The Fine Art Dealers Association's 15th Annual Los Angeles Art
Show may be nearly two decades old, but still has an edge. "We
weren't allowed to set it on fire," Kim de Los Angeles, Assistant
Director at Eli Klein Fine
Art, told me in reference to one of the show's more
inflammatory pieces, Burning Man Obama, by Chinese artist Liu
Bolin, the number 1 searched artist on artnet.com. The
piece was recently featured on an ABC news
segment. The artist intends the bronze, which emits
non-destructive flames, more as a playful nod to how "hot" or
popular, the U.S. President is, especially abroad.
The L.A. Art
Machine (an online arts publication and organization)
produced "Vox Humana," a live action art performance in which
street influenced large-scale painters, drawing from both the
history of the mural and the graffiti movement, covered several
specially built walls inside the convention center during the
course of the exhibition. Another of the curated project spaces
exhibited a show within a show, "Signs: Contemporary Middle
Eastern Art," which included pieces such as Ali Hassan's "Noon 4"
which emphasized the formal beauty of Islamic font.
The global feel of the show was enhanced by the first time
participation of a gallery from India, Arushi Arts, a welcome addition
to the geographic panoply of exhibitors which spans from Africa
to Europe to Latin and North America, with a high concentration
of New York and LA galleries, as well as a strong presence of
South Koreans.
The London-based Rebecca
Hossack Gallery had a good week; As I walked by I overheard a
patron ask the gallerist, "Sell anything?" to which she
cheerfully retorted, "Yes! Tons!" -And it did seem as if the
pictures were flying off the walls. Greenwich, Connecticut-based
Abby Taylor represented
another success, expanding from the previous year, where she had
one showroom, to include a second showroom of sculpture, set
apart by her unique decision to install lush, lily white
wall-to-wall carpet underfoot. During a brief conversation with
Ms. Taylor, she expressed a conviction that last year's move from
the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica to the larger downtown Los
Angeles space was "the right thing to do." In fact, with unusual
heavy rains during exhibition week, the show would have been
difficult to pull off in the previous location.
At Chinasquare New
York, artist Alex Guofeng Cao combined iconic images of art
and antiquity (such as the Mona Lisa) with contemporary pop
culture icons (think Marilyn Monroe) using a complex system of
grayscaling miniature photos, like individual pixels, to create
archival prints where the individual images of the former combine
to form a composite figure of the latter, leading the viewer to
meditate on the evolution of how images are disseminated, high
versus low art, and the watering down of meaning in a visually
oversaturated world.
However, if you aren't overstimulated yet, there's always the
2011 show, so mark your calendars for January 19, 2011. The 2011 show promises to be another exciting event, well worth the price of admission.
© 2010, Moira Cue for The Hollywood Sentinel, All rights
reserved.