Youth and Enthusiasm

            One of the forces driving our local art scene today is the energy of the artist youth population. Previous generations in LA followed the way of the lone wolf. As soon as wisdom was gained, the intrepid artist would seek his own path, establish a lair and attempt to find the ultimate answer, or at least a steady paycheck, through artistic production. Sometimes the artist would create a personal ashram and impart his hard won wisdom to followers attempting to set themselves up to seek their own path in the future. This was the American Way of Art. Developed after the examples laid down by Pollock and Newman (among others) and reflecting our nationalistic obsession with individuality, this mindset has served us well although it has done more for inflating the heroic image of an artist than it has for the art market as a concerted business segment. The present brave new art world is a diverse mix of styles, gallerists and consumers. The old maxim of big LA collectors not buying at home has not been disproved so new art purveyors sought out new customers- actors, movie bigwigs, new media mavens and the like. More galleries showing more art in LA than at any other time has created a climate of can do for young artists. The proliferation of underground and guerilla art (graffiti, wheat paste posters, stencils and decals) adds to the cultural atmosphere. Couple all this with the Southland’s long acceptance of new technology and media (such as hotrods and television as real profession) and you end up with all sorts of aspiring dabblers.

            A new twist on this new school is the broad-based camaraderie of these people. There is a level of communication among them that far outstrips the gaggle of elbow benders at the old Cedar Bar. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and similar venues connects them. Images get passed around without a slide projector anywhere in sight. Techniques have slipped from the grasp of the old masters and now are subverted by this irreverent gang. Art has become a communal endeavor.

Handmade book workshop at CS Fine Art:

Andy Stickar instructing.

Sublime at Artcore

            Tae Ho Kang has a show at LA Artcore in Little Tokyo through the end of this month. All the works are paintings on canvas varying in size from small to wallpaper. The paint surface is the great attraction of these pieces and they are very different from Kang’s paintings from years ago. Colors and textures swirl on the surface in granular patterns, inviting close inspection. These are abstractions with occasional linear elements that hint at objects playing on the surface or trying to pass between the textural layers. A few paintings with horizon lines reference a landscape but the surface activity breaks any direct connection to nature other than on a microscopic level. The swirl of color and shapes viewed at a distance break down to ever intricate combinations that reveal themselves fractally as one moves nearer. The push and pull of the colors and their emulsified patterns drive the compositions.

            These new paintings also differ from earlier efforts in their attention to non-objectivity. Eggs and orbs occupied previous paintings evoking connotations of mortality and human frailty. Those paintings, although heavily patterned, were very static in their compositions allowing the shapes and objects command the stage. The current paintings appear to be random wanderings through space and color but they actually allow for simultaneity of readings. The small paintings can be taken as a whole instantly but the use of a color serving as a border references a video screen and natural impulse cause the viewer to search the screen for extra movement and more detail. The largest paintings can be read as broadly patterned decorative wall coverings because any gestures are immediately subsumed by the overwhelming scale of the support in respect to the artist’s mark. The effect is similar to a tapestry or royal screen.

            Mr. Kang’s paintings show an attention to detail while considering the overall picture as an interpretive statement. The vibrancy of the colors and the grainy structure of the patterns recall video images comprised of pixels. The difference is the viewer can access the magnification of detail within a physical experience. The structure of the pieces plays with issues of dualities. Objects and patterns or objects made of patterns are some of the readings. The occasional definite markings that appear in a few of the paintings bring up concerns of their relationship to the miasma they bisect or intrude upon. It always comes back to the structure of the materials laid on the canvas and this point is what separates Tae Ho Kang’s newest production from earlier studies. These paintings demonstrate more than a mastery of materials; the cohesive nature of the concepts contained within the compositions reveals a clinical inquiry into the ability to combine scaled narratives.

Beer Envy

There is a billboard over the Brewery Art Colony belonging to a beer maker. It kind of looks like this:

Irony abounds when this topic comes up. Microbreweries are found everywhere these days and one lost opportunity is placing one within the colony and claiming its history as a selling point. The Brewery lacks a decent restaurant and one with homemade suds could be a upbeat compliment to the dour San Antonio cafeteria down the street that tries to pass itself off as a fine eatery. The advertised beer makes some decent styles but they follow the tradition of brew culture in naming their varieties. It would be fun, not to mention culinarily elitist to call their varieties reviews. that way a mild brew could be called a 'good review', a bitter style 'negative', and a specific experimental recipe- "scathing'. The cornball applications go on and on.

The point is, for a city based on plastic image and temporal culture it is exceedingly staid in its domestic offerings. Kitsch is kitsch and class is class with little allowable overlap. I wish LA's denizens could revel in the artificiality without the need to compartmentalize.

Walking for Art on Thursday

The second Thursday of the month is the time when Angeleno art mavens venture forth in search of the elusive high art. I went to the Downtown Art Walk this evening, braving the huddled cheese mice seeking shelter from the frigid SoCal winter to join in on the search. My reason for art trekking in nearly 50 degree weather was to ease my guilt in not visiting any galleries in almost a month, make that several months for tonight's neighborhood. My plan was to hit every show space guerrilla style up one avenue and down the other. The crush of dawdlers and party people was too bothersome to deal with so after a quickie in Crewest (dull, as too many other shows were) I popped into the sadly entertaining community spaces on Main before trying to enter Pharmaka.

Pharmaka held the promise of a thoughtful installation based upon an interesting observation by the director of a new visual vocabulary that a current generation of artists share. Any hopes of weighing in on that thought were squashed in the throng of gray noggins rooted in the center of the gallery intent on relating the latest news on Lost and their pets. So on to next space... 

Bert Green was also infested but fortunately the good artist of the three displaying work was installed toward the front of the space. Doug Cox- handles paint nicely, dense but not heavy, dark but the figures are still demarked with a soft edge. It would have been nice to spend more than a few moments on these pieces.

A couple of odd spaces later I climbed up the stairs to the Spring Arts Collective Gallery. This space usually has a mishmash of artists of varying abilities and tonight proved no different. But... the Daniel Mercadante video wing was nicely arranged and fit the odd shaped vault room well. I usually avoid darkened rooms with video installations like Watchtower peddlers but this time it didn't hurt to take a peek. So far tonight this was the most authentic proposition of the night- almost worth a second visit during daylight hours. The rest of the show was uneven and the computer squeezins' being pawned off as original print unfortunately kill the good feelings.

Morono Kiang Gallery was my cultural redemption of the evening. The ink paintings of Xie Xiaoze (no, I cannot pronounce that for you) were witty comments on historical and cultural memories. Craftsmanship- 3 stars, content- 3 stars, political commentary- 3 stars, need I go on? Plus, the animated dedication of Karon Morono satisfied the cultural craving that propelled me on this evening's sojourn.