DOMESTIC MODERNISM, pt 37

"the Los Angeles story."
aka
"you know the old story"

DESIGN + ART + FURNITURE

Summer officially begins June 21st. There is simply too much happening in Los Angeles in the upcoming weeks. As the sun begins to feel the power that June gloom took from her, the city becomes alive with the buzz and the beat of summer. This first glorious week of summer you will find YHBHS here:


1. LAMA AUCTION, preview begins today. Auction this Sunday, June 26th. The above image is Lot 51: Edward Ruscha "You Know the Old Story." Bid online for this work here... See you there! But still craving more Ruscha? Then get on the road to Hammer Museum's On The Road...

2. DWELL ON DESIGN. June 24th-June 26th, Los Angeles Convention Center. Plus the hundreds on events that are happening surrounding this event. Remodelista will be there with Atelier's goods, Scout Regalia! plus hundreds of other vendors. go here...

3. MARC FOXX GROUP SHOW, 6150 Wilshire, has a beautiful group summer show. Ricky Swallow's new works are on view. Trust me, see them. They call to mind red tunnels & buildings that you might secretly dream about. (At least for me!)

4. DAVID KORDANSKY shows new work by Los Angeles painter, Lesley Vance. "In particular, some of the new works conjure the otherworldly light, perforated spaces, and strange familiarity that the surrealists brought to painting during the first half of the twentieth century. " + new watercolor works by Lesley.

5. IKO IKO and HEATH both have new shows, which is always a reason to celebrate in my book. Kristin from IKO IKO presents MerkelWare. Don't ask, just go. (Or just peak here.) Adam Silverman shows new works at HEATH this week with two openings, one co-hosted by REMODELISTA. The series is called COLORBLIND, June 23 5:30-8pm. (New York's SIGHT UNSEEN just posted a great studio visit with Adam Silverman when they were in town recently on their site...)

Leslie Williamson photography, Bertoia Barn, Barto, PA

6. REFORM GALLERY will be hosting an event the same evening down the street from HEATH. Leslie Williamson's Handcrafted Modern: "This collection of photographs by Williamson focuses on domestic modernism at its warmest and most creative, offering an intimate and detailed glimpse into the strikingly beautiful mid-century home interiors of some of the most iconic designers and craftsmen of our time, including J.B.Blunk, John Kapel and Jerome and Evelyn Ackerman, artists whose work will be on display at Reform." Meet Leslie Williamson, and enjoy some beautiful images of DOMESTIC MODERNISM, at its finest.

7. DESIGN TRUCK: A mobile gallery following some of L.A.'s best food trucks next weekend, June 24th and 25th, to mark the end of the first-ever L.A. Design Festival.
Design Truck will feature the work of 12 Los Angeles-based designers, bringing comfortable chairs, beautiful tables and designed lighting to the hungry masses. Featuring Brendan Ravenhill, Chris Adamick, Bend Seating, Kelly Lamb, Sam Moyer, Scout Regalia, Brooke Woosley, Machine Histories, whyrHymer, Woodsmithe Aprro, Clancy Pearson

8. PAINTERS BEYOND PAINTING, Sunday, June 26 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm Location @ the Mandrake 2692 South La Cienega Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90034

Tom Lawson, Steve Roden, Brett Cody Rogers, and Amanda Ross-Ho join moderator Jill Newman in a conversation about artists’ relationships to painting when it is one aspect of a multi-faceted practice. In some cases these artists apply the language of painting to various mediums, in others they create paintings through the mechanics of differing disciplines, or arrive at content through subjects outside of painting.






















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Brendan Fowler

projections and performance.
part of L.A.N.D.
10 pm - 12 am









Los Angeles Nomadic Divison

10:30pm: Video selections by Brendan Fowler
11:30pm: Performance by Stephen/Steven (Brendan Fowler)

Address: M Bar
1263 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, CA 90026 Parking: Street
RSVP not required.



"A programming series with an eye toward film, video, and the moving image in general, Frame Rate is presented in conjunction with simultaneous LAND exhibitions, at other site, as a means to further explore the work of the exhibiting artists, the exhibition's thematic, and how the two relate."










