Your Social Life, A Free Hammer Museum Interlude and John Cale OBE

Einstürzende Neubauten, Ein Seltener Vogel


It's Thanksgiving holiday, most galleries are closed, and next week they will all be going en force to Miami (for Art Basel, Pulse, etc.) so there's not much going on in Los Angeles until the week after next.

FBC! takes advantage of the hiatus to let you know that rather than go spend the money you don't have on items you don't need on Black Friday, you could make a better use of your time and dough by going to the Hammer Museum today. The Hammer is turning 20, and for the next 20 days the entrance is free, so you can go see the Eva Hesse, Mark Manders, Julian Hober Hoeber and My Barbarian shows, in addition to the selection from the Grunwald Center by Frances Stark (I think it's still up).

Meanwhile, I also want to remind you that Einstürzende Neubauten will be playing 2 dates in Los Angeles next week, at the Music Box in Hollywood on Wednesday and at the Echoplex on Thursday. FBC! will be there, hoping for a great experience. I always heard great things about them on stage, but it will be my first EN concert.

Lastly, congratulations to John Cale, O.B.E, (does that make him the new OBE Wan Kenobi?) who came to pick up his chocolate medal from Prince Charles last week with a tie that matched his hair colors (while, pink and blue).  Cale proves once again he's the real Prince of Wales, as for the medal, some people seem pissed off he accepted it. Me, I think it's pretty cool, maybe he'll be invited to sing Guts at Prince William's wedding, who knows, with Chicken Shit as an encore?
As long as it doesn't distract him from coming up with the new album the world has been waiting for during the last 5 years...

[I don't know where the image of John Cale with Prince Charles comes from, except for the PA watermark. I'll be happy to attribute proper credit if someone directs me to the right source, thanks!].

Your Social Life, The Way The Morning Broke Was Quite Unusual

Sorry for the absence of posting last week, yours truly was drowning in French paperwork, grading students papers and having badass allergies, so I had no time to look up what was going on. This week (and the next few ones until early next year) I won't be able to attend much art social stuff, so the posting will likely remain spotty.

Let's start with tonight, at Frank Pictures Gallery in Santa Monica where Vanessa Place and Barry Schwabsky, among others, will participate in a reading. The event starts at 7.15 with nibbles and drinks and the readings proper at 8 PM.
Tonight as well, synchronized open doors from the galleries at the PDC, where our friends at anotheryearinla will present Gift Shop. Still at the PDC, Standard Deviation at See Line Gallery, a group show with Natasha Snellman in it, while Annie Wharton presents The Way The Morning Broke Was Quite Unusal, a show whose title is taken from the opening line of my favorite Front 242 song (it's pronounced Front Deux Quatre Deux, BTW).
Still at the PDC, Paul Young presents Deadpan and Soft & Hard. Deadpan presents videos by John Wood and Paul Harrison, whom you may know as the duet behind the Art In Theory series (you know, the white books with tons of excerpts from famous art theoreticians), while  Soft and Hard presents videos by a selection of women including FBC! gal pal Julie Lequin.

Proving that Thursday is the new Saturday in Los Angeles, Art Center Los Angeles on Pico, a place that is so criminally close to me it's surprising I haven't been there yet, shows Hans Weigand tonight.

And if you are in Pomona tonight(you need the gift of ubiquity to see everything in Los Angeles, unless you are Peter Frank who does see everything there is to see), don't miss the opening for M.A Peers and the panel discussion as well, featuring artists Steve Roden and Doug Harvey (who's also the distinguished critic for the LA Weekly).

On Friday 323 Projects presents You've Got Problems? We've got Solutions, featuring Matthew Timmons, a telephonic exhibition if I understand correctly.

On Saturday, Margo Leavin presents an exhibition curated by the great James Welling, The City Proper, with FBC! faves Amir Zaki (hi Amir!) and John Baldessari, plus Zoe Crosher, Catherine Opie, Shannon Ebner, William Leavitt, Allen Ruppersberg, etc.
Steve Turner opens Big Four, while Tom Solomon shows Brett Lund. Meanwhile, yours truly will be doing her annual workout by going on the Great LA Walk, rain or shine, so you likely won't see me around at any openings after.

