Your Social Life

 And now back to our usual programming (can't wait to post the next John Cale Song Of The Week).

Your social life will be richly enhanced tonight if you swing by the Pacific Design Center, the new home of anotheryearinla, and get to see the show where FBC!'s über-fave, Stephen Kaltenbach is in.


Saturday, if you happen to be in Riverside, don't miss the reading by A.W. Hill at Riverside Arts Project at the Riverside Plaza (Central Avenue Riverside, CA

3545 Central Ave. between Chico’s and El Torito in conjunction with the Terminus Nodus exhibition by Multipoint), from 4 to 6 PM.

Still on Saturday, Scott Benzel whom you know without knowing him (he's behind the soundtrack of the Mike Kelley/Michael Smith "A Voyage of Growth and Discovery") is playing at Kings Road Park Pavilion.  Yes, he's the handsome man in the photo above. FBC! is alas too broke to attend, but you can buy tickets here. And, incidentally, have a look at what SASSAS does for sound art and experimental music in LA. I never get to talk about the Cindy Bernard-founded non profit and it's a shame. Support it, people!

Still in Los Angeles, but in Chinatown, the always delightful Charlie James has an opening at his gallery, Nery Gabriel Lemus.

 

In the already opened category, I warmly recommend spending a whole day at LACMA where, between John Baldessari, Cathy Opie, Tad Beck (within the Thomas Eakins exhibition) and Fallen Fruit (great wallpaper) plus the permanent collection, there are loads of great things to see.  

If you feel more comfortable in a smaller setting, don't miss the fantastic Amir Zaki show at LAXart (I'm not so wild about the Divola show at the same place) and the group show at Cottage Home as well as the one at Tom Solomon. Pics to follow soon. If you are not as broke-ass as FBC!, I think you should invest in the artist book Zaki has produced. It's gorgeous, and for an artist book really cheap.

Your Social Life

This week will be a happy one, my friends, let me tell you. First of all, Amir Zaki and John Divola both open at LAXart. Two immense smart photographs united in the same space, what's not to like? 6 to 9 PM on Saturday.


Same evening , at Regen Projects is the opening of the Walead Beshty-curated Summer Show, and it's chock-full of artists I really love, Pictures Industry (Goodbye to all that): anybody from Carol Bove, Troy Brauntuch, Tony Conrad, De Rijke & de Rooij, Wade Guyton, Imi Knoebel, Glenn Ligon, Michael Snow, etc.  From 6 to 8 on Saturday.

In Chinatown, China Art Objects and Tom Solomon unite forces for a Summer group show at Cottage Home where FBC!'s favorite emerging artist, Juan Capistran, is included, another good reason to go see it, not even mentioning Analia Saban is alo in it, as well as Alex Israel and Jonathan Pylypchuck. Also 6 to 9 on Saturday.


And, if you think you don't have enough "6 to 9 opening on Saturday, my freaking God why haven't they invented teleportation yet????", there's also Kory Newkirk, except it is 6 to 8 PM, almost guarantying yours truly will be unable to attend, but it is conveniently located smack in the middle of LA, at Country Club on 805 South Genesee. Country Club is a gallery that has, IMHO, an editorial problem, since they show fab artists such as Newkirk, as well as lame-duck crap such as Shepard Fairey, Harmony Korine, etc.
Seriously people, if you need to show commercial stuff, so be it, but it's detrimental to your image and to the other, good artists you are showing. A bit more intellectual rigor would be welcome. Unless you have a secret plan to join the Jeffrey Deitch team at MOCA, who knows.

Speaking of which, congratulations to OCMA for taking over the Philip Kaiser-curated Jack Goldstein retrospective from MOCA, a formerly respectable institution that lost its mojo since NYC sent us its own commercial rejects. THE exhibition everybody in Los Angeles has been waiting for a decade, and it's been scrapped for... James Franco? Dennis Hopper bland photographs and mediocre paintings? People, flock see the Arshile Gorky show at MOCA, because it is the very last good exhibition there for a long, long time.


After this rant, let's congratulate also LACMA with the opening next week of the Thomas Eakins, Catherine Opie and Tad Beck trifecta. Super intelligent exhibition. If LACMA folks are reading me, I also wanted to tel you: I love you, but your Twitter feed during "Cell Phone Stories"? Painful. I had to un-follow you a couple of times to clean up my feed. Please, don't do horrible things like this again.