Wall Rockets: Contemporary Artists and Ed Ruscha, currently on view at the FLAG Art Foundation, is an homage to one of America’s most beloved artists. Named after Ruscha’s celebrated canvas, Wall Rockets (2000), which sits front-and-center at the elevator entry, the exhibition includes a multi-media mixture of works by over seventy international artists — including John Baldessari, Tom Friedman, Juergen Teller and Mark Bradford, among others — who were influenced, in one way or another, by Ruscha’s iconic pop art style. (The vernacular of Southern California and Los Angeles in particular have played a major role in Ruscha’s oeuvre.)
Highlights include what the curator once referred to during the installation process as the “Los Angeles wall” (the long wall in the gallery’s main space that’s guilty, in a good way, of horror vacui), where one can find Israeli artist Nir Hod’s intoxicating, “The Night You Left” (2007) (pictured above).
Despite leaving her director’s position at the Guggenheim for Sotheby’s Auction House, Lisa Dennison, the show’s curator, seems to have lost none of her mojo. She did a seamless job organizing the show between two floors as well as the 9th floor terrace, where resides a gorgeous Ugo Rondinone tree sculpture.
The FLAG Art Foundation can be found on the 9th and 10th floors of the Chelsea Arts Tower, which boasts interminable views of the city. (I personally like to think of the FLAG as a precious, unadulterated gem as well as the-best-New-York-City-art-gallery-that-you’ve-never-heard-of!)
For a bit of background, New York-based art collector Glenn Fuhrman founded the FLAG in January of 2008 as a space to showcase emerging contemporary artwork. The FLAG makes a practice, however, of only displaying works from private collections. This is its third-ever exhibition. The FLAG’s previous show, Attention to Detail, which was curated by none other than Chuck Close, received critical acclaim.
Image: Nir Hod, The Night You Left, 2007, oil on black mirror, 47 x 64 inches. Courtesy of the Collection of John and Amy Phelan.
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[...] Wall Rockets: Contemporary Artists and Ed Ruscha, currently on view at the FLAG Art Foundation, is an homage to one of America’s most beloved artists. Named after Ruscha’s celebrated canvas, Wall Rockets (2000), which sits front-and-center at the elevator entry, the exhibition includes a multi-media mixture of works by over seventy international artists — including John Baldessari, Tom Friedman, Juergen Teller and Mark Bradford, among others — who were influenced, in one way or another, by Ruscha’s iconic pop art style. (The vernacular of Southern California and Los Angeles in particular have played a major role in Ruscha’s oeuvre.) Read More » [...]