Jul 31 2009
Walk-through:
Jul 27 2009
Merce Cunningham
Untitled ( Tiger 5-3-97 #9 )
1996
Black ink, colored pencil on paper
12 x 9 inches, paper size
Courtesy of Margarete Roeder Gallery
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Merce Cunningham remembered by Mark Swed
When a giant departs, the world often seems to shrink a little. That is especially true when a great choreographer dies. Little of the work normally survives, since dance is created for the moment and not easily preserved or passed along.
Still, the universe operates through expansion. Chaos is nature’s growth industr. A true artist’s legacy need not be stuff but rather suggestions for new ways of proceeding. Merce Cunningham died Sunday night. He was not like other choreographers. He believed in nature and accepted its chaos.
more…
Jul 17 2009
“These artworks are making noise”
July 17, 2009
Holly Myers
Koh Byoung-ok, 2 Glass Clock, 2007, clock parts, glasses, aluminum, 7 x 10 x 3 inches
Instruments, at SolwayJones, builds on the gallery’s long-standing interest in the line between visual art and sound to present just what its title implies: a selection of artist-designed, sound-producing objects as compelling in their aural as their visual presence. The works span from the early ’70s through present day. Save a charming trio of stringless banjos painted with folk-art-inspired scenes by Clare Rojas, nearly all are functional and available for demonstration by a gallery associate.
There are a number of string instruments — two harp-like pieces by Robert Wilhite; another by William T. Wiley; a cello and a bass by William Leavitt — as well as a trio of gongs (also by Wilhite) and a beautifully carved, long, pale wood structure housing a single piano key and string by Koh Byoung-ok.
Several are purely electronic: Paul De Marinis’ 1973 “Pygmy Gamelan,” for instance, a nondescript device that amplifies ambient radio waves; Nam June Paik’s 1994 “I Wrote This in Tokyo in 1954,” a 144-note music box mechanism nestled inside a vintage television frame, with a miniature video camera transmitting it to the screen; a trio of synthesizers built from children’s electronics; and a lovingly scrappy pair of amplification devices by Dani Tull (who will perform at the gallery July 25).
My favorite, so subtle in the din of the others that one could almost miss it, is Koh’s 2007 “Two Glass Clocks,” which consists of a pair of unmarked pint glasses into which the battery-powered gears of two dismantled clocks have been dropped. Each retains merely a second hand that, pinned by the wall of the glass, taps a steady, deliciously delicate rhythm on the lip.
Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times
Jul 12 2009
8:30 pm
In a rare solo performance, Dani Tull will use vintage Organs and Synthesizers, Guitars, modern technologies and hand-made instruments, to create exotic ambient, polyphonic sound works that intertwine pre-recorded and improvised live musical performance. The set up and approach will be informal, analogous to a casual home-studio session.
Artist and musician Dani Tull has had solo exhibitions locally at Blum and Poe, Kim Light Gallery and Angstrom Gallery. As a musician he has collaborated and worked with a multitude of musicians including Marnie Weber, Eric Avery, Tom Watson, Raymond Pettibon, Brad Laner, Jad Fair, and Jim Shaw. Tull has also played in many bands including Polarbear, The Spirit Girls, Mythter and BoyGeorgeMichaelJacksonBrown. Recently he has composed original scores for 2 films by Jim Shaw. Dani Tull and Jim Shaw have also collaborated on an epic performance for the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum, Blast 6, and an upcoming performance in Turin Italy.
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PERFORM! NOW!
Chinatown, Saturday, July 25 – Performance Night in Chinatown. The first event of new visual and sound art performances by Los Angeles artists, will be held on and around Chung King Road in Chinatown, Los Angeles.
Featuring approximately 20 performances, this will be Chinatown’s first collaborative performance event hosted by the resident galleries. The galleries participating include The Box, The Company, China Art Objects, Chung King Project, Jancar Gallery, Parker Jones, David Patton Gallery, Redling Fine Art, Sister Gallery, Thomas Solomon Gallery, SolwayJones and David Salow Gallery.
The entire program of performances will provide the audience with an exciting interactive exploration of the world-renowned Chinatown, Los Angeles community of galleries. For one evening, the gallery spaces and surrounding outdoor areas will present various performances engaging viewers from a broad range of interests, breaking down barriers with a variety of performative materials from new visual art, dance, film, theatre, and music, including new commissions and historic reconstructions using historic Chinatown neighborhood as the backdrop for work by approximately 15 artists at 8 different venues.
Programming will include a schedule of live performances and parallel exhibitions that will provide critical and historical contexts for the new work produced. The 15 plus events will be free and open to the public with an expected attendance of over 500 guests.
This event is made possible by the generous support of For Your Art.
