ArtRx LA
LOS ANGELES — This week, apartment gallery Laurel Doody plays Terry Allen's 1975 "conceptual country" record Juarez, Embassy opens a massive show of artist books, a group exhibition at the Loft at Liz's focuses on African-American artists from Watts, and more.
LOS ANGELES — This week, apartment gallery Laurel Doody plays Terry Allen’s 1975 “conceptual country” record Juarez, Embassy opens a massive show of artist books, a group exhibition at the Loft at Liz’s focuses on African-American artists from Watts, and more.
Juarez
When: Thursday, January 14, 7:30pm
Where: Laurel Doody (637 S Cloverdale Ave, Unit 7, Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles)
The genres of conceptual art and country music don’t often cross paths, but they are brought together in the oeuvre of Terry Allen, who also creates paintings, drawings, video, and sculpture as part of his practice. This Thursday, Laurel Doody will be playing his debut album, Juarez (1975), selected by writer and curator Michael Ned Holte, who refers to it as a “conceptual country” record. The music will find visual accompaniment in the drawings of Nick Austin, currently on view in the space, who shares Allen’s interest in offbeat storytelling and visual play.
Together/Alone
When: Opens Thursday, January 14, 7–10pm
Where: Embassy (422 Ord St, Unit G, Chinatown, Los Angeles)
The artist book allows artists an opportunity to produce interactive multiples that are generally less precious than paintings or sculptures. They are meant to be touched, inviting you to flip through their pages. They can also serve as a documentation of process, or a way for artists to work through ideas parallel to their main practice. Together/Alone at new artist-run space Embassy presents a wide selection of artist books from A.L. Steiner & Nicole Killian, Sayre Gomez, Sara Rara, Keith Rocka Knittel, and many more. The one-week show opens this Thursday with a reading and performance from Jennifer Moon.
Sharon Lockhart: Goshogaoka
When: Thursday, January 14, 7pm
Where: Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Grand (250 S. Grand Avenue, Downtown, Los Angeles)
The premise behind Sharon Lockhart’s 1997 film Goshogaoka is relatively straightforward. In six 10-minute shots, Lockhart filmed a Japanese girls’ basketball team practicing. The result, however, has elements of documentary, experimental cinema, and dance, as the players’ exercises resemble post-modern choreography. Preceding Goshogaoka will be Tacita Dean’s 2007 film “Merce Cunningham. First Performance of STILLNESS (In Three Movements) to John Cage’s Composition 4’33” with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007,” capturing one of the late choreographer’s last performances.
Watts
When: Opens Saturday, January 16, 7–10pm
Where: The Loft at Liz’s (453 S. La Brea Avenue, Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles)
Born and raised in Watts, Stan Sanders was an early advocate and supporter of African-American artists in Los Angeles, and was a co-founder of the Black Arts Council in 1970. Watts, the upcoming show he curated at the Loft at Liz’s, features a number of artists who were involved with the Black Assemblage Art movement that flowered in Watts in the late 1960s, as well as others, like Dale Brockman Davis, Noah Purifoy, David Hammons, John Riddle, John Outterbridge, and Timothy Washington. Alongside the recent Purifoy retrospective at LACMA and the current Outterbridge show at Art + Practice, Watts provides an overdue look at this important group of artists.
Punk Povera
When: Opens Saturday, January 16, 6–9pm
Where: WUHO Gallery (6518 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, Los Angeles)
The Italian art movement Arte Povera emerged in the late 1960s as an alternative to the mainstream, commercial art world. Drawing on elements of minimalism, conceptual and performance art, artists used everyday materials, eroding the barrier between art and life. In a similar way, the punk movement of the late 1970s was a volatile response to a bloated and self-satisfied music industry — an attempt to strip everything back to the essentials. The upcoming group exhibition Punk Povera uses these two radical movements as lenses through which to view recent work from Los Angeles and Mexico City. Featured artists include Steven Bankhead, Irisdan Corley, Carla Danes, Bridget Kane, Mike Kelley, Nicholas Kersulis, Thomas Lawson, Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba, and more.
Juliana Paciulli: Uh-Huh
When: Opens Saturday, January 16, 6–8pm
Where: Greene Exhibitions (1639 S. La Cienega Boulevard, Mid-City, Los Angeles)
Juliana Paciulli’s photographs are meticulously composed but enigmatic scenes. They provide narrative clues, but leave the ultimate meaning up to the viewer. The works in Uh-Huh, her upcoming solo show at Greene Exhibitions, adopt the language of advertising to interrogate the relationship between women and commercial consumption in our society. Absurd juxtapositions of female hands with various objects — a parrot, a mannequin leg, gorilla gloves — channel both still life and performance with comedic effect.