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Blinky Palermo: Retrospective : LACMA
Los Angeles County Art Museum
1964–1977
October 31, 2010–January 16, 2011











"While Blinky Palermo’s reputation as one of the foremost post-war abstract painters is well established in Europe, his work is rarely seen in North America. Beginning its yearlong tour at LACMA, this is the first comprehensive retrospective of the work of this German artist in the United States."

go to LACMA for more.

Conversation: Lynne Cooke,
Mathias Poledna & Rhea Anastas
Tuesday, October 26 | 7:30 pm
(I'll def be going to this!)

"Blinky who died mysteriously at 33 years old,
continues to haunt the art world...."

"Shortly before his death in 1977, German painter Blinky Palermo created his most significant cycle of paintings, dedicating it "to the people of nyc." The work consists of 15 parts, composed from 40 painted aluminum panels arranged in combinations of cadmium red, cadmium yellow and black.

Recalling Piet Mondrian's late series New York City (1941-42), and works by such American artists as Robert Ryman and Brice Marden, To the People of New York City (1976) is distinguished by its prescribed hanging and pacing, and its rhythmically changing formats, which also bring to mind the Jazz performances that Palermo sought out during his time in New York, where he had maintained a studio from 1973 to 1975.

This handsome edition discusses To the People of New York City--today in the collection of New York's Dia Art Foundation--within this context and alongside works by his former teacher Joseph Beuys, and his long-time friends and colleagues Imi Knoebel and Gerhard Richter, among others."


Blinky Palermo: To the People of New York City
Text by Lynne Cooke, Anne Rorimer, Pia Gottschaller, Jaleh Mansoor.


book via ARTBOOK, go here to
see more of their catalogue!









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Fall Calender:
Art/ Design opening

"Autumn Suite"
at SPECIFIC!

S P E C I F I C

Brooks' store rocks! Excited to see this upcoming show!

September 4th, 2010, 5-8 PM to celebrate the start of the season. Introducing new furniture designs by Jalal Poehlman and sculpture and painting by Sean Brian McDonald

Featuring new case goods and lighting by favorite SPECIFIC designers Marie Christophe, todosomething, WORKSTEAD, Scout Regalia and Atelier Takagi...
uh huh!



7374 Beverly Blvd Los Angeles,
CA 90036 323.930.0220 store



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Gaetano Pesce!

Gaetano Pesce gives a talk at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
And his retropsective opens in Los Angeles the same evening!

Just found out that Gaetano Pesce is giving a lecture at the Hammer Museum next week!
And the opening of a retrospective of his work at the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles.

Anyone going, drop me an email.....?

The first retrospective in the Western United States of architect, artist, designer Gaetano Pesce celebrates the maestro of art-design and his years of experimenting and creating works with polyurethane foam, resin, and plastics for such A-list companies as Cassina, B&B Italia and Meritalia.

Works on display include prototypes, production models, video, and audio produced throughout Pesce's 40-year career.

Gaetano Pesce
Co-presented with Istituto Italiano di Cultura.


Internationally renowned architect and designer Gaetano Pesce was born in 1939 in La Spezia, Italy, and studied architecture at the University of Venice. He has designed for companies such as Cassina, B & B Italia, Bernini, and Knoll International. His architectural work includes the Organic Building of Osaka, the Children’s House for Parc de la Villette, the Gallery Mourmons in Belgium, and the office for the New York advertising of agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. Pesce received the prestigious Chrysler Award for Innovation and Design in 1993 and the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Lawrence J. Israel Prize in 2009.







-----------------------------

Arshile Gorky

a sandwich
and some
painting.

I got called into jury duty today.
Museums are free to downtown Los Angeles jurors...
Off to MOCA for the new retrospective during my lunch break!
I know so little about Arshile Gorky, excited to see this show.




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Arshile Gorky (b. c.1902, Khorkom, Armenia; d. 1948 Sherman, Conn.)
was a seminal figure in the movement toward abstraction that transformed American art in the middle of the 20th century. Born in an Armenian village on the eastern border of Ottoman Turkey, Gorky was a first-hand witness to the Turkish government's Armenian Genocide of 1915, which led the artist’s family and thousands of others to flee.

