Galleries
Driving the Los Angeles Gallery Scene
From the beach to downtown, Los Angeles has great summer shows.
Eileen Kinsella
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From Culver City on the West Side, to Hollywood, and the fast-growing downtown arts district in the East, the ever-expanding Los Angeles gallery scene has plenty to offer viewers right now; notwithstanding that it’s mid-August and most of the art world is on hiatus. At The Mistake Room, one of LA’s only nonprofit contemporary art institutions, visitors are treated to an ambitious project by Bangkok-born Korakrit Arunanondchai (who also has a solo show at MoMA/PS1 through September 14). It consolidates the artist’s new paintings, sculptures and videos into an immersive experience guided by actresses who appear in the show’s two respective films. Arunanondchai’s work addresses notions of social identity, conformity, and ideas about cleansing and rebirth. He also explores questions about the emotional and spiritual “cost” of devotion to one’s artistic practice. The show, entitled “Letters to Chantri #1: The lady at the door/The gift that keeps giving,” runs through September 13.
Art dealer François Ghebaly inaugurated his new arts district space with a show by Gina Osterloh that kicked off with a live performance Prick, Prick Prick! on July 19 in which she used her own body to strike and slice through paper. Osterloh’s constructed sets and paintings as well as her mesmerizing new 16 millimeter film Press and Outline, in which she slowly wrestles with her own shadow projected on the wall, remain on view there through August 23 (extended from original close date of August 16). At Gusford gallery on Melrose in Hollywood, check out Singaporean born artist Genevieve Chua’s site-specific solo show “Cicadas Cicadas.” The artist uses paintings, objects, and sound to explore the unique life cycle of the insect and the larger implications of dormancy and eventual uprising.
At Regen Projects, large scale photographic works by Scott McFarland reconsider the concept of the photograph and its ability to capture a single, documentary moment in time, while German artist Manfred Pernice’s expansive, freewheeling installation “Bbreiland” occupies the floors and walls of the back gallery (both run through August 16).
If you head west on the 10 freeway, you can end your day at the appropriately titled group show “Driving L.A.” at Craig Krull Gallery. The exhibition consists mostly of documentary black-and-white photographs by 16 artists the gallery represents. Along with historic shots of main thoroughfares, such as a bird’s eye view of Wilshire Boulevard looking towards the beach in the 1960s, the photos explore LA’s driving culture, in the form of billboards, car washes, drive-ins, freeways, and maps to the stars’ homes.
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