L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley When Workspace, a Lincoln Heights storefront with a gallery the size of a living room, hosted a reading last Sunday, only one of the four featured artists actually read, and he read the work of someone else. It was Tyler Coburn, who sat at the front of the room in bow-tie and[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley On January 5th, 2nd Cannons Publications, artist Brian Kennon’s publishing venture, sent out a press release. It announced “the last exhibition in our Chinatown project space/vitrine,” a small closet-sized enclave at 510 Bernard St. with a glass sliding door. 2nd Cannons has been hosting miniature shows there for the past 3 years.[…..]
Mike Kelley claims he doesn’t particularly like Superman. The jury is out on whether or not this qualifies him as a communist, but his claim does provide a source of perplexity when evaluating the inspiration for his ongoing Kandor sculpture and installation series – the newest of which being currently displayed at Gagosian Gallery (Beverly Hills) alongside the latest chapters of his filmic project, Extracurricular[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley Around 1970, painter David Hockney was in London feeling listless. Or at least he was according to Jack Hazan’s 1974 documentary, A Bigger Splash, which portrays Hockney as a lovesick, indecisive genius. The original NYTimes review of Hazan’s film called it “unforgivably solemn, something that Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey would never[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley “There are no easy happy endings anymore,” said writer David Levithan when interviewed about The Lover’s Dictionary, a novel told entirely through “definitions” of words like “aberrant” and “quixotic.” But there are no easy sad endings anymore, either–even though the romance the book dissects is doomed from the start, Levithan indulges in[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley Maybe it’s an American thing, a hanger-on Puritan fetish, but I can think of few qualities more seductive than discipline. It seems like the quickest path to perfection, and as much as I purport to accept—even celebrate—“idiosyncrasy,” “peculiarity,” “limitation,” they’re all consolation prizes, the realities you force yourself to love once you[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley Clicking through TIME Magazine’s “Most Unforgettable Images” of 2010 feels a bit like watching a missionary slideshow at an Evangelical tent meeting. There are helpless bodies, flames, sweeping gestures and unsettling blue skies, all tied together in concentric compositions. What’s more, each image seems certain its viewers will intuitively understand why and[…..]