In 1920, Gorky emigrated to the United States and eventually settled in New York, where he became a largely self-taught artist. At a time when the American avant-garde privileged originality over traditional working methods, Gorky was a nonconformist who developed his personal vocabulary through a series of intensive apprenticeships to the styles of other artists, including Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, and Joan Miro, before developing his own unique and deeply influential visual language in the early 1940s.

MOCA GRAND AVENUE
250 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012



------------------------------

Michael Smoler

“bodies and celestial backdrops coalesce
as if made up of the very substance of the universe itself”

via light and wire gallery














Michael Smoler
the Universe is Part of Ourselves....

-----


Light & Wire Gallery presents an exhibition of new and recent collages by Los Angeles-based artist Michael Smoler. The exhibition, 'the universe is part of ourselves' will display twenty-six works from an on-going series of collages that combine reprinted Hubble images of the cosmos with such things as historical figures, animals and other iconic elements.

The collages are accompanied by a serialized poem entitled this here and now, written by the poet Lisa Johns for the occasion of this exhibition.







----------------------------

The Alchemy of Things Unknown

"After the cursing comes laughter,

so that the soul is saved from the dead."

- Carl Gustav Jung, The Red Book

Khastoo
The Alchemy of Things Unknown
7556 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046



This exhibition intends to examine and expose individual works of art in relation to theosophy, sacred tradition and devotional practice. From William Blake's illuminated works of divine imagination to Carl Gustav Jung's drawings of collective symbolic unconscious, the visual is undoubtedly an integral creative tool for re

aching, exploring, animating and pervading the indefinable spaces beyond body and mind. The artists in this exhibition, some more explicitly than others, sought after or seek spiritual truths through art making and employ an almost fervent and reverent experimentation to their practice, one that is both ritualistic and against the grain. This mystic behavior is what defines the show; the persistence on new and unorthodox visual experimentation reaches beyond the worldly sphere to heightened states of consciousness.



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Kenneth Anger William Blake Aleister Crowley Zach Harris Alfred Jensen Angus MacLise Raha Raissnia Jim Shaw Austin Osman Spare Scoli Acosta Harvey Bialy James Lee Byars Cameron JFC Fuller Susan Hiller Paul Laffoley Marilyn Manson Harry Smith
medi

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LA Box Collective

so
happy
together.
(california!)













"Fifth Floor is pleased to present "So Happy Together" the debut exhibition of the LA Box Collective. The 12 strong, LA Box Collective, is a newly formed group of Los Angeles-based professional furniture designers and makers committed to environmentally-conscious design and production. While working in various modern styles, the individual furniture makers that make up BoxCo are collectively devoted to fine craftsmanship, sound design, and the use of long-lasting, reclaimed, and other sustainable materials.

andy riiska
inky and pac man tables.
these rock andy!

The group has come together to showcase what Los Angeles has to offer in the way of beautiful design, crafted locally and sustainably, and ultimately to encourage buyers to look for the "Made in Southern California" stamp. The members of the collective are Cliff Spencer Furniture, Sidecar Furniture, caseandgrain, whyrHymer, Robert Apodaca, Stranger Furniture, Edward Pine Stevens, Riiska Design, and Topher Paterno."





So Happy Together LA Box Collective Debut Exhibition
June 12, 2010 - August 29, 2010

david johnson

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fifth floor gallery
502 Chung King Court
Los Angeles, CA 90012.

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Specific
Los Angeles,
June 5, 2010







PLAY: SUSANNA MAING & TODOSOMETHING
Opening Reception Saturday, June 5, 5-8 PM
Exhibition dates: June 5, 2010 - July 2, 2010

Brooks Hudson Thomas is pleased to announce his second exhibition of new work by emerging artists and designers at his new project space, SPECIFIC. What will become an important new chair design (and dozens of variations of it) by Chad Petersen and Dakota Witzenburg, the team behind TODOSOMETHING, is being shown for the first time with new paintings by Los Angeles artist Susanna Maing.



Susanna Maing, honored with a solo exhibition at Angles Gallery in Santa Monica in 2006, has been in the studio developing her practice and SPECIFIC is proud to be the first to show her new body of work. Maing and TODOSOMETHING are both working hard at play in their endeavors and we think you should keep your eyes on their very bright futures.

