30 January 2006

the charms of L.A. part two

Okay, so in the very same day that I rediscovered Art & Wonder at the Museum of Jurassic Technology I ventured out West (well, Santa Monica) to Art L.A. 06, back at the Civic Auditorium where I saw Photo L.A. last weekend. At first I was more than disappointed in the quality of the work, shocked, even by the homogeneity of erm…”edgy” crap. Lots of Skateboarders being sold by Young Women, Tattoos being sold by Hairy Men… Everyone seemed to have either a Chris Johansen or a Raymond Pettibon (but never both! Though there were times I couldn’t tell which was which.)

There was plenty of porn, cartoons and digital photography, and some really really lame things (Hmm… she has some nice stuff on her website, but I’m sorry, these glitter Rorschach drawings sucked.) The saddest, piece however was William Powhida’s “Open Letter to Dana Schutz” at Platform, Seattle, where he attacked the newly-minted art star for her painting and her color palette as well as for appearing in person in her Artforum ad. I don’t much care for art about the artworld to begin with, but the whole thing came across as actual petty-minded jealousy more than any clever gambit. “Half in jest, all in earnest,” as my Dad often says. I mean, I’m sure Powhida’s “joking” but it would help if he was actually funny. Blah blah boring.

I made myself slow down, and started to notice things I liked, such as Gary Ruddell’s paintings at Dolby Chadwick from San Francisco – though they were too much of Richter and Rauch in one… I saw a couple of Bill Hensons, one nice and one boring, and some Tony Fitzpatricks of whom I’m quite fond. (So is art.blogging.la, I just noticed…) I saw a nice drawing by Peter Lam at Kontainer, then stumbled on a wonderful gallery from Portland called Motel full of lots of inexpensive small works on paper and some paintings. Ok, so maybe much of it is overly tasteful and cute, but I didn’t care at that point. I was much happier to see careful pencil drawings of bird-mushroom mash-ups than one more juvenile rendition of a sex act.

Oh, I also loved Carlee Fernandez’s animal-fruit hybrids (like this one below) at Acuna-Hansen Gallery, perhaps my favorite pieces in the fair.

Then, I ran away…

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