Seven from Los Angeles

A show of weird, wonderful and young American artists.

By GIL STERN STERN GOLDFINE
sailors dance 88 224 (photo credit: Courtesy)
sailors dance 88 224
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Intimate, personal and approachable are the artistic and social concepts I would use to describe "From and About Place: Art from Los Angeles," an engaging exhibition of contemporary works by seven young artists who live and work in LA, currently on view at the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in South Tel Aviv. From and About Place is the culmination of a cooperative venture planned and executed by the team of Sergio Edelsztein, director of CCA, and Alma Ruiz, curator of contemporary art at the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles). Edelsztein and Ruiz met several years ago through a curatorial exchange program initiated and supported by the Tel Aviv/Los Angeles Partnership, a project of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and the municipality of Tel Aviv. Unlike ArtTLV 08, an assembly of arcane and confusing sculptures, installations, conceptual pieces, photos and paintings displayed recently at the Rubinstein Pavilion, Ruiz provides viewers with a well balanced, fresh and a intelligible array of works in diverse media including an out of the ordinary installation constructed in situ with bits and pieces culled from local vendors. In a conversation I had with Fran Siegel (b. 1960, New York), represented in the show with Overland I and II, large-scale unframed drawings of a topographical nature, she indicated her work has developed from sequential photographs of Los Angeles shot from an aircraft on its descent to the airport. Referring to them as "unified surfaces of information" Siegel's non-objective planes and lines coalesce into what she calls nomadic drawings for they have no roots or a particular focal point. The several layers of transparent vinyl and opaque black, ocher and white cut papers, embellished with colored pencil and pigments, are stitched and glued together like a Beduin tent as they amble across the plane, halted at times when her diagrammatic vocabulary is recycled into an apocalyptic language. Alexandra Grant (b. 1970, Ohio) also explores topography but in landscapes constructed from single words or phrases cast into changing patterns. A mixed-media work on a metallic surface using language as object corresponds to a DVD whose dynamic linear images and audio track advance, recede, crisscross, unite and unravel in a fractious manner onto the spectator's retina as the work explodes into reflections of prophetic proportions. A trio of performance artists with the weird and wonderful name My Barbarian is projected in two video productions, The Golden Age and Toward a Leftist Positionality. In the former the three, Malik Gaines (b. 1973, California), Jade Gordon (b. 1975, California) and Alexandre Segade (b. 1973, California), in sailor suits and hats transform themselves into a 1930s song-and-dance troupe that is vivacious and highly amusing, while in the latter the three, this time in military garb, sit around a darkened space making political decisions tinged with sarcasm and pathos. An interest in water wells, their history and development, tied to an advocacy of alternative energy, has provided Scoli Acosta (b. 1973, California) with the motivation to create Reliquary, an intriguing conceptual installation fabricated from pink shoe boxes, turquoise tubing, aluminum foil, tape and a variety of paints. When Acosta discovered the ancient neolithic well at Atlit Yam was underwater in a security zone, preventing him from creating a site-specific work, he regrouped in the gallery space and proceeded to organize his thoughts and his objects. Shoe boxes form the bricks of a well with tubing running from its base to a solar heater situated on an adjacent window, then continues to traverse the space, exiting through a wall in order to heat the world. A brilliantly finished product is not Acosta's objective. He indicated to me during a recent conversation that his working methodology revolves around the Aesthetics of Resourcefulness, a philosophy which guides him to refigure the energies in found and recycled objects, including silhouettes of several swimmers on the gallery ceiling and the underside of a submarine, all cut from simple black paper. For Adam Janes (b. 1976, Texas) the opposite is true. His finished drawings and skillfully crafted objects are at the core of his oeuvre. In an interview with Alma Ruiz, Janes describes his affinity for movement, and its counterpart obstruction, both central to his final product. Water, doors and ladders often appear in his work, as in Rethinking Rebirth Complete, a pair of wood, fabric and fiberglass floor directed cases in natural woods except for a kelly green open door and sash that allows the black spirits to escape their confinement. What If Walls Made Things Greener on the Other Side is a four panel photographic print by