------------------------

SPECIFIC is the new project space curated by Brooks Hudson Thomas. Operating in the gap that exists between a shop and a gallery, SPECIFIC is passionate about exhibiting contemporary design and contemporary art together in a way that has never been seen in Los Angeles.

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A
day
of
color.

Anne Truitt, 1964 Out
Nippon A - Marine Finish Acrylic
on Welded Slab Aluminum

Spent the afternoon being overwhelmed by color & beauty at Christopher Farr here in Los Angeles, on La Cienega Blvd. Ptolemy Mann, an artist based in London gave an inspired talk about her work, from weaving, installations, new fabrics and architectural commissions. I was particularly obsessed with this digitally printed fabric Christopher Farr is releasing. To say it is psychedelic and charged with energy is an understatement. To say it is refined and elegant, well, that's pretty much accurate!


I left thinking today about Anni Albers, Anne Truitt, Bauhaus textiles, The Light Movement of California, Donald Judd, and looking for colored buildings as I drove down Santa Monica Blvd toward Rachel Harrison's new show at Regen Projects. Melted statues with photographs!

Anni Albers..(1899-1994) s
screenprint, 1985

China, by Allegra Hicks
at Christopher Farr, Los Angeles

Christopher Farr has been at the spearhead of contemporary rug design for over twenty years. Together with his business partner Matthew Bourne, they were the catalyst that revolutionised contemporary rug design.

Starting with a small shop in a leafy area of north London, a stone's throw from Primrose Hill, this one time painter, trained at the Slade School, wrought a vision that combined the art of the times with a different form.



thank you christopher farr
and christina tullock....

Varvara Stepanova

A
day
of
color.

Los Angeles:
Tokyo

Playmountain
+ Heath = :)











Very excited
for this!


Heath LA will feature an eclectic array of Playmountain products including its newest line, Chin Jukan Pottery, a collaboration between Nakahara and Korean potter/designer Hyejeong Kim inspired by and fired in a historic 400-year-old Japanese kiln with origins in Korean craftsmanship. The result is four series of modern yet modest, highly-designed yet functional ceramics from tableware to home accessories. The summer shop will also incorporate original, handmade children’s toys from Nakahara’s children’s line, Chigo; clothing by Playmountain’s neighbor, Loopwheeler, a small Japanese manufacturer that uses vintage loopwheel looms, which date back to early 1920s Germany, and which, because of the slow, quality-first approach, only process eight sweatshirts a day; and products by TEMBEA, a manufacturer known for its high-quality fabric bags durable enough to tote and bundle firewood but stylish enough for daily use. Plus, new products will be arriving throughout the 90-day event.











----------------------------------

puppets, apartments, and sculpture!

everyone
needs
neighbors
like
iko iko...
(los angeles)









IKO IKO
presents

YELENA ZHELEZOV


performing an evening of experiments in puppetry, video projection, and live sound, that contemplate the notion of self-improvement .



Three situations are presented to the distinguished audience:
1. A multistory apartment building changes into a mountain over a surprisingly short period of time. 2. A bear attempts to study architecture, and is arrested For Fashion Faux Pas (4 paws). 3. A short course in learning to appreciate monumental sculpture.




This SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 7:30 pm
(please be timely as the show will begin at 7:30 sharp!)



Yelena Zhelezov is a Belarusian-Israeli artist based in Los Angeles. Yelena’s work is highly interdisciplinary, and as such takes form of installation, objects, texts, film, and puppetry performance. Yelena’s materials are evidentiary of the world, often sourced in science, art history, and her yard. She uses strategies of research, classification and the archive in her practice. She is currently an MFA candidate at CalArts.








go to iko iko here...
thanks kristin, this looks amazing!

H E A T H

2010
Heath
Summer.

(via Heath Ceramics newsletter.....)

"Here's a sneak peek into what's to come April 1...
This season we bring you Ocean Pacific, a three-color pattern created by two glazes. It starts with aqua — each piece is hand-dipped. Once dry (within moments), the piece is dipped again, this time in zest yellow. In the area where the aqua and zest overlap, another vibrant yellow is created. The resulting pattern resembles the horizon line of the sea on a bright summer day — the inspiration palette for the 2010 Summer Collection."

bowls in the making! two scoops.

