May | 2014 | Jonathan Griffin

Raster Raster

Aran Cravey, Los Angeles

Artie Vierkant, Air filter and method of constructing same 18, 2013, US Patent 8118919 B1, aluminum, charcoal fiberglass mesh, organza, 68 x 32 in

Any post-Postmodernists who dared hope that contemporary art had become ‘post-movement’ must have been dispirited, in recent years, to see the tag ‘post-Internet’ growing in ubiquity. Art magazines have done their best to nail down a definition of this vague field, in some cases recruiting the same curators who are bold enough to try to identify its principal characteristics and exponents in group exhibitions. Read the rest of this entry »

May 16, 2014

Math Bass

Overduin & Co., Los Angeles

$Math Bass$

Math Bass was known, until recently, principally as a performance artist, although she has long made sculptures and drawings. Her performances – which, I admit, belong to a genre that I find rather pretentious – often combine solemnly delivered poetry or song with passages of improvised group activity. Dogs and Fog, an event Bass presented at Overduin & Kite in 2011, convened dry ice machines, cinder blocks and 20 or so dogs who padded amongst the crowd. A circle of singers, the artist among them, intoned in harmony a song written by the artist. The dogs seemed uninterested. Read the rest of this entry »

May 15, 2014

Allen Ruppersberg

At 6am on 9 February, 1971, Allen Ruppersberg was thrown out of bed onto the floor of his studio. Later, he would learn that the 6.6 magnitude earthquake – Los Angeles’ worst in decades – had killed 64 people and caused half a billion dollars in damage. It also delayed construction of the new California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), 30 miles north of Los Angeles in Valencia. When CalArts finally occupied its new building in November that year, the progressive school ushered in a new era for Los Angeles’ art world. Read the rest of this entry »

May 1, 2014

Aaron Curry

CAPC_LA_062014_photo_Arthur_Pequin_MG_8971-1024x682

When Alexander Calder began making monumental steel ‘stabiles’ in the late 1950s, he developed a distinctive technique for signing them: a welded ‘AC’, applied to the face of the sheet metal. For Calder, it was a logo of sorts, and an integral part of the sculpture: a reminder that these complicated constructions originated in drawing – from one man’s hand. Read the rest of this entry »

Jonathan Griffin

Month: May, 2014

May 27, 2014