As a follow up to last year’s inaugural event, ForYourArt and Black Frame gave us the second annual Los Angeles Art Weekend, a citywide web of exhibitions, lectures and performances from standouts in art, architecture, design, and music.
All the city was a playground, from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills and as far east as downtown. But the spine was Postopolis, a five-day “conversation” on the rooftop of the Standard Downtown LA, where participants from the architectural blogosphere discussed architecture, urbanism, landscape and design. Postopolis was accessible not only in person, but also via a dedicated Twitter badge and a live webcast.
Kudos to Taschen for blessing LA Art Weekend with a dash of haute couture by hosting a book signing with Valentino Garavani at their Beverly Hills location. The designer extraordinaire set things off with a bang, signing copies of his new book Valentino: A Grand Italian Epic and the collector’s edition of Valentino Garavani: Una Grande Storia Italiana.
It was all about the art of course, with Culver City galleries Blum & Poe, David Kordansky, Honor Fraser, Kim Light/Lightbox, LAXART, Susanne Vielmetter, Taylor de Cordoba and Western Project at the epicenter. While some of the work was hit and miss, the Kim McCarthy and David Hendren exhibitions (which show through May 16th at Kim Light/Lightbox) were well worth the trip. Hendren’s wall-mounted sculptures were a far cry from the “junkyard” feel typical of the assemblage medium. Perhaps it’s a testament to modernity that his mishmashes of wood, aluminum composite, wire, glass and fluorescent lights were surprisingly accessible, warm and familiar. Meanwhile, McCarthy’s watercolor saturation technique tempted the viewer to imagine the large and small portraits of adolescent boys and girls as happy accidents.
Another notable was Timothy Hull’s exhibition at the Taylor De Cordoba. His piece “The Innocents Abroad”—a video of foreigners on an Egyptian cruise ship attempting to go native on the dance floor—finds its peculiar depth when the artist himself is spotted among the subjects he portrays. Finally, Kaws’ first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, “The Long Way Home” at Honor Fraser, proved to be a great showing. The works were a mix of sculptures and paintings, all washed in vibrant colors. The subjects, which included Smurf parodies and a “deaths-head” version of the Michelin Man, epitomized pop and held visitors in rapt attention. “The Long Way Home” closed on April 4.
All told, LA Art Weekend 2009 was a hell of a sequel.