"The four hand-dipped pieces in the Summer Collection (vegetable bowl, bulb vase, deep serving bowl and 12x12 platter) are being offered alongside a few new items to our standard line. The entire Seasonal line was designed with the newest glaze addition to our Plaza line in mind - aqua.

We're constantly exploring the intersection of science and art, finding inspiration where the two converge. Each glaze reacts differently when put in contact with another — the possibilities are endless. The two-part glazing process used for the Summer Collection is a technique that's been explored at Heath Ceramics for many years — on both tile and dinnerware .


Once again, we were sparked by historical experimentation and inspired to bring the past into the present. As you may know, our Seasonal Collection is offered twice yearly — once in Spring/Summer (April 1), once in Fall/Winter (October 1). The Seasonal concept gives us a chance to explore new colors, techniques and ideas without altering our standard line. We offer them in limited edition runs, as a way to explore our creativity, and push the limits of our design and manufacturing capabilities. "

go to heath here...

lazy
afternoon
at
iko iko.
los angeles, ca.

current, and back issues of casa brutus, available at iko iko.
go to casa brutus here.

-----


IKO IKO 1298 Sunset Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90026
Tues-Sat 1-7, Sun 1-5
fantastic selection of ceramics, vintage books, and clothes...
Angelino Heights. go to IKO IKO space and blog here.

Looking forward to Self Improvement, at IKO IKO in Feb!

a portrait of los angeles.

Los Angeles, Portrait of a City
Heimann, Jim (Editor) Starr, Kevin

go to taschen for more info!

"From the first known photograph taken in Los Angeles to its most recent sweeping vistas, this photographic tribute to the City of Angels provides a fascinating journey through the city's cultural, political, industrial, and sociological history. It traces the city's development from the 1880s' real estate boom, through the early days of Hollywood and the urban sprawl of the late 20th century, right up to the present day. With over 500 images, L.A. is shown emerging from a desert wasteland to become a vast palm-studded urban metropolis."

"Events that made world news—including two Olympics, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, and the Rodney King riots—reveal a city of many dimensions. The entertainment capital of the world, Hollywood, and its celebrities are showcased along with many other notable residents, personalities, architects, artists, and musicians. The city's pop cultural movements, its music, surfing, health food fads, gangs, and hot rods are included, as are its notorious crimes and criminals. This book depicts Los Angeles in all its glory and grit, via hundreds of freshly discovered images including those of Julius Shulman, Garry Winogrand, William Claxton and many other superb photographers, culled from major historical archives, museums, private collectors, and universities. These are given context and resonance through essays by renowned California historian Kevin Starr and Los Angeles literature expert David L. Ulin."

"

free
thursdays.....
at the hammer.








Claude Collins-Stracensky
(now on view at Hammer Museum, here.....)
see lots more of his images here..


"LA-based Claude Collins-Stracensky takes as his subject the fundamental aspects of the natural world—light, energy, and time—in a practice that embraces a range of mediums. The exhibition will present a group of new sculptures and two new large photographic lightbox wall reliefs, alongside a selection of photographs taken since 2001. From the face of a boulder rendered a glowing silver by the sun to a dramatically collapsed pavilion near the Santa Monica airport after a wind storm, Collins-Stracensky’s images capture moments that heighten our awareness of the constant interactions and changes occurring in our environment between systems, materials, and forms. Our desire to contain nature and our mediated experience of the natural world is explored in several recently completed sculptures, which consist of 2-way mirror tinted and perforated glass and colored Plexiglas vitrines containing objects such as painted palm fronds and sea shells placed atop precisely rendered steel bases. The filtering of visual information and the need to view the sculptures from multiple vantage points will be mirrored by Collins-Stracensky’s interventions into the space for which he will make perforations in the walls and install colored film onto the windows."



also showing:
"Second Nature: The Valentine-Adelson Collection at the Hammer brings together for the first time a selection from Dean Valentine and Amy Adelson’s generous gift to the Hammer Museum’s Contemporary Collection of fifty sculptures by twenty-nine Los Angeles artists."

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.

L.A.C.E.

Lust for Lace.