Don’t miss Yellow tonight, curated by Lia Trinka-Browner at the Fellows of Contemporary Art as part of their quarterly curatorial projects, Curator’s Laboratory. Featuring works by Christopher Michlig, Tamara Sussman, & Anna Watson, the project also includes “The Yellow Reader” with contributions by nearly 25 artists. Opening in tonight from 6-8pm and continues through June 28.

Yellow is a show about material and language, primarily paper and text. Although… I really wanted to depart from a primarily text-based show and investigate the paper side of it, the material aspect of the work; as collage, construction and dissection.

Read the rest of the Curatorial statement

Inspired by the “Flying Circus” marathon on BBC America on Monday I searched Youtube for perhaps the funniest comedy sketch about artists ever…”Bicycling Picasso.” I’ve tried to find it before but to no avail but got lucky this time. Kurt Schwitters!

Whoa, how did I miss this one?

Chief Curator of the Hammer Museum, Gary Garrels, is returning to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as their new as senior curator of painting and sculpture (a position he held at SFMOMA before). L.A.’s loss is S.F.’s gain…read the LA Times piece on his departure.

Many people, including  love the look of old things. We love to furnish our homes with some  old furniture and different nick knacks that have come from a different era. Many of these things are antiques while many are just old looking. There come a fashion to decorate our homes with older looking furniture. Many manufacturers make modern furniture that look like antiques but in fact are not.

This is a cheaper way for people to have the look without the spending more. Of course they also miss out on the history that goes with the original piece. But for many it is

an option that we welcome. Many of my original antiques are things that have been handed down through the generations of my family. These things I really treasure.
duie to their craftsmanship and of course for their sentimental value. It is such a shame to think that so many antiques have been thrown out or destroyed over time because they were old and not fashionable any more.

If you are someone who really loves the original product whether it be furniture, cars, glass wear, dolls and so on and you want to purchase some then you should know a little bit about antiques. Just because something looks old and you love it does not mean it is worthy of an expensive antique price tag.

Of course, in the end if you’ve got the money and that is what you want then price doesn’t really matter but generally for the average person you should only pay what the product is truly worth. Especially if you want this product as an investment as many collectors do.

You need to learn about things such as certain markings or numbers to look for on some antiques. It is a way of knowing that they are original. It’s sad to think that there are also many remakes that are being sold as the originals when they are really just excellent copies. That is why it is important to learn a few things.

Ask around to find an antique dealer that has a good reputation. Then go and talk to him or her about what you are interested in. They can be a great source of information. There are also many good books that will be very helpful and educational. Once you arm yourself with this knowledge then you can start shopping with confidence.

Per my request, I’m getting fabulous images from the Allan Kaprow “Fluids” events that happened last month…

Los Angeles artist Autumn Rooney sent me her Flickr set of the “Fluids” happening that was held on Sunday, April 27th in MacArthur Park.

And MOCA has just put up their Flickr set of the “Fluids” happening at the Geffen from April 27. I’ve been told more images from the events are going to be posted on MOCA’s page so keep a look out. Of course, I’ll post them here too.

In case you missed the links in the post:
View set here. and here.

Straight from Beautiful Decay’s Creative Director Amir Fallah:

Beautiful/Decay Magazine is looking for a bright, motivated self-starter to expand ad sales in the art market to our Gallery, Museum and related Art World target market base. You should have a strong familiarity with the East and West Coast art markets, as well as having a great presence and an eye for detail. B/D has experienced a phenomenal growth in the past 4 years and this position has enormous potential for growth within the company. You must be based in the Los Angeles area.

Job qualifications after the jump…

Beautiful/Decay Magazine Advertising Sales/Marketing Position

Perks:
· Make your own hours, full time or part time
· Health benefits for full time employees
· Travel to art fairs and other art related events.
· Salary based on commission, your performance determines your salary.
· Your office is the art world.
· We offer training and a supportive helpful staff.

Responsibilities include:
· Sell magazine advertising space and internet ads to art-world clients
· Generate revenue through advertising sales
· Service existing advertising clients (meet with at trade events/make in-office sales calls)
· Maintain relationships and favorable contacts with current and potential advertising accounts
· Meet monthly sales goals
· Prospect for new business targeting potential advertisers to acquire new accounts
· Assist with coordination of art related events like artist’s panels, release parties, art fairs, etc.