Have a great art-filled weekend, and before I sign off, congratulation to former LA art dealer and all-around  curatorial force of nature Sue Spaid who is now the new executive director of the Baltimore Contemporary Museum!
Hurray Sue Spaid, and Hurray the Baltimore Contemporary!

Your Social Life With Iannis Xenakis, Rachel Lachowicz,Edgar Arceneaux, Etc.

FBC! is still marveling at the awesomeness of last week when the Blinky Palermo and the Matthew Brannon exhibitions illuminated what is otherwise a really trying period of my life, so I can only encourage my beloved readership to run see these shows as fast as they can, and to see the Kaltenbach exhibition at anotheryearinla before it closes (on the 10, I think).

There are a few openings in town this week, starting with FBC! pal Edgar Arceneaux at Susanne Vielmetter  who's also showing Martin McMurray. Still in Culver City, where you can also go attend Kelly Barrie's at LAXart. While in the neighborhood, don't miss Zoe Crosher's An Unveiling at EGHQ. Also in Culver City, Stop Move at Blum and Poe, a group show with Nathalie Djurberg, Hirsch Perlman, Robin Rhode and Matt Saunders. At François Ghebaly, Candice Lin presents Holograms.

FBC! never sets foot on the Westside (given the traffic there and the horrible parking situation) but I highly recommend the Rachel Lachowicz show at Shoshana Wayne at Bergamot Station. It's been a while since I've seen Lachowicz work, about a decade at least, so I'm curious to see where she's at with her work right now.

On the other side of town, MOCA presents something really interesting and not completely vapid for once, the Iannis Xenakis (who once taught John Cale avant-garde composition at Tanglewood) event Persepolis, at Los Angeles State Historic Park (on the Eastern edge of downtown). It starts at 6 PM and it's free, without reservations required. And, if I wasn't going to the Edgar Arceneaux opening, I'd attend it, it's not every day you have avant-garde music/events being recreated in LA. It goes with the MOCA/Pacific Design Center show about Xenakis, which I assume comes from the Drawing Center in NYC. If you click on the link above you can go through the sketches/notation and listen to his music.

On Sunday there's a mega-event at LACMA to end (?) the year-long Fallen Fruit residency, Let Them Eat LACMA,  with many performances (including Ann Magnuson) but I won't attend because I work on Sundays, and also I need to come  clean on that: I really, really dislike group activities and participatory/interactive art. I understand how people like to have fun together, but I like my art less crowded. Which makes me a fucking elitist, I guess, a label I can live with, as long as I don't have to mix up with hundreds of people.
This being said, I wish Fallen Fruit lots of success in their enterprises.

(pic on top from the MOCA website, I suppose an original photograph of the historical Persepolis event, but I couldn't find credits).

Einstürzende Neubauten, Bleib, To Enlighten A Crummy Day

Today is the Day of The Deads, of whom I have plenty to remember, thank you Grim Reaper, for harvesting my family first and foremost (we're so distinguished, you have no idea); and  today is also the day where America is poised to welcome back into power the same vociferating fascists who got 8 years to put us in the crap we are in presently, but couldn't let the spineless, pussyfooting current majority more than two years to try and clean up after them.
In short, we're fucked, your fault, you people who don't bother to vote,  so please shut up if you're unhappy during the next 2 years and your precious freedoms are taken away from you while you're getting poorer and poorer and the 2% of the population that's wealthy becomes richer and richer.

Meanwhile, I thought we needed a bit of something to cheer up, so I'm posting a bit of Einstürzende Neubauten, who are coming to LA on December 1st and 2nd for two concerts, at Music Box (formerly the Fonda) and at the Echoplex. FBC! will be there (thank you, Carmen, for the tickets!). While not as batshit crazy about them as I am about John Cale, I like their music a lot but never got the chance to see them live. Everybody I know who's seen them told me it was a sight to behold, so off I'll go.
The song is called "Bleib", it means "Stay".

Also, art lovers, I highly recommend, praise, love the Matthew Brannon show at David Kordansky. I haven't stopped thinking about it since last Saturday night. It's the most perfect show, ever. I am not sure I will have time to write about it any time soon (too many deadlines and other issues), so I want to let the word out that this is the most important show you can see in Los Angeles this year.