06.11.2012: ALIKA COOPER'S FLAWED BEAUTIES

Brigitte (on couch) (2008)

Maybe this is the wrong place to start, but most paintings of women make me want to punch myself in the face. If you’ve ever read anything I’ve written on this blog, I’m pretty sure my distaste for most representations of females in, like, every media ever is clear, so it should come as no surprise that whenever I see another painting of a woman – especially if she’s naked – I tend to give the painting major side-eye, mutter something about originality and single-notedness under my breath, and walk away. And then there’s Alika Cooper.

Grace (Keith Haring Body Paint) (2010)

"WOMEN/works ON PAPER," curated by Yaoska Davila and up at TENOVERSIX until July 7, is a selection of Cooper’s paintings of famous women, starring the likes of Edie Sedgwick, Grace Jones, Brigitte Bardot, Twiggy, Farrah Fawcett & Little Edie Beale. Not only are these women famous; they’re women whose image literally made them who they are (or are remembered as) today. And that’s where this show just starts to get interesting; all of these paintings are based not solely on the women depicted, but rather on famous photos and stills of these women as depicted by someone else. Whether it’s Grace Jones as painted by Keith Haring as photographed by Tsen Kwong Chi or Brigitte Bardot in a scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, this body of work, created between 2007 and 2010, is definitely right on meta-trend.

Edie (grey gardens) (2008)

Edie (ciao manhattan) (2007)

The work definitely doesn’t stop at its meta-ness, however; just saying that these are paintings of pictures of famous women doesn’t at all do justice to the experience of looking at them. Cooper’s style turns these otherwise familiar images on their heads. They’re dirty, they’re gritty, they’re a little confusing. They add new and varied dimensions, sad and beautiful, vulnerable and strong, to the faces and bodies of women we’ve already seen thousands of times. Edie (ciao manhattan) (2007) seems to show a young neanderthal deep in thought. Edie (grey gardens) (2008) could be a painting of Joan of Arc. Adding to this disorientation is the fact that these celebrities are portrayed in goauche on paper with torn, uneven edges. Cooper takes the idea of idealized female celebrity and simultaneously flips it off and caresses it, telling it everything will be ok.

(L to R) Brigitte (large) (2007); Farrah (by Andy) (2008)

I guess in a way these paintings apply the modern lens through which we see young, beautiful female celebrities to their forebearers from a time before Wikipedia and the stalkerazzi. Britney was in a bad place for so long, but now it seems like she’s marrying a nice guy, and that makes me happy. Lindsay! Oh Lindsay. You wanna hate her, but then you remember her parents and understand everything. They’re beautiful, they’re ugly, they’re objects of desire, they’re objects of disgust, which is exactly how I feel while looking at (and sort of being judged by) Brigitte (large) (2007). She’s a little cross eyed and her skin is awful but that hair is so perfect. She’s clearly Brigitte Bardot, but there’s also something very off. Through these paintings we get to see a side of these women that may only exist in Cooper’s head but feels so real you wanna pop open a can of Sofia and drink champagne with them. Out of a can. Cause they actually seem like in this world, they’d be down for that.

Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.

04.16.2012: LACMA’S IN WONDERLAND (OR HOW I LEARNED TO LIKE SURREALISM AGAIN)

I may or may not be partial to Frida Kahlo’s Autorretrato con Collar because the cat in is the spitting image of my handsome black cat, Mung.

I’m a female, Mexican-American artist, so as soon as I heard about "In Wonderland" at LACMA, I emailed my mother and set a date to see it with her. Not only would there be Kahlos (I can’t be the only little girl who grew up simultaneously scared to death of and totally in love with the work of the woman whose image I was as familiar with as Our Lady of Guadalupe), there would be work from Francesca Woodman (every female, teenage art student’s wet dream, amirite?), Maya Deren (My other cat’s name is Glamour Girl, the cat she shared with Alexander Hammid), Louise Bourgeois, Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo, Yayoi Kusama, pretty much every badass female artist living and working in the US & Mexico around the same time as dudes were painting melting clocks.

Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon was the opener of the exhibit. While this was totally sick, what was even sicker was winding through the exhibit and occasionally hearing the soundtrack for it, contributing to the show’s extreme nonlinearness.

