Your Social Life Is (Somewhat Vaguely) On Strike

Or, not totally here. Not that I necessarily want to comply with the always excellent Doug Harvey's hope (demands ?) that I totally kick off the art stuff (see comment on the latest John Cale Song Of The Week), but I have other fish to fry this week, and there's too much stuff going on, dammit.

So, quickly, if I have to recommend something this week, it's that amidst the shitloads of openings tonight, yesterday, tomorrow, you go and see the Stephen Kaltenbach show at anotheryearinla (review to come soonish), which opened on Wednesday night.
And then if you go hopping in Culver City tomorrow, please go wish good luck to China Art Objects at its new location.

Pics: short correspondence between Stephen Kaltenbach & Clement Greenberg.

Your Social Life

Hello everybody,

another short edition of YSL, to announce a few selection of art-related things I would attend, if I wasn't on a writing deadline.
First of all, tonight two competing things are going to require you to stretch your attendance between Mixtape Volume 1 at Federal Art Project, featuring FBC! super favorite Juan Capistran, and many others, and a special movie projection at Cottage Home (more below). All the information you need about Mixtape 1 can be found here.

There's a life after today, and you can delight in it with something a little bit more, er, *family-friendly* with the Public Art Party in Beverly Hills on Saturday organized by For Your Art around the Yayoi Kusama sculpture. In what other place than LA can you experience conceptual porn AND giant polka-dotted flowers on the same week? Rumors say there will be some Kusama-inspired cupcakes too, but yours truly is on a diet, so if by any chance I make it there I won't succomb to temptation.
After Kusama, I'd suggest you head down to Chinatown where you can attend the opening for the Summer group show organized at Cottage Home by China Arts Objects as well as the one curated by Thomas Solomon (with Marcelo Rios)

This is all very well, but what was this other thing competing with Mixtape 1 tonight? Tonight is also the premiere of Lawrence Weiner's movie "Water In Milk Exists" at 8 PM (so you can go to Federal Art Project first) at Cottage Home. There's no link on their page, so please check all the info on the Facebook event page. Lawrence Weiner will say a few words, and just in case you haven't heard about it yet, it is a conceptual porn movie. When was the last time you saw one? Exactly. So, have fun tonight!

Your Social Life In Los Angeles And Los Angeles In NYC

Hello dear beloved readers,

Sorry for being one day late to post YSL, our connection here at FBC! worldwide headquarters went down yesterday for a very, very long time.
So this weekend, I know you will need some cultural distraction after reeling from Celebs Holocaust. You can start and go pay a visit to Cosmopolitan Book Shop to load on print culture, then attend a few openings that are going to make you stretch quite a bit geographically.

First of all there is Michael Rashkow's opening at China Art Objects from 6 to 9. There's also the opening of the recent UCI grads at LAXart, and of course the opening of the shows at the Armory Art Center in Pasadena, where yours truly would have showed up, had I been in better shape physically. There's the exhibition curated by David Burns and featuring, among others, FBC! gal pal Julie Lequin, while Michael Markowski is also having a solo exhibition (where you will be able, or so I hear, to get his new book).

Meanwhile, if you happen to be in NYC, don't miss the opening at d'Amelio Terras of Tables and Chairs, an all-LA show curated by Jedediah Caesar and Shana Lutker with works by, among others, Vish Jugdeo and Rebecca Morris.

Have fun everybody.

The Shows at China Art Objects, Sister and David Patton

Just a few pics from various shows at China Art Objects, David Patton and Sister. The best thing at the Cal Crawford show was the music, it was mesmerizing , but the rest, uh...

1999 at Cottage Home, China Art Objects at 10

After showing you the pictures of some of the art in the previous posts, here you can see some of the people who were in attendance, above Steve Hanson, showing a piece to a couple of people.

The artists Vish Jugdeo and Scoli Acosta with writer William Wright laughing because I'm waving at them from upstairs, where I'm admiring Vish's piece (I didn't know it was his actually, I love it when a piece I like has been made by a pal!)


Artist (and former colleague) Peter Wu with girlfriend Samantha (whose last name I didn't catch, apologies!)
Everybody who's anybody, as they say, was around, and I socialized with more people in one evening than I usually do in a month, including Tom Solomon who was wearing a great pocket flap, but was too modest to have his picture taken. I saw my pal the fabulous painter Ivan Morley and we saw a bunch of people, but my memory isn't that good tonight so I'll stop the name-dropping here.
It was a really cool anniversary, everybody was relaxed and mellow just like the good old days when there was no money to be made in the LA artworld, and there was this great sense of community around. Ah, the good old days of yore... On another hand, I was pretty sore and really tired (see car accident mentioned elsewhere) so if there were tensions around I didn't notice, and frankly I couldn't care less. I was just glad that China Art Objects had made it through its first decade, and I wish Steve and his partners many more decades like this. Happy anniversary China Art Objects, and a special thought for Giovanni. As I've said elsewhere, we miss you.

1999 at Cottage Home, China Art Objects at 10

Even more pictures! I'll attribute the artworks when I have some time and my head doesn't hurt anymore. You can have fun guessing anyway!

