LA Art Show
Los Angeles kicked off the new year in a haze of optimism as it’s annual art show revealed a city wholeheartedly embracing its diversity, and believing in that diversity’s place in the international art world. As Los Angeles rises as a global art destination, its strength in variety has met happy approval in an industry that thrives on the transcendence of the predictable, overdone, or “basic”. The show’s combination of notable museums and eccentric local Angeleno subcultures shown created a boundless cultural showcase, that allows the visitor to become revived by established art crushes while also being smitten by a new favorite creator. As the new year begins to bloom around us, the LA Art Show enables the visitor to add a fresher, brighter tone to their resolutions and habits, and encourage all your new yous to be as diverse and optimistic as the city itself.
As the global art world grows more interested in contemporary art, Los Angeles is able to flex its expertise as an American hub of street culture. For it’s in this sunny city that graffiti artists in sweatpants are the welcomed muses of rich and refined. It is in this space where gritty introspective street art can transcend the pretentiousness of the art world, and be a symbol of a unified people who can return to acceptance, positivity, and maybe even have a little of fun.
A quite enjoyable and cathartically interactive exhibit was “Left or Right” by Antuane Rodriguez, which invites visitors to wallop on punching bags bearing the notorious faces of controversial world leaders. Rodriguez is a Cuban artist, and has revealed a childhood conditioned to distrust politicians, and claims that, “listening to the news is stressful, and demands a release”. There were many passionately therapeutic hits on several shameful mugs, including Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Un, and Saddam Hussein and, as expected at an art show in California, the current president was by far the most popular outlet. The exhibit’s interactive quality and unifying charm in the face of various villains radiated the shows message of diversity and unity. Though surely sweets are not intended to literally translate to your new year resolutions, a sort of candy coat veiled the show in themes of energy, childlike wonder, and optimism. Recent themes of glitter and sparkle in contemporary art seem to have melted and solidified into hard candy, as seen in resin popsicle sculptures by Betsy Enzensberger. Jae Yong Kim presented a deliciously colorful wall of ceramic donuts, all individually glazed and embellished with colorful swarovski crystals. The ever ironic Daniel Allen Cohen did not disappoint with his giant satirical candy bars juxtaposing sugar and money with a “Wealth: Million Dollar Bar” made of stacks of hundred dollar bills, and a now richer than ever, “1 Millionaire: American Dream Bar”.
Aside from the candy, the icing on the incredibly inclusive show was the incredible representation of Chinese, Korean, and other Asian galleries. The vibrant Asian community in the city make this art show a perfect moment for its artistic inclusion. Galleries from China presented traditional as well as contemporary works, including one of my top choices at the show, an oil painting titled “Chinese Kungfu” by Yu NanCheng aka “The Fish”. Represented by a contemporary Shanghai gallery, NanCheng uses a traditional “China Red” oil paint, and with his palette knife sculpts a connection between a stoic history and a colorful present in his works. Another incredibly creative work inspired by the encounter of tradition and modernity was artist Siyao Ding’s “Hilldau Moriken”, and incredbile fish skin inlay painting of a young Chinese woman in royal garb.
A host of prominent contemporary Korean artists represented did not miss a beat meeting the diverse and fresh aims of the show. Kim Tschang-Yeul, the most admired Korean philosopher painter of the century, presented his incredibly absorbing “water drop” paintings. These prominent works of abstract expressionism present three dimensional drops of water suspended from a canvas of Korean calligraphy, filling a space between the abstract and reality. Artist Mari Kim brought the fun and familiar anime inspired splash with her “eyedolls”, a series of female characters with disproportionately large eyes. Kim claims that regardless of “East or West”, the eyes are “the windows to your mind” and shes uses them as a “wormhole … a gate to an imaginary and reality world". Kim recently received global fame after animating and directing a music video for Korean pop sensation 2NE1. This inclusion of both traditional and contemporary Korean art expresses the show’s commitment to showcasing the diversity of the city, and enables Korean galleries to commemorate the Korean population of Los Angeles, the largest outside of Seoul.
As we look to a fresh and untold year ahead, Los Angeles is buzzing with a positive vibrant energy, that asks us to be fearlessly optimistic, inclusive, and excited about the future. As contemporary artists dig deep to express the necessity for inclusion and diversity, the city has responded to them with open arms, enabling thriving subcultures to surge with creative flow and opportunity. The boundless environment created by this kind of inclusion seems to unify the polarities of the art world, even just for a weekend. As the bubbling art atmosphere of Los Angeles only rise, it seems that resolutions of optimism and unity should be a top priority for Los Angelenos, because this inclusive city is taking every to the top with it.