While I’m not in love with the name of the exhibit (I don’t necessarily think “grown ass female artist making pretty revolutionary work” when I think Alice), the subtitle, "The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and The United States," does something that, at least for me, was a pretty big deal from the get-go. For about 2 or 3 years now (because of Black Dahlia Avenger, I admit), the word “Surrealism” has sort of been a dirty word for me. I mean, duh, the work’s great, but those guys were misogynistic d-bags who basically stole an entire movement from their mothers (That may be a stretch, but if anyone can remember the name of the exhibit that showcased the insane photo collages of the mothers of Surrealists, plz let me know). Laaaaame. So in addition to Kahlo & Krew (BEST. GIRL GANG. EVER.) not generally being labeled Surrealists, that whole movement was starting to seem pretty tired and icky to me.

L to R: Duchamp’s Etant Donnes vs. Dorothea Tanning’s Birthday. Which makes you feel better about having a vagina?

But then along came Ilene Susan Fort and Tere Arcq to punch my brain in the face with the biggest “DUH” I never thought of. These women were totally Surrealists, and their work is work that not only I can fall into the rabbit hole of (nyuck nyuck nyuck), but my mom can, too! And Mexicans, and Mexican-Americans, both populations almost never addressed in the fine art world. And that is exactly what makes this exhibition so amazing. It is a collection of Surrealist works that utilize the visual and emotional vernacular of those generally seen as “other,” a group I am firmly planted in, a group that most people I know are firmly planted in, and you know what? It is just as mind-blowing as the work of the Surrealist men. I actually maybe even like most of it better. Snap.

Bridget Tichenor’s Autorretrato. Ugh. Slays me every time.

What most affected me about going to see "In Wonderland" was not the work, for the most part quite influential to me; it was all of these people, a majority of them women, many of them people of color, being so pumped to see the work. The crowd around Las Dos Fridas gave me an anxiety attack I haven’t experienced since the Mona Lisa. In the end, this show is way more than just a celebration of the female Surrealists; it is celebration of all those who look at these works and think “Finally, someone who gets me.”

"In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States" is at LACMA until May 6, 2012, when it will be traveling to Quebec and Mexico City.

Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.

09.17.2011: ANOTHER LOS ANGELES

So not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’ve always felt that LA looks best when it’s overcast. Maybe it’s my inner Shirley Manson, maybe it’s my propensity for muted tones, maybe it’s that I really love layering, but there’s just something about a grey sky and flat lighting that pulls the landscape of this sprawled out, architecturally incohesive city together for me. And, well, apparently I’m not the only one.

David Ash’s latest collection of photos, Another Place, depicts a Los Angeles that is a far cry from its stereotypical representations – yknow, blondes, palm trees, sunshine – to focus on a side of this city simultaneously familiar to its locals and completely alien. In Ash’s LA, there is little to no movement besides fog rolling through the streets, though all of these images are taken a little too East for this to actually happen. The only cars are parked, and there are absolutely no people. It doesn’t even seem that there has been recent human activity; there is hardly any trash, even in the images taken of Downtown. Ok I just noticed a couple of flyers beneath a truck’s windshield wipers, so this world is not quite the first week in a Life After People episode, but it’s close.

One of the images that’s gotten the most “WTF?”s has been an almost surreal image of the Hollywood Reservoir. Not only does it look like a (natural) lake nestled in lush, green mountains amongst images of a cold, desolate city, but it’s taken from an angle that not even those who see this tiny body of water in the Hollywood Hills on a daily basis are familiar with – it seems to be taken from the reservoir itself. The only clue that gives away its location is a tiny Hollywood sign peaking through the thick layers of clouds. And the light bulb goes off.

Each of the prints are from editions of 7. They are $2,100 unframed and $2,500 framed. Another Place will be on display at TENOVERSIX until late December 2011.

Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.

04.21.2011: K-KERRY KERRY TR RY TRIBE’S CRITICAL MASS

Kerry Tribe's pieces tend to be sort of like a bunch of really enthralling academic essay about rad, obscure historical figures. She's both a story teller and a disseminator of a ton of meticulously researched information, but instead of reading these essays, the audience experiences them, generally via video, sound, and installation. This feeling carried over into her latest performance, Critical Mass, a live restaging of Hollis Frampton's 1971 film of the same name, at The Hammer on April 7.



