own reality - or sobriety - as so trippy were they. 

Another really great installation was the big portrayal "Cut-Outs" by Ramiro Gomez of a Los Angeles home. It uses negative space very effectively when the housekeepers and gardeners are cut out of the piece and erected in front of it, proving their importance. It reminded me of the great and important documentary, A Day Without A Mexican from Sergio Arau. Crucial viewing, both. 

Coagula Projects brought an installation from Fred Tieken that would be very Venice-appropriate as it portrayed birds and skateboards and said, "No birds on skateboards allowed on this beach".  Only we would never stand for that. 

There was so much to see and do at this year's L.A. Art Show that it insists upon a return visit, when it's not so full of opening night crowds and people to catch up with. For every piece I saw, there were probably 100 that I didn't - or more. It's always so gratifying to attend events that are all about the art and the people that make it, and that recognize the beauty and importance of art in our lives. The show runs through January 15th, so you have until then to be "On The Scene in '17" yourselves. No excuses. 

Thank you to all involved for another wonderful showcase of the world's art and artists, indeed helping to shape our reality. Hooray for Art!