We didn’t have an expert art guide for our 2nd day of art exploration in LA, but Cookie (ISCA intern) and I covered quite a lot of ground in the little Hyundai Elantra rental car.
First and foremost, we went to Venice Beach and stopped at Iris Projects...wait...Iris what?? Yup, it’s the gallery formally known as the Samuel Freeman Gallery. They closed its doors on La Cienega Blvd in Culver City a couple years ago and have been working on a secret project.
Well, I don’t know how much of a secret is it, but I’m not posting any photos until they open cuz you have to go check it out for yourself. Sam Freeman is responding to a changing art market and in rethinking “the gallery,” has given us a new space and a different way to appreciate art in a more relaxed environment. On September 21, he is debuting his new space with a show by Martin Mull, “HARVEST”
Over at Various Small Fires, they continue their commitment to sustainability with their second solo exhibition by The Harrisons. The artworks collected in this exhibition, dating from 1970 to the present are the The Harrisons idea to “mediate the extinction of our natural world, and provide a rough and ready blueprint for countering the extinction now upon us.”
After a quick refill of Matcha roti and coffee at Cafe Dulce 🤤 in Japanese Village, we headed over to Hauser & Wirth.
David Hammons invites the visitor to imagine themselves homeless in his site specific installation in the courtyard of Hauser and Wirth filled with tents with the words “This could be you” stenciled on the them.
Inside the vast galleries, are a breadth of David Hammons’s works of all shapes and sizes, medium and materials, cardboard boxes, framed photographs, tarps with deliberately poked holes to expose color, fur coats, a big red ball.... The more I saw, the more I began to appreciate the wit, humor and depth of the works. Wishing I had more time...
Next, off to MOCA LA to visit Bryan Barcena, Assistant Curator and Manager of Publications.
The last time I was in L.A. during Frieze Art Fair in February, I visited Elliott Hundley’s studio and saw a mock up of this exhibition Open House: Elliott Hundley that he and Bryan work on jointly. It’s pretty much exactly as they planned it, CONGRATS!!! 🙌🏼
In this group exhibition, Hundley explores “the architecture and origins of collage, exploring how the visual and material logic of this technique has informed artists in MOCA’s collection, as well as his own practice.” This sculpture is the piece of his own that they included in the exhibition.
MOCA LA also has an extensive permanent collection. This is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Six Crimee from 1982, 72 x144 in
