Benefit Breakdown

There are a number of excellent benefits coming up in support of Los Angeles non-profits and artist-run spaces. I hope to see you at all of the following events...


Saturday April 30, 2011 7 pm – 10 pm
Santa Monica Museum of Art
INCOGNITO 2011
Tickets starting at $100

SMMOA
Bergamot Station G1
2525 Michigan Ave.
Santa Monica, CA 90404
http://smmoa.org/index.php/exhibitions/details/245
Contact 310.586.6488 x116 or email incognito@smmoa.org

Sunday May 1, 2011 2 pm – 8 pm
workSPACE
workSPACE Art Sale
FREE

Workspace
2601 Pasadena Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90031
http://workspacela.tumblr.com/
Inquiries or to purchase work: info@workspace2601.com

Sunday May 1, 2011 3 pm – 7 pm
Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery's Benefit Auction
Tickets starting at $25

LA Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall
4800 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
http://www.lamag.org/
Contact Meg Madison | meg@megmadison.com | 213.393.9333

Thursday May 5, 2011 8 pm – 12 am
LAND
LAND Art Auction & Benefit Party
Tickets starting at $75

Palihouse
8465 Holloway Drive
West Hollywood, CA 90069
http://www.nomadicdivision.org/auction/default.html
Contact Allison Gorsuch at allison@nomadicdivision.org

Saturday May 7, 2011 5 pm – 7 pm
Outpost for Contemporary Art
Breaking New Ground: A Tribute to Julie Deamer
Tickets starting at $20

neutraVDL Research House
2300 Silverlake Blvd
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.outpost-art.org/specialevents_soon.php
RSVP rsvp@outpost-art.org

Thursday May 12, 2011 6:30 pm – 9 pm
Rema Hort Mann Foundation
The Los Angeles Initiative
Tickets starting at $20

Honor Fraser Gallery
2622 S La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90034
http://www.rhmfoundation.org/la2011/index.html
Contact Quang Bao, rhmfoundation@gmail.com or 212.966.8444

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 7 pm – 10:30 pm
The HeArt Project
19TH ANNUAL EVENING OF ART

Tickets starting at $150

Hollywood Media Arts Academy
1140 North Citrus Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038
http://www.theheartproject.org/eveningofart.html
Contact Alma Villegas at (323) 465-1404 x234

Thursday May 19, 2011 7 pm – 10:30 pm
LACE
LACE Benefit Art Auction 2011
Tickets starting at $50

LA Mart
1933 South Broadway
Los Angeles 90007
http://www.welcometolace.org/events/view/lace-benefit-art-auction-2011/
Contact LACE at 323.957.1777 ext. 17

Kehinde Wiley at Roberts & Tilton

Kehinde Wiley at Roberts & Tilton

The World Stage: Israel

April 9 - May 28, 2011

In placing his 'everyday hero' in such grandiose compositions, Kehinde Wiley's paintings become a mixture of appropriation, photorealism, pastiche, subversion, and even homage. It is not possible for me to identify the countless references to historical masterworks in his paintings, but Titian and other Venetian Renaissance painters should immediately come to mind. I have problems with the work in that they are so seductive and so beautifully rendered that I sometimes lose sight of the subjects of the work - I am too distracted to realize that these men probably live in utterly abject conditions. He provides an escape in his recent talk at the National Museum of the American Indian when he said, "Sometimes I almost feel guilty with what I’ve created."

Sometimes, I almost feel guilty liking them.

Florian Maier-Aichen at Blum & Poe

Florian Maier-Aichen at Blum & Poe

April 9 - May 14, 2011

You know what you are looking at is NOT real. Not real, in the sense that you could not stand at a particular point on this earth, raise your camera to your eye and see what Florian Maier-Aichen saw through his lens when he took these photographs. These places — these lakes, these snow-lined streets, these starry horizons — do not exist. The works are printed at such a gorgeous scale as to reveal themselves in their detail. It's true what the press release says, "The exhibition is poised at a sea change, with the artist's hybrid works fully resolved into gestural and handmade pictures." In a large work (in Gallery 3) depicting a bright blue night sky through silhouetted trees in a forest (detail below), the stars are scribbles on a vast background. The artist's hand is craftily revealed in gestures throughout the show. The inability to discern exactly where most of these gestures are is a testament to his impressive skill.

Florian Maier-Aichen, Untitled (detail), 2011

C-print, 86 x 61 1/2 inches framed

Indie Photobook Library at Photolucida

Indie Photobook Library at Photolucida
Indie Photobook Library will be at Photolucida
April 14 – April 17, 2011
9-11am, 12:30-5pm
Free and open to the public

Photolucida
Benson Hotel
309 Southwest Broadway, Portland, OR
Second Floor

Melanie Flood and Shawn Records have been invited to curate a selection from the Indie Photobook Library to be on view during Photolucida’s biannual Portfolio Reviews. Titles include Shane Lavette's Lay Flat publications - 01: Remain in Light and 02: Meta, featuring many fantastic contributing photographers.

