EXHIBITIONS: PACIFIC STANDARD TIME LA/LA – in galleries
September 2017 – January 2018
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles.
Led by the Getty, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is the latest collaborative effort from arts institutions across Southern California.
While the majority of exhibitions will have an emphasis on modern and contemporary art, there also will be crucial exhibitions about the ancient world and the pre-modern era. With topics such as luxury objects in the pre-Columbian Americas, 20th- century Afro-Brazilian art, alternative spaces in Mexico City, and boundary-crossing practices of Latino artists, exhibitions will range from monographic studies of individual artists to broad surveys that cut across numerous countries.
Where to go, be-Art’s favorites for September
2/2: in LA Galleries
Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles
David Lamelas, Time as Activity
9/7/2017 — 10/21/2017
This exhibition features films and videos by the Argentina-born conceptual artist David Lamelas, culled from his ground-breaking and ongoing series Time as Activity, 1969–2017. These works— the first shot in Düsseldorf on 16mm film and the most recent of which streams live feeds from Athens and Berlin— investigate the durational, experiential qualities of both time and moving images. Through a series of timed image sequences, viewers witness stationary shots of streets, parks, houses of parliament, and other urban environments. Lamelas offers timestamps and durations for each scene, making viewers aware of their own location in time and space, and of the impossibility of creating unmediated representations of reality. This exhibition is presented concurrently with the artist’s first monographic exhibition in the United States, David Lamelas: A Life of Their Own, on view at the University Art Museum (UAM) at California State University Long Beach (CSULB), September 17 – December 10, 2017.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
Hugo Crosthwaite — In Memoriam: Los Angeles
9/9/2017 — 2/25/2018
Hugo Crosthwaite — In Memoriam: Los Angeles is presented at the Museum of Social Justice at the Los Angeles Plaza Historic District, in conjunction with Luis de Jesus Los Angeles. Following the ideas of impermanence and performance that are central to all of Hugo Crosthwaite’s murals, the mural at the Museum of Social Justice will be created over a period of several weeks, and will be destroyed, section by section, as the exhibition draws to a close. This is the first mural that Crosthwaite has undertaken in Los Angeles and it follows other mural projects that he has created in San Diego, Oceanside, Riverside, Chicago, Tijuana, Mexico, and Cuenca, Peru. One can watch Crosthwaite at work on a mural on this short PBS documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bauTo2C7M3Q.
CB1 Gallery
Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia: Vida, pasión y muerte
9/9/2017 — 10/29/2017
This exhibition introduces Hurtado Segovia’s sculptural work with an emphasis on traditional woodworking techniques. Known for his Papel tejido (Woven Paper) works, the exhibition marks a turn toward figuration and drawing. Hurtado Segovia continues his use of pattern and textile influences while exploring new materials such as tar sourced from the La Brea Tar Pits.
Ibid Gallery
Rodrigo Matheus
9/9/2017 — 11/4/2017
Ibid Gallery presents a solo exhibition by Rodrigo Matheus, a Brazil-born Paris-based artist working in the realm of sculpture, installation, and assemblage. Through the novel displacement and arrangement of objects, Matheus reflects on the inherent value placed on them by their social and economic networks. His most recent exhibition, What Separates Us, at the Embassy of Brazil in London, centers around themes of circuits of exchange and value from a cultural, social, and political point of view. It examines contemporary travel and mobility, as well as international trade and the value of art in this system, which developed from colonial and postcolonial histories. For Matheus’ first exhibition in Los Angeles, he brings to the fore, in the diverse context of this city, issues of crossing boundaries, the circulation of materials, and the creation of new meanings by awakening subjectivities not originally contained in materials.
Regen Projects
“Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Tonificantes Para Sublevar Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas.” —Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador)
9/9/2017 — 10/28/2017
Curated by artists Abraham Cruzvillegas and Gabriel Kuri, and titled: “Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Tonificantes Para Sublevar Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas.” —Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador), this exhibition examines the influence of the Latin American diaspora on the global imagination, identity, and economy, with particular emphasis on Southern California. Spanning the late Modernist period to the present, the exhibition will feature pre-existing works, political documentation, and project-specific contributions. Positing a more open-ended approach to selection criteria, Cruzvillegas and Kuri cite the socio-political maps of artist and writer Miguel Covarrubias as the exhibition’s conceptual origin. This curatorial proposal includes artists living and working beyond the geographical limits of Latin America, encouraging a reevaluation of its art, borders, and identity.
The exhibition is intended to reference Martín Ramírez: His Life in Pictures, Another Interpretation at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Hauser & Wirth
Building Material: Process and Form in Brazilian Art
9/14/2017 — 10/18/2017
Building Material: Process and Form in Brazilian Art, features works by three generations of artists, emphasizing affinities between the materials, processes, and forms they have embraced since the Concrete and Neo-Concrete movements of the 1950s and 1960s. Building Material takes as its point of departure the work of pioneering artist, photographer, and industrial designer Geraldo de Barros (1923 – 1998), a central figure in the evolution of Brazilian art from mid-20th century onward. From his participation in the first Bienal de São Paulo in 1951, de Barros interpreted and reworked tenets of the European avant-garde to achieve a uniquely Brazilian abstraction that reflected the dynamism of a new modern society. Building Material explores the ways in which his innovations have found echoes and responses in the work of artists from subsequent generations: Rodrigo Cass, Ivens Machado, Paulo Monteiro, Nuno Ramos, Celso Renato, Lucas Simões, and Erika Verzutti.
Taj•Art Studio Gallery
Mending Structures: Latin American Women in Art
9/15/2017 — 10/7/2017
Latin America has century-old traditions of indigenous artisans working on textile manipulation: looming, weaving, embroidery, and tapestry creation. The selected group of artists manipulate fiber textiles by creating collages, sculptures, paintings, and installations that go far beyond tradition.
Simultaneously alluding to femininity and challenging art historical canons, the participating artists take it upon themselves to provoke and embrace the complexity of the medium.
The gentle yet powerful artworks allude to the socio-economic expansion in Latin America, as cotton is primarily responsible for the industry growth in Mexico, as well as the construction of a new economy in the border towns alongside the Mexico/U.S. divide and the myriad implications this presents, from capitalism to necropolitics.
Mending Structures juxtaposes tradition with political displacement. This dichotomy simultaneously evokes a return to nature and inherited heritage, while also making a critical remark on contemporary consumerism.
Kohn Gallery
Chingadaras Sofisticadas
9/16/2017 — 11/4/2017
A group exhibition bringing together nine prominent artists based in Guadalajara, Mexico, whose varied practices contribute to the city’s growing cultural ascendance and international recognition. Until recently, Guadalajara was considered one of Mexico’s most traditional cities with large industries focused on textile, artisan and craft production, perhaps best known for its ceramic fabricators and studios. Since the nineties, however, the city’s art scene has progressively flourished due to a growing number of artists who have either relocated or returned to Guadalajara to set up studios, galleries, alternative project spaces or residencies that have positioned the city as a cultural center rivaling Mexico City. This exhibition illustrates the dominant and interwoven narratives of craft, tradition and conceptual rigor that position Guadalajara as one of Latin America’s burgeoning art capitals.