Frampton expanded a few minutes of footage into a 25 minute film via sound and video editing. Kerry Tribe used actors with commendable memorization skills to perfectly reenact the audio, along with the expected motions of a couple's fight that will never be won by either side. Though this seems like it might be incredibly frustrating to watch, certain repetitions seem to emphasize the actors' points, while others repeat the ridiculousness of this fight (both the fight itself and the phrases that date the original piece - "far out" and "hippie colony" were two stand outs). Pretty much everyone in the audience cracked up at least once. In fact, the few points at which the fight is allowed to continue uninterrupted by the editor's hand, while they give the audience more information as to what is potentially going on, were sort of, well, boring; the stutters and repetition actually added a certain amount of raw emotion and frustration that feels very real in the situation being staged....Sound like something you're bummed to have missed? Well, you're in luck! Tribe will be restaging her restaging at LAXART on April 22 at 7 pm.

Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.

01.14.2011: LOUISE BOURGEOIS’ LONELY IRONY IN 2D

Louise Bourgeois is best known for her sculpture, particularly the large, spider structures based on her mother. She was a woman in her 70s, 80s and 90s still working out her mommy and (mostly) daddy issues, and this raw, confused emotion showed in everything from her titles to the details of her installations. These works were balanced out by her more sexual pieces, oftentimes depicting blatant sexual acts and sexual organs (both singularly and en masse). There is also, of course, the famous photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe of Bourgeois in a fur coat laughing while holding a sculpture of a very large penis. It is with a similar frailty and humor that she created engravings for He Disappeared into Complete Silence, which is not actually on view anywhere at the moment but I just purchased and am SO pumped on. Each simple, geometric image comes with a short story or description, such as “Once a man was telling a story, it was a very good story too, and it made him very happy, but he told it so fast that nobody understood it.” Originally created in 1947, the beautiful, simplistic delivery of irony and loneliness still makes for a chuckle and singular tear.

Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.

12.12.2010: NO SHIRT, NO SHOES REQUIRED AT THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY

It’s 80 degrees in LA right now. You could go to the beach to celebrate this, but then you’d probably find yourself in a crazy amount of IT’S 80 DEGRESS IN DECEMBER OMG traffic. If you’re not lucky enough to have a pool at home (or if you are, because I’m pretty sure yours doesn’t have a sick light show), may I suggest a dip in Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida’s “psychedelic swimming pool,” officially titled Cosmococa–Programa in Progress, CC4 Nocagions, currently up at The Geffen Contemporary. ”Psychedelic swimming pool?” you may ask. “In a museum?” Well, the MOCA has put together "Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color, and Space," the first major museum show to “situate pioneering Latin American artists among the international canon of those working with light and space” by recreating large installations by the likes of Carlos Cruz Diez, Lucio Fontana, Julio Le Parc, Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida, and Jesús Rafael Soto. While I certainly have reservations about a show that places Latin American artists within a larger contemporary art context by showing them with…other Latin American artists exclusively, this is definitely a rare chance to see some major, influential works. The word suprasenorial was first used by Oiticica to describe the all-consuming nature of his installations. The use of the word “installations” here is actually sort of questionable; really, what these artists do is use light and color to create environments that make the audience, by walking through them, as integral a part of the work as what was made by the artist. I’d say it’s safe to assume that you don’t become part of a work without having a pretty epic experience in it, and really, if you’ve seen or are familiar with light works by non-Latin-North American and European artists, this show will blow your senses out of the water. I guess literally? "Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color, and Space" is up at the Geffen Contemporary until February 27, 2011.

Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.