Steven Bankhead at EGHQ

Steven Bankhead at EGHQ
Sex: A Monument to Malcolm McLaren
April 2 – May 4 2011

Fortunately history also preserves the memory of the great fighters against history, that is, against the blind force of the real and thus puts itself right in the pillory, because it brings out directly as the essential historical natures those who worried so little about the “Thus it is,” in order instead to follow with a more cheerful pride a “So it should be.” - Friedrich Nietzsche. On the Use and Abuse of History for Life [Revised Edition, 2010]. Translated by Ian Johnston, Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC, Canada.

To coincide with the one-year anniversary of the death of legendary music producer Malcolm McLaren, Steven Bankhead mounts a rousing solo exhibition at Emma Gray HQ. The main gallery space is modeled after McLaren's Sex boutique with black and white wallpapered Blitzkrieg imagery lining the walls. Bankhead has created a series of finely executed oil paintings as a homage to McLaren based on a single image he discovered of a painting McLaren did while at Goldsmith's. These paintings, bright and colorful, full of vitality, are tucked inside the smaller gallery/office space where they live with a sculptural stump, carved with the same double-M symbol found on MaLaren's grave. Trying to create a monument to the genius of McLaren is surely a daunting task, but this exhibition offers up a wonderfully balanced sense of appreciation, honor and remembrance.

Ed Ruscha: On the Road - Exhibitions - Hammer Museum

Ed Ruscha: On the Road - Exhibitions - Hammer Museum

June 3 - October 11, 2011

I'm very much looking forward to this new body of work by Ed Ruscha using the texts of Jack Kerouac. As curator Douglas Fogle suggests, “It is completely fitting that Ed Ruscha would take up the challenge of looking at Kerouac’s On the Road. In many ways Ruscha’s entire career has offered an artistic corollary to Kerouac’s linguistic portrait of the American landscape, giving concrete visual form to the poetry of our vernacular roadside. These new works are no different except that they channel one of the greatest chroniclers of the American landscape by appropriating and artistically framing fragmented instances of Kerouac’s language.” What else is there to say?

Thomas Ruff: MCA DNA

Thomas Ruff: MCA DNA

There is an exhibit of the work of Thomas Ruff currently on view at the MCA Chicago. I haven't been back to my old haunt recently, and while I can't tell from the MCA site whether this show is worth a trip or not, I suggest my Chicago friend see it before it closes on June 19th.

New Perspectives on Community Photography at International Center of Photography

New Perspectives on Community Photography | International Center of Photography

For my friends in New York, you may be interested in this panel discussion at ICP. From the press release:

In conjunction with the current exhibition Jasper, Texas: The Community Photographs of Alonzo Jordan, the International Center of Photography will present a lively debate around the issues of community photography. Guest Curator Alan Govenar, photographer Clarissa Sligh, and filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris convene to discuss the role of community photography in documenting African American social and cultural life and how the vernacular aesthetic has impacted contemporary photography. ICP's chief curator Brian Wallis will moderate the discussion.

The free event will take place in the ICP galleries, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, on Monday, April 25, 2011, at 7 pm.

Terry O'Neill on Chris Beetles Fine Photographs

TERRY O'NEILL (Born 1938) | Chris Beetles

It's refreshing to see that in the late Sixties, photographers and pop stars were toying with religious iconography. It makes the hoopla over Madonna's 'Like A Prayer' seem mistimed. Check out some really stunning photos from the 60s and 70s at Chris Beetles Fine Photographs

Ken Gonzales-Day at Las Cienegas Projects

Images of Ken Gonzales-Day's recent exhibition Profiled at Las Cienegas Projects.

Upon entering the space, the viewer is drawn past a metal rail that holds a series of reproductions of antique postcards featuring couples; generally, same-sexed, in costume or drag. As the viewer moves along the wall, the progression of the images reveals more tenderness and caring in the subjects.

Be sure to see Ken's upcoming show at UCSD University Art Gallery:

Silent Witness: Recent Works by Ken Gonzales-Day
Curated by Grant Kester, Elize Mazadiego, and Jennifer Moreno
March 31 - May 20, 2011

Opening: Thursday, March 31, 2011, 5:30pm

Mark Flores at the Hammer Museum

Mark Flores - Exhibitions - Hammer Museum

Though Flores alters, filters and appropriates his own snapshots, it is certain that the photograph is still one of his main concerns. During his walks through the city of LA, he trains his camera on that which catches his eye(s); and, like an inkjet printer, he paints these photographic images with CMYK precision.

Firooz Zahedi : Elizabeth Taylor in Iran at LACMA

With Elizabeth Taylor's passing on March 23, 2011, Hollywood, the artworld and the world of AIDS philanthropy lost an icon. A muse to many artists, Taylor traveled with photographer Firooz Zahedi to Iran in 1976. This exhibition of his photographs of Taylor opened shortly before her death.

For information on the LACMA show, click here.