Human Resources In Chinatown

        Aghh! I will begin the gushing now. Human Resources is probably my favorite art collective in all of Los Angeles. To put