12.04.2010: JULIAN HOEBER WILL MAKE YOU SICK

Julian Hoeber, who I became totally obsessed with upon viewing his video Killing Friends for the first time, has put together Demon Hill at The Hammer Museum. Based on “gravitational mystery spots,” his installation mixes high art and slightly more low-end spectacle right in line with the rest of his work (a self-aware video about sex and murder; busts of the artist that have been blasted with shotguns). This time, however, the audience in right in the middle of the action, and his exploration of the line between real and staged experience forces even the most logical mind to question itself. (Come on, we’ve all been to Knott’s Berry Farm and seriously wondered how they got a marble to roll up.) Julian Hoeber’s Demon Hill is up at The Hammer Museum until January 23. We’re still in the midst of The Hammer’s 20 days of free admission, so the only reason to not attend would be a weak stomach.

Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.

11.28.2010: MARK MANDERS' BEAUTIFUL NIGHTMARES AT THE HAMMER

Mark Manders’ simple, while simultaneously sad, creepy and beautiful, sculptures are up at The Hammer Museum in "Parallel Occurrences/Documented Assignments." Combining (literally and references to) every day objects with the simplest of media and colors, Manders’ work feels like an incredibly familiar dream in which one is completely, almost desperately, alone. And that’s just when he places a few vertical pieces of wood together. "Mark Manders: Parallel Occurrences/Documented Assignments" is up at The Hammer Museum until January 2. While you’re there, check out equally awesome shows by My Barbarian and Julian Hoeber (which I may just write about next week; I can’t help but have a small art-crush on the man). If that isn’t enough reason to go, The Hammer is in the midst of completely free admission for 20 days to celebrate its 20th anniversary! So no excuses. You really must see this work in person.

Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.

06.25.2010: OUTSIDE THE BOX

Over the course of about 20 years, Los Angeles publisher Edition Jacob Samuel published 43 print portfolios made by the likes of John Baldessari, Rebecca Horn, Anish Kapoor and Ed Ruscha, just to name a few. In doing so, he was able to show the successes, failures and in-betweens that are produced when artists force their work and practice into a predetermined medium and format. Such is the case at “Outside the Box," an exhibition at UCLA’s Hammer Museum which showcases the newly acquired Edition Jacob Samuel archive.

I happened into the exhibit through the exit, so I was lucky enough to end on a high note with Marina Abramović’s Spirit Cooking with essential aphrodisiac recipes (1996). Not only do these 39 prints showcase Abramović’s use of and obsession with natural elements (One print reads “breakfast ROSE QUARTZ lunch OBSIDIAN dinner TOURMALINE"), but they also speak to both her process in creating and implementing performances and concern with keeping performance alive through others. She turns daily actions such as looking in a mirror and intercourse with one’s lover into duration pieces to be practiced at home. Even the making of the prints, literally embedded with her DNA, is a signature Abramović performance in itself; her spit was mixed with the ink and the pressure of her fingers and fingernails were used to create all of the images.

Another portfolio that acts as an extension of the artist’s body of work with a 2D twist was Gabriel Orozco’s Polvo Impreso (Lint Book) (2002). With his usual focus on the every-day object, Orozco glorifies a waste product which we generally destroy and throw away but which also contains, as the opening print points out, “leftovers […] from our bodies: they contain human skin and hair.” In addition to small fragments of humans, lint also contains dust, a well-known enemy of printmaking. Though usually abhorred, Polvo Impreso makes lint something to be studied carefully and mounted behind glass, something that is beautiful in its fragility and messiness.

Though there are a number of works, such as the aforementioned, that fluidly tie in the process and format of printmaking with the oeuvre of certain artists, this exhibit also houses flat-out the failures that showcase the inability of other artists to turn the prints into works that stand on their own. The two that stand out on this end were Dan Graham’s Two-way Mirror/Hedge Projects (2004) and Andrea Zittel’s Rules of Raugh (2005).

While Graham’s piece is fairly informative, it is simply a collection of his diagrams and photographs of his already well-known work. Text is utilized only to describe the projects in the most basic terms possible. The diagrams are messy line drawings of an aerial views of the installations followed by photographs of the same works taken from a ground perspective. This creates the exact opposite of what makes Graham so great; instead of the playful guess-work that goes into interaction with his installations, the prints are boring, sloppy and tell you exactly what you are looking at.

