LA Art Show is the largest, longest running, most comprehensive art experience on the West Coast. It runs today and tomorrow at The Los Angeles Convention Center.
I have posted many of my highlights of the show on Design*ByProxy Instagram. Be sure to check it out…in person or online.
For more information and event info, please check out their website here.
Commune was established in Los Angeles in 2004 by four like-minded souls—Roman Alonso, Steven Johanknecht, Pamela Shamshiri, and Ramin Shamshiri— with a common mission: to enhance life through design and to blur the lines between disciplines, eras, and styles. California is for those who refuse to conform and who live for freedom of expression, indoor/outdoor living, and that golden sunshine glinting off the waves of the Pacific.
Commune perfectly captures this spirit and embodies a new California style that freely mixes old and new in its layered, highly personal interiors that embrace color, pattern, and texture. This book is the first monograph of Commune’s work, featuring its designs for private residences, hotels, commercial spaces, and restaurants, as well as the works they specially commission from virtually everyone in the artisan craftsman movement in California today.~ abramsbooks.com
Check out this interview with Roman Alonso, one of the founders of Commune featured in T magazine here.
I stopped by Regen Projects on my way home this morning to check out Still Life exhibition by Los Angeles based artist, Doug Aitken .
It’s definitely worth checking out. Here’s just a few snaps, but you should really see it in person.
Taking its name from the traditional concept of nature morte, Aitken’s Still Life presents an immersive environment where place and time dissolves, where the individual exists adrift in an electrically charged space. Wending their way through the gallery, viewers are confronted with a series of signs and symbols that at first glance appear familiar but upon closer inspection reveal their foreign nature. A series of internally illuminated light box sculptures hover on the gallery walls. Combining text and image into physical form, they each represent the crystallization of an idea captured from the frenetic modern landscape.
Among the other works featured in the exhibition is a cast public pay phone bathed in a luminous glow. Appearing as a relic of a bygone era and removed from its everyday function the work becomes a vessel emitting interactive light that brightens or dims depending on the viewer’s proximity to its surface. A sonic fountain combines water and sound creating a visceral optical and auditory experience. A hexagonal sculpture features a collage photo of an aerial view of the LA freeway system infinitely reflected in a series of mirrors, creating a kaleidoscopic vision. Existing as a series of ruptures, the works in Aitken’s subconscious twilight terrain unfold in a parallel of time and space, perceptually suspended in time. ~Regen Projects
Exhibition open until October 11th.
image via c-home by Jim Bartsch
image via c-home by Jim Bartsch
image via c-home by Jim Bartsch
La Gerbe installed in Brody residence. Photo courtesy the archives of Frances L. Brody, now at LACMA.
Architect A. Quincy Jones’ designed the Brody House in 1949. The Brody’s, the original owners, were well known patrons of modern art. Jones’ modern architectural vision housed the couple’s extraordinary collection of art, including works by Picasso, Braque, Giacometti, Calder, and Moore.
When Frances L. Brody died in 2009, she gifted the 2000-pound ceramic, La Gerbe by Matisse to LACMA. The couple had commissioned Matisse in 1952 to create the piece and in 1954, after the artist’s death, the 15 section wall was shipped to Los Angeles and installed in what Frances L. called “the heart of our home”.
Purchased two decades ago for 24.95 million, , designer/restorer Stephen Stone has tweaked little and updated the property with modern conveniences like installing black-steel windows and adding heat and central air. Stone also kept many of the original decorator William Haines‘ interior design ideas in the home, but mixed them with contemporary influences and pieces.
You can view the original article posted in C Home here.
Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara has died. Famous for his hand-lettered “Date Paintings” which he created all over the world, using the language for which they were created in, under meticulous self imposed guidelines and documenting each one.
“On Kawara — Silence” is set to go on view at the Guggenheim in New York next year.
~image Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic
The Hammer’s biennial exhibition Made in L.A. 2014 on now until Sept. 7th, features works by 35 Los Angeles artists with an emphasis on emerging and under recognized artists. It debuts recent work and new painting, installation, video, sculpture, photography, and performances created specifically for the exhibition. Made in L.A. 2014 will be installed in every gallery at the Hammer Museum. The exhibition is organized by the Hammer chief curator Connie Butler and independent curator Michael Ned Holte. ~Hammer Museum
Please find more info here.
“Since the 1950s, Gabriella Crespi has dedicated herself to the creation and worldwide circulation of furniture and other objects that balance design and sculptural abstraction.
Crespi began her career as a designer in the 1950s with her first production of objects, the “Small Lune Collection”, steel moon-shaped sculptures, in which the stylistic influences of time converge and are transformed.
In the beginning of the 1960s, she established an enthusiastic creative relationship with Maison Dior, especially in the context of home and table accessories and, from the 1970s, with furniture.
Between 1970 and 1974, she created her most significant lost-wax works, including the sculpture “My Soul” (1974), the “Animali” collections, (bronze sculptures with a fairy-like feel that reveal Gabriella’s relentless attention to the natural world), “Jewels,” and “Gocce Oro:” free flowing sculptures conceived through the ancient and precious process of lost-wax casting.
Between 1972 and 1975, she designed the “Quick Change Sofa”, the “Z” line ( “Z Bar,” “Z Desk” ) and the “Rising Sun” bamboo collection, material much loved by Crespi that, as she says, “unites strength and flexibility.” The famous “Fungo” lamps (1973) are part of this collection.
In 1985 she released the last interviews on her work as a designer before setting out on a new life completely devoted to the spiritual quest, a path she follows to this today.
In 1987, she traveled to India where she met Sri Muniraji, who became her spiritual advisor. Gabriella lived in India almost without break for two decades.
In 2008, she created for Stella McCartney a limited reissue of some of her jewelry collection from the 1970s. The proceeds were donated to the Shree Baba Haidakhan Charitable and Research Hospital at Chilianaula, in the Himalayas, an institution specializing in eye care that was founded by Sri Muniraji, Gabriella’s spiritual advisor.
Gabriella Crespi now lives in Milan, practices meditation daily, and is considering new creative projects.” ~gabriellacrespi.it
Yesterday I went to check out Gas Giant by Jacob Hashimoto at MOCA Pacific Design Center. Gas Giant, the “massive, space-altering installation, was inspired by the “sense of purpose” of sacred architecture and influenced by the “possibility” offered by a 1990s generation of California landscape painters including Laura Owens.” ~MOCA
I was so taken away by it, I wished I had someone with me to share in the experience. It was incredible to view thousands upon thousands of paper kites suspended from the ceiling. I couldn’t wrap my head around the feat of this kind of installation.
I found this video on MOCA TV showing the install. The exhibit is up until June 8th.
