Your Social Life At Home: Meet The Debutarts!

It's back to school heavy duty openings weekend! Basically, you guys are going to maddeningly increase your carbon footprint and scramble all over LA for the new season's round of openings. I hereby declare we should officially call the Fall in LA "The Season". Sounds very London circa 1895, except that we're more likely to see celebutards around than Society ladies (we don't have those in Los Angeles).
In fact from now on we should also call the freshly-churned-out-of-Grad-school new faces roaming the streets (I mean the unique street) of the swanky Culver City art district the Debutarts! New on the market, hopeful, hustling and peddling their modest wares to their distracted former art school instructors, in the vain hope those are going to connect them to powerful art dealers. Eager to get free drinks and start spewing theoretically critical utterances to impress uppity gallerinas and maybe pick up a bed partner or two. Ahhhhhhh ... Youth!*

So if you want to avoid the great unwashed, I'd say stay home with a good movie, a bottle of wine, some good food and a cat to warm your feet. Otherwise, it's pretty dumb to go and hope you will see shows: you're going to waddle in a mass of loud bodies, many of them who will address you every 5 seconds or so to express their happiness at seeing you there, and have you been at Blum and Poe yet? Oh gosh, we have to rush, we have to meet [Here, drop 7 names in a row, at least 4 of them being semi-locally known/3 years out of Grad school youngsters, 2 others nationally known middle-aged ones and the last one a well-liked Cal Arts instructor] in Chinatown/West Hollywood/at Father's Office for burgers/in the bathroom of [redacted to fill your imagination] to do some blow/blow a famous gay art star.

But you won't see any art, there will be too many people in front of it blocking your view and busy schmoozing and trying to figure out where and when to go get dinner. If by that time (way past dinner time) you're in Chinatown, chances are you may wait in line at [insert name of whichever of the 2 bars you're thinking about here] for some cokehead art dealers to get out of the restroom so you can at last take that leak. The 7 free beers you drank between China Arts Object and Sister are starting to have an effect.

Anyway, you won't listen to Auntie Frenchy, so if you feel you absolutely have to go out this weekend, avoid the Debutarts. Instead you should:

- Absolutely check Christie Frields show at Dave Patton's who's relocating his gallery to Chinatown. Christie is a very interesting sculptor whose work deserves a much wider recognition than she currently enjoys. Go support Christie!
- Lisa Lapinski has a new show opening at Richard Telles
- The 2 shows at Steve Turner Gallery (I adore their programming and their recent director, Carol Ann Klonarides, but their website sucks).
- And Julian Hoeber at Blum and Poe.
- While you are in Culver City you can check the new Roberts and Tilton space with a group show.


That's all for this weekend. I know there's no way you can go to all those places and see the art and schmooze during the 6 to 9 PM window of opportunity, so please drive safely, OK?





* this is a subtle reference to a very famous work by a no less famous Los Angeles artist, and this artwork served as a design for a "mainstream" alternative band. If you find the reference, I buy you coffee when I get out my writing reclusion.