Requirements/Skills/Abilities
· College degree (background in Fine Arts a plus)
· Excellent written & verbal communication skills
· Strong customer service & client relations skills
· Demonstrated interpersonal skills
· Excellent presentation skills
· Motivated self-starter
· Familiarity with art market and scope of the magazine’s contents
· Sales background ideal, but not mandatory

Please send a resume and cover letter to: contactbd@beautifuldecay.com

Ending an evening of art openings at a karaoke bar in Korea-town with dealers, artists, and collectors is by far one of the best ways to be amused, embarrassed, and see the less serious side of your artworld friends. So that’s what we did Saturday evening and, I will just say, you haven’t experienced fine karaoke until you’ve seen Angela Dufresne do “Come Together.” For real.

But back to the beginning…I started the evening out at Regen Projects II space for Andrea Zittel’s Energetic Accumulators, and Token Exchanges. The Token Exchanges part of the exhibition involves the public directly - moving from viewer to participant in just a few small steps. Objects placed on top of tables are available for exchange; meaning you can place (replace really) one of your own objects you think is of equal value to the object of Zittel’s you’re taking. Ranging from stones to photographs to felt pieces, the overall piece directly questions ideas of value, commodity, and exchange. Myself still trying to escape the correlation between art and commerce (a side-effect still lingering from being a dealer), I felt too guilty to exchange anything I had on me. Nothing seemed good enough or what if I put something silly, like the dog bones hiding in my purse I had just bought, and someone thought unworthy. L.A. artist Josh Levine echoed this sentiment saying that he would be coming back to exchange something from his studio. Token Exchange has “participatory instructions” therefore also exploring rules and rules following; something I don’t do very well. So although the shark purse was calling out to me, I just couldn’t be bothered.

So onward we went to Culver City for the receptions for Angstrom, Kim Light, Liz Oliveria, and Dufresne’s Twilight of Mice and Men at Kinkead Contemporary where it seemed everyone seemed to be buzzing about Annie Lapin’s solo debut at Angeles Gallery in Santa Monica that opened last week. But in Culver City Austrian artist Tillman Kaiser’s first U.S. show at Honor Fraser is definite not miss - his abstract simultaneously simple and complex paintings play with ideas of forms with bits of text and cut out eyes peer back at you. Corresponding floor sculptures inform the paintings although I’m not sure how well they would work on their own. Kaiser’s work is intriguing, still processing it really, and it makes wonder why contemporary European artists do abstract so well.

Honestly, I’ve been a little disappointed in what I’d been seeing lately at galleries but it seems as if it’s picking up in L.A. just in time for summer. I look forward to next weekend and, just perhaps, more karaoke.

Image: Tillman Kaiser at Honor Fraser Gallery.

On April 25th I participated in one of the ten Allan Kaprow Fluids happenings taking place in Los Angeles that weekend. The one I did was in Pasadena with the Armory Center and, fortunately, the event took place before L.A. experienced an amazing heat wave (pretty ironic since we were all building ice sculptures around the city). I wrote about my experience and thoughts on the re-enactments of Kaprow’s work in conjunction with his current exhibition at MOCA on Art Review:

How many people does it take to build four walls of ice 30 feet long, ten feet wide, and eight feet tall? Turns out that to recreate Allan Kaprow’s 1967 Happening Fluids in Pasadena’s Memorial Park on Friday, it really just took a handful of artists, students, gallerists, curators, Kaprow family members, original participants and the occasional curious passerby about two hours to make the structure, piling up ice, cube by cube. Then we just waited to see how long it would last. It was built to melt of course, it’s obsolete from the off, doomed, ephemeral by design – the epitome of Kaprow’s Happenings. It must be long gone by now – it has Happened.

We finished the project around 1:30 and it was already melting. Sinead Finnerty-Pyne from the Armory informed us that the sculpture wall collapsed around 3pm and, well, you can imagine it all melted pretty fast!

**If anyone has pictures or images on their Flickr of the other Fluids events that were in LA, please let me know!

Venice Arts has listed new job opportunities including Lead Filmmaker, Grant Writer, Contract Faculty (Photographers, Filmmakers, and Digital/Interactive Media Artists/Educators), and Contract Technical Support Specialist.

The Puppet Show at the Santa Monica Museum of Art features a pretty impressive list of artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Maurizio Cattelan, William Kentridge, and Bruce Nauman but I’m curious about the puppet theme. Like, will I run screaming from the room from the creepiness? May need to send someone first for a recon mission.

And you know that Machine Project is doing something amazing for Memorial Day weekend. First is a Friday night lecture by Trevor Paglen “Blank Spots on a Map: State Secrecy and the Limits of the Visible”. Second is Daniel Martinico’s exhibition “Khaaaaaan!” and who doesn’t love a little Shatner?