1999 Cottage Home, China Art Objects at 10

More pictures from the show.

1999 At Cottage Home - China Art Objects At 10

A few pictures from the show. More text later, I've been suffering from horrible headaches since that March 16 accident.

China Art Objects 10 Year Anniversary

10 years ago, the LA art world was much, much smaller, art stars/local art school faculties were mingling with their students at their openings (indeed, they attended their student's openings!), Culver City was a foreign place no one had ever heard about, the hot spot was 6150, Bergamot Station was already starting to be a bit passé and you could, on opening day, hop from one place to another and see all the art in town within 2 hours! Not that traffic was lighter (it wasn't) but there were far fewer galleries, art students, artists and attending curators or critics around, and let's not talk about collectors (incidentally, only the small proportion of collectors has remained the same since 1999). In Chinatown, some Art Center-related friends (let's say they all met at the ACCD Library, even if it isn't entirely true) created a gallery, named after the sign left by the previous store, China Art Objects. There was a cool, dark and narrow small store right next to it full of bric-à-brac , where many an art student bought some shabby trinkets for pennies, and right across the gallery was a rather dirty convenience store (where Goldman Tevis, later Mary Goldman and now David Patton stands).


Last Saturday, China Arts Objects celebrated its 10th birthday, with a 2-part show: the first one in the "historical" gallery (which has doubled since 1999, bye-bye, cool weird store next-door!) and the second at Cottage Home, the space it co-occupies on a rotating basis with Sister and Tom Solomon.


The founders of CAO were the late Giovanni Intra, and Steve Hanson, Peter Kim, Amy Yao and Mark Heffernan. I'm sure everybody had a thought or even a drink in Giovanni's memory last Saturday.


On Saturday, CAO proudly featured its historical artists in its own space, and organized an after-party at the Mountain Bar, which yours truly didn't attend because my recent car accident left me really sore and therefore easily tired. But before the opening I had the pleasure to dine with Andy Alexander and Stephanie Taylor (and their respective spouses, child, friend of mine, etc.) who were among the first artists to be shown at CAO at the beginning of its first decade.



I remember a Stephanie Taylor performance that was held in front of the gallery on Chung King Road (wasn't Prina there too?), and a collaboration between Andy Alexander and Andy Ouchi that took place in the gallery basement/storage, an installation-cum-sculpture-cum-party environment made for the audience to party on. With some rocks and succulents if memory serves right.
There was a party vibe to China Art Objects back in the old days, which was also much in the air last Saturday. I didn't really ask how the party was (I've been in major pain most of this week, thanks for asking) but judging from the crowd at Cottage Home when I left around 8.30 PM, everybody in LA was there.

Your Social Life In Anniversary Mode

No, not FBC! anniversary, but China Art Objects, the Chinatown gallery with which everything started (well, not exactly, let's call it the second or third LA art boom, OK?).
China Art Objects opened 10 years ago and will celebrate this Saturday with a show/bash at Cottage as well as in its original location, followed by an after party at the Mountain Bar. When you go see the show or if you end up at the Mountain Bar, please don't forget to have a thought, or better yet a drink in honor of the late Giovanni Intra, one of the co-founder of China Art Objects. The opening will last from 6 to 9 PM, with many, many artists, so many it's impossible to list them all.
Many are personal pals of FBC! so I'll pay a rare appearance at an opening, but on the early side as I'm recovering from yet another car accident!

[To the moron who plowed into my car at a red light and sent me flying into a SUV: Drop. Dead. Now. And next time you drive, that is if you don't drop dead now, do it with a valid driver's license and put your bloody cell phone away. My future lawyer is going to have a field day with you, b••ch!].

I'm fine, if a bit sore, and taking meds that make me very sleepy, hence the early appearance at the opening. Meanwhile Mam'zelle VaVaVoom is at the car doctor, waiting for her diagnosis, hopefully she's fixable. I have a nice replacement rental but nowhere as cool as Mam'zelle VaVaVoom.

Unfortunately, because of this I have to make a choice in my opening attendance, so I will miss Walead Beshty at LAXart, but you guys should be able to go, before or after China Art Objects.
There are lots of other openings on Saturday, such as the group show "The Ballad That Becomes An Anthem" at Acme, with among others, FBC! absolute fav' Mary Heilmann and also Rebecca Morris.
To make your life even more complicated, there's an interesting group show opening at the Armory in Pasadena, Under The Knife (I guess "under the box cutter" was not so appealing, and "running with scissors" was already taken) about artists cutting up paper and doing collages. It's from 7 to 9 PM so I guess if you start at ACME, go to LAXart, then China Art Objects/Cottage you may conceivably be able to reach the Armory at the tail end of the opening.
But wait! There's also an opening at Charlie James in Chinatown. And one at Marc Foxx, who also shows some work by the recently deceased Hanne Darboven.
All in all a pretty busy weekend for opening-goers in LA. Have fun, but above all drive responsively and shove that cell phone in your trunk, OK?