I could have spent all day circling Jason Rhoades' installation in "Eden's Edge" at the Hammer Museum at UCLA. The late artist's 2004 work, titled Twelve-Wheel Waggon Wheel Chandelier, is dominated by neon-light representations of crude terms for female genitalia. There's so much going on, and you know how I feel about fluorescent tubes. The words' orange industrial wiring is anchored against a wall at, if I recall correctly, a pile of pillows and an upright, formidable cucumber drenched in what could be semen. Far out! I mean, L.A. oozes sex, excess, decadence, sinister brightness -- the coarse flat plains where desire intersects with destruction. (Emphasizing the point, Rhoades died of a likely overdose, a year ago on August 1.) It makes sense for this garish display to be the last on view in what I think is the richest, smartest show on Los Angeles art in a long time.
Although I'm barely getting around to posting on it, the show's theme is now -- recent work by 15 artists in Los Angeles -- and the power of prerogative, or "personal choices" as Doug Harvey put it in his LA Weekly review. (Harvey, if you remember, is the guy who once suggested they pump the MOCA galleries with pot smoke.) Here's the LA Weekly slideshow. And an interview with curator Gary Garrels by arts editor Tom Christie.
In the interview, Garrels, a Gotham transplant, articulates the now commonly held belief that the L.A. art scene is more exciting and innovative than the scene in New York:
There’s an openness. I don’t think the art making has been completely overshadowed by the commercial world here. Artists are more willing to talk about art here. The gallerists are more open to talking, they’re not just selling. There’s just a very lively, spirited community here.
This assertion was touched upon in Christopher Knight's review of the show in the L.A. Times, and more or less in the New York Times, in this Sunday piece in March. KCRW, in turn, recently discussed the growing East Coast media fascination with L.A. in this segment.
"Eden's Edge" shows why none of this buzz is empty hype, and part of the fun of it is figuring out how much you agree with this specific take on the L.A. glow, and what you do and do not personally like. My personal choices are the dark paintings by Matt Greene, which are covered with mushrooms and naked women; the vast abstract collages by South L.A.'s Mark Bradford, made from discarded street signs; the psychedelic swap-meet-looking paintings by Sharon Ellis; Elliott Hundley's intensely layered push-pin collages; the really unbelievable pieces on translucent calfskin by Rebecca Morales; and the weird films by Stanya Kahn & Harry Dodge.
"Eden's Edge" closes on Sept. 2.
* Links: LA Weekly review, LA Weekly slideshow, Jason Rhoades obituary, Garrels interview, L.A. Times review, N.Y. Times Sunday piece, KCRW segment. * Add: Ernest Hardy's L.A. Times magazine piece on Mark Bradford.