Though the title of Zittel’s portfolio references her Raugh furniture, it turns out to be a series of sketches of wooden furniture, small shelters and lone structures in the middle of the desert that seem to exist in direct opposition to her Rules of Raugh, which are spelled out in the opening print. Again little more than visual representation of work either already or easily created by Zittel, both this and Two-way Mirror/Hedge Projects made Google searches and show catalogues look like more informative, more interesting and significantly less pricey alternatives.

Though slightly disappointing (and a little exciting) that such big names can’t all make work that tests boundaries at all times, those disappointments become just as interesting and informative as the truly wonderful. By showing what such varied artists produce when working in the exact same medium, "Outside the Box” provides a snapshot into each of their brains, contextualized by their individual responses to the request to publish a set of prints.

04.07.2009: THE GAME OF MEMORY

A man around 80 years old is asked what he looks like. He has dark brown hair. He is asked how old he is. Late 40s or early 50s, somewhere around there. He is asked about the Gulf War. It was a conflict having to do with Mexico and Cuba. These are not the responses of a man who has lost his memory due to old age or a recent accident; these are the responses of a man who has lived this way for most of his life.

Henry Gustav Molaison is the subject of Kerry Tribe’s new film installation, "H.M.," currently on view at 1301PE in Los Angeles. H.M., the initials that represented him in innumerable scientific reports, was born in 1926. He acquired severe epilepsy in a bicycle accident at nine, and on September 1, 1953, at 27, underwent an experimental procedure in which his left and right medial temporal lobes were removed. His epilepsy was gone, but so was his capacity to retain any new information past the immediate memory mark of 20 seconds.

Tribe’s interpretation of his story is conveyed with enough layers to confuse even those with all aspects of memory fully in tact - re-staged interviews and tests; abstract visuals of crossword puzzles and floating stars; Tribe’s (or the person whose notes she’s reading? or a fictional character all together?) personal memories with and about H.M. The viewer is even put to the test just as he was, pictures of famous faces flashing onscreen in an effort to understand where the memory of important events begins and ends. This audio-visual onomatopoeia is further extended in the 2-channel projection. The official description states that the same film is shown next to itself, a 20 second delay between the adjacent projections, but even after watching it a number of times, I remember the two films as being slightly different.

For H.M., time was liquid, not linear or fixed as people tend to understand it. He used clues from his immediate present and distant past to understand what was going on around him. Tribe’s installation is probably as close as any of us will get to experiencing what H.M. did, no temporal lobe removal required.

Article originally published on Anthem Online.

03.05.2009: DAN GRAHAM: BEYOND

"Dan Graham: Beyond" at MOCA Grand Avenue begins with a quote from the artist: “I love magazines, because they are like pop songs, easily disposable, dealing with momentary pleasures.” After reading this, one ventures into a room containing two of his fully constructed two-way mirrored pieces. No matter one’s age, the thrill of being able to see people who can’t see you is indeed quite the momentary pleasure. In the same vein, his use of mirrored glass in Girl’s Make-Up Room, where one is able to look.. inside.. a girl’s.. make-up room.. turns playful into downright creepy, but I digress.

The next room contains samples of his magazine work, which oddly enough seem to be the only pieces with any sense of permanence; they are on paper, preserved in frames and glass cases. Other works follow as such: the performance documentation is pretty cool, the most recent photographs aren’t that great, and the small, decidedly corporate-feeling architectural models date work that, when actually experienced, feels consistently contemporary. (“Sonic Youth” “tagged” on the model of Skateboard Pavillion? Really, Dan Graham?)

The real show stopper is the installation of Public Space/Two Audiences, at least it would have been had MOCA followed directions. Viewers step into one of two rooms, divided by glass, one of which has a mirrored wall. They are supposed to stay in there, doors closed, for 10 minutes, but the first time I went, no time limit was enforced and the second time, the doors were left wide open. The inability to hear what is going on in the other room, despite having a perfectly clear view, causes a lot of awkward smiles, staring contests, and a sense of forced comradery with complete strangers, putting into practice Graham’s question of public versus private space, being watched versus watching.

A video Graham made of Minor Threat in ’83 and a large projection of Rock My Religion (1965-1990) end the show in an attempt to show the artist’s connection to a fuck you, in-your-face youth culture. I felt like I walked out with blue balls.

Article originally published on Anthem Online.