Your Social Life - In Activist Mode

Hello, hello beloved, adored readership,
Sorry for posting late. I was sick as a dog last week, better this week but wiped out. So I haven't really paid attention to your social life yet.

Which should be greatly enriched if you attend the opening at Las Cienegas tomorrow with CANNON HUDSON / ALEX KLEIN / VISHAL JUGDEO. Where you will see the Frenchy, likely on the early side. I'm a big fan of Vish and Alex work, don't know Cannon Hudson but I'm happy to discover the work.
Tomorrow too, not too far on Miracle Mile, Uta Barth has a show at 1301 PE. And Acme has no less than 3 openings, including a group show with, among others, Kim Fisher and Mary Weatherford, and still at 6150, Daniel Weinberg also has an opening, Chris Martin.

In Chinatown, François Ghebaly also has an opening at his two gallery spaces. I'll let you click here for all the info. While you're in Chinatown, you can also attend the May Day event at Human Resources, and I'm sprecifically linking to the Facebook page because their website is just a placeholder (that's bad PR, Human Resources). Music and Performance art will take place, on what is EVERYWHERE BUT IN THE US the International Labour Day, or whatever you call it in English. Probably too "socialist" for you, the Tea Baggers-Douchebaggers-with-no-culture-nor-education-but-tto-much-fear-in-your-hearts.
Here in LA we're having an immigration rally, starting at 11 AM on Olympic & Broadway.

And, to keep up with what's wrong with SoCal and what's wrong in this country, students at UCI will do a performance/political event on Monday with a 24 hour reading of California 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, because you know how everything is wrong in the UC system and at Cal State right now. Do you know Cal Poly Pomona is planning to eradicate its art program? And, so does Chapman University (which, I think, is private.). Meanwhile, Los Angeles non-profits are in trouble, with the city planning to repel the $1/year leases conceded to many arts organizations. Make your voice heard and protest here.

Have a great arty and activist weekends, beloved readers, and remember: half of the art shown in NYC on a daily basis is made here, and the other is made in Europe. With art institutions in vulnerable in SoCal, a large part of the art economy risks tanking. Well, no, that's not true, but it risks becoming more and more dull, corporate and boring.

C'est la lutte finale, groupons-nous dès demain!

Soma Holiday - Shake Your Molecules

FBC! came back from a super top secret trip (also known in other circles as the World Domination™ Tour) with a horrible, nasty cold. As in, my voice is gone, I've gone through 2 huge boxes of tissues already, and I'm dozing out all the time. So, not much writing (my spelling goes totally South when I'm sick), but to make you patient a little bit, this video by Soma Holiday. I adored this song when I was 14, and I'm so happy someone posted it on YouTube. I'd love to be able to buy the mp3 somewhere, but so far I haven't found it.


Shake your molecules!

Your Social Life - Bicoastal Edition

This week I've just become aware of this gallery in NYC, where you should go this Saturday because French photographer Eric Poitevin will be in the show. Poitevin is one of my favorite French photo artists (the others being Sophie Ristelhueber and Jean-Luc Moulène), and in real life an extraordinarily nice guy. I haven't seen him in well over a decade, and I'm a bit sad I can't be in NYC to see him at the opening. So, if you're in town, go to Theodore Gallery say hi for me! Also, if you can find the artist book he made on butterflies... someone stole my own copy years ago and I've been missing it ever since.
And, since you're in NYC and not me, please represent me at Marina Abramovic. I so wish I could see the show.

Anyway, closer to us in Los Angeles. For those of us who are done with our taxes, things will start early tomorrow with a group show at LA Louver where Olga Koumoundouros will have an opening at the same time as David Hockney and Charles Garabedian. I, alas, won't be able to attend, but if you're on the West Side, go and enjoy!
Friday is the opening of Carrol Dunham at Blum & Poe.
Saturday will be the usual mad dash all over town to try and see The Story of O at Otis, a show featuring 20 alumni of the school to celebrate the 20 years Roy Dowell has been the Fine Arts Chair at Otis. The show is co-curated by Nizan Shaked, among others.
On the opposite side of town China Art Objects presents Mark Hagen with Succession and Simultaneity and there's also Adam Janes and Erick Pereira with De Stijl Life.
In between in Culver City, Adam Pendleton opens at Roberts & Tilton. Methinks it would have made everybody's life easier if they had coordinated on Friday with Blum & Poe.

And, I almost forgot, if you're intellectually and architecturally inclined, there's a short symposium about Learning From Las Vegas at the PDC on Sunday afternoon, if you're not going to this marvel of SoCal suburbia, Valencia (see thereafter).

On Sunday there's Cal Arts open studios, a yearly ritual I usually cannot attend, in the past because of car accidents and/or work committments, this year because I'm spending the weekend doing my taxes all by myself, old school that I am. And I'm a bit sad I won't be able to attend because there seem to be quite a bit of interesting things to see.

Until then, you only have a few hours to answer the poll at the very bottom of this page. Have a great art-filled weekend everybody, that is, if you're not stuck at home doing your taxes of course.

[the tree pix is an installation shot of an Eric Poitevin exhibition at Galerie Nelson in Paris in 2007, found here.]

Pomme Sez: Look Down Here!

There's a new poll at the bottom of the page! Scroll down, down, down, and vote, you only have a few days left!

Your Social Life -No April Fools Day Edition

Today I'm glad to have a functioning shoulder again, thanks to the truly awesome therapist I've seen last week (really, I want to adopt that man and take him everywhere with me), so I can type, yeepee!
Now the bad news is there's super loud construction going on next door (FBC! lives/works in a duplex, so next door is literally in the house) AND our internet connection works one second out of twenty, maybe. So, in between having earplugs grafted to my ears (not working very well) and my connection malfunctioning, posting is very, very irritating. To say the least. Ah well.

So, instead of posting you a nice April Fools Day joke (I was going for Jeffrey Deitch renouncing all his assets and entering a Zen monastery, after donating all the artworks from his personal collection/his gallery to poor, small and deserving museums scattered all over the United States. Or maybe Larry Gagosian being announced as MoMA's next director. Or even Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith entering a MFA writing program) I'm just going to announce a couple of openings this coming Saturday.
There's William Cordova and Shirin Guirguis opening at LAXart, and Roy Arden at Richard Telles. Image above taken from Telles' website. There's also Tris Vonna-Mitchell opening on Sunday at Overduin & Kite, where I won't be able to go but I'd like to mention them because it's a good gallery and they are smart to do their openings on Sundays.

Speaking of good spaces that should be mentioned more often, the current show at Las Cienegas, featuring FBC! occasional collaborator Vincent Johnson is very good. I had a blast at the opening, and met people I hadn't seen in about a decade, sure, but the space is magnificent and the curating intersting. And, also currently at Tom Solomon is the Dennis Oppenheim exhibition, I haven't seen it yet but I hope to do so very soon (the Dennis Oppenheim pic: Still from Gingerbread Man, B&W and color photography, collage, text, 1970-71, 60 X 40 inches)