Ruben Ochoa (b. 1974, California), focusing on the LA freeway system, a colossal network that, in addition to being a symbol of urban progress has become emblematic of partition and separation, social concepts that foster physical and mental barricades. As the spectator moves along the corridor, a section of the photographed retaining wall magically disappears, exposing a mound of uncultivated earth behind it. The last piece in the exhibition, entitled An Arrangement Without Tormentors by Edgar Arceneaux (b. 1972, California), is a two-track video clip of two separate musicians fingering the same tune, "I Want to Dance," who slowly divert their musical prowess into separate avenues of expression in tempo, sound and rhythm.. According to Arceneaux, as stated in his interview with Ruiz, all logical systems inevitably become illogical through their subject's nature. (The Center for Contemporary Art, Rachel and Israel Pollak Gallery, Rehov Kalisher 5, Tel Aviv). Hebrew-English catalog. Until the end of November. A working partnership The Tel Aviv/Los Angeles Partnership was established a little more than a decade ago by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and the Tel Aviv Municipality, with the assistance of the Jewish Agency, to provide a platform for the citizens of both cities to achieve specific goals in social, economic and cultural affairs. Programs sponsored by the Partnership fall under education, health and human services, and economic initiatives. The education program, the partnership's major initiative, provides for children from 36 schools in both cities and consists of activities from simple e-mail greetings to a student and parent travel exchange for the purpose of sharing Jewish community experiences, curriculum content and to discuss common goals. Especially active in fostering programs and events in the performing and visual arts, the partnership sponsors annual master classes in cinema and television and professional workshops and seminars in opera, dance and theater throughout the year. The visual arts committee, chaired by Nancy Berman in LA and Bill Gross in TA, has advocated for exchange programs for museum curators and artists for the past several years. Last month Berman was here with several invited museum curators on an educational tour with an objective to review Israel's contemporary art scene at Jerusalem's Focus and ArtTLV 08. The group also visited the architectural offices of Prof. Nitza Szmuk, for a presentation of "The White City of Tel Aviv: The Modern Movement," a traveling exhibition searching for a venue in the LA area. The current exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Art was the result of interaction between curators Alma Ruiz and Sergio Edelzstein that began with their initial meetings in 2003 during a Partnership exchange program for museum professionals. Additional programs for 2009, celebrating Tel Aviv's 100th birthday, include a Barry Friedlander exhibition possibly at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and in exchange a show of photographs by noted LA artist Sharon Lockhart. West Coast curator in Tel Aviv Born in Guatemala City, Alma Ruiz came to Los Angeles at 18 and today is the curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Contemporary Art, LA. As a child she had a burning interest in the history and culture of ancient civilizations and it was this curiosity that eventually led her to study international relations at University of Southern California in the late 1970s combined with several art history courses for which she received her BA degree. After a few years in Italy studying for her MA in Italian language and literature at the Middlebury College extension school, she returned to California and by several unusual comings and goings found herself assistant to the director of MOCA in charge of touring exhibitions, a post she held for 10 years. Ruiz is well respected in her field and, in addition to acting as an external juror and art adviser; she has mounted during her curatorial tenure several important exhibitions focusing on postwar Latin America and Italian art movements. She was responsible for the Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa's first exhibition in the US; MOCA Focus - periodical exhibitions designed to showcase emerging artists from Southern California; a show devoted to the works of conceptualist Gabriel Orozco; Poetics of the Handmade featuring Latin American artists; and for early 2009, Ruiz is involved in Women Artists on Immigration: Crossing Borders, Confronting Barriers, Bridging Identities. During her stay in Tel Aviv, while installing the exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Art, Ruiz conducted professional workshops for local curators of contemporary art. Her positive response to the artistic presence she discovered in Tel Aviv has prompted a desire on her part to work with Sergio Edelsztein, director of CCA, in bringing an exhibition of Israeli artists to the MOCA sometimes in the near future.