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SIMONE FORTI : 6 PM – The Box
LUCAS MURGIDA : 6 – 9 PM – Charlie James Gallery
ALEXIS DISSELKOEN : 6:30-Ongoing – Chung King Project
MICOL HEBRON: 7 – 10 PM – David Salow
JOEL KYACK : Ongoing – Chung King Road ( Hill Street )
JOHN KILDUFF “Let’s Paint TV” ( Live! ): 7:30 PM – Jancar Gallery
AARON SANDNES “Flying False Colors”: 7 – 10 PM
MARGO VICTOR : 8 PM – The Company
GOLD COBRA AND SLOW BULLETS : 8-10 PM – Sister
MAURA BREWER “Face Transplantation and Depression: 8 – 8:30 PM -
Chung King Project
MARCUS CIVIN & SANDY DELISSOVOY “Johnny Angel”: 8:30-9:00 PM – Chung King Project
KATHLEEN JOHNSON “Brainchild”: 8:30 PM – David Patton Los Angeles
DANI TULL : 8:30 PM – SolwayJones
VANESSA PLACE : 9 PM – Chung King Project
NAO BUSTAMANTE “Silver & Gold”: 9:15 – 9:45 PM – Chung King Project
DAWN KASPER : 9:15 PM – The Company
SARAH CONAWAY & LISA WILLIAMSON: 10 PM – Mihai Nicodim
F-STOP SERENADE : 10 PM – Sister
SIMON LEUNG “Simon Leung Dances Yvonne Rainer” : 10:45 PM – Center of Chung King Road
LIZ GLYNN : 11 PM
all times subject to change contact galleries for additional information
Jul 06 2009
Thursday, July 9th
8:30 pm
Please join us for an evening of improvisational sound music performed by Joseph Hammer (tape loops and synthesizers,) William Leavitt (electric cello,) and Rick Potts (analog synthesizer). Hammer, Leavitt, and Potts (with Steve Thomsen) performed together in the early 1990’s as the group Solid Eye.
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Los Angeles based William Leavitt is a theater artist, painter, and musician who has performed and exhibited in Los Angeles since 1975. He wrote and produced his first theater piece, “The Silk,” in 1975. Around 1988 he began working with Joseph Hammer and Rick Potts on experimental music projects. They collaborated on the music for “Random Trees”, a play that was presented at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 1990. As a cellist, he has performed in several local groups including Solid Eye, The Sub tones, and Provisional Riviera. He was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for New Genres in 1991 and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998. This exhibition will include his hand-built instruments “Two by Cello” and “One by Bass” from 1991-92.
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future Instruments related performances:
Dani Tull, Saturday, July 25 – solo performance
William T. Wiley and Ethan Wiley, Saturday, August 15
Jul 01 2009
Matthew Picton at SolwayJones
by Tucker Neel
Originally published in Artillery Magazine jul/aug 2009 vol. 3
Cities are living creatures, shifting and growing, contracting with time, but fragile too, subject to the forces of historical change and destructive powers both internal and external. This fact is no more evident than in Matthew Picton’s recent exhibition “Postwar Landscapes” at SolwayJones. Here, Picton presents five works that deploy the formal tropes of mapping to speak to memories of space and time.
In one of the most alluring works, Moscow 1808, 1905, 2007, 2008, Picton traces Moscow city maps from these four years in white-painted Duralar and pins them, like preserved scientific specimens, atop each other against a black background. The ghostly sinewy lines of rambling city streets attest to a place that congeals and expands its borders and features. It is up to the viewer to give the work’s four dates and the years in between a historical relevancy.
Hiroshima, 1930, 2008, paper sculpture on lightbox, 192 x 120 x 48 inches
Hiroshima, 1930 consists of a massive 16×10ft. light box holding a 3D paper map of that city’s buildings and streets, 15 years before they were devastated by the Little Boy nuclear bomb. The installation brings to mind the modular and rectilinear sculptures of LeWitt or Smithson, but it is more reminiscent of a war room, a literal stage where buildings and the humans they house are envisioned as targets for future destruction. Even with this theatrical set up, the work comes across as surprisingly restrained, and instead of banging the viewer over the head with a moralizing tale of war and death, the piece calmly acts as a jumping-off point for a discussion of Hiroshima, before and after World War II, as an important historical site.
Washington, DC, 2009, burnt archival paper, 41-1/2 x 55-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches
In another more startling work, Washington DC, Picton uses the same folded paper technique on a smaller scale, blocking out sections of The Capitol Mall and surrounding environs in a way that makes the layout unmistakable to anyone who has ever lived in, or visited, the city. This approximately 4×3 ft. work hangs in a white frame on the wall and is pockmarked with hundreds of seemingly random brown and black miniature explosions, places where the artist burned holes into the white paper. During the war of 1812 the British did in fact burn the White House and parts of the Mall, and riots have certainly set sections of the city ablaze in the past. But this diorama reads as a quick model for a Hollywood set explosion, a view of DC ravaged by aerial bombardment. While the work causes an immediate reaction regarding the possibility of DC in ashes, its spectacle nature and lack of historical grounding set it apart from other works in the show. While the work could be interpreted as an imagined future, juvenile wishful thinking, or misplaced Cassandra-like prognosticating, it seems more than anything to address our familiarity with seeing famous cities reduced to ashes in mass media.
With this we see the strength of Picton’s overarching project and the curious way he is able to incite viewers to plumb the feelings and associations that come with looking at a map, be it of the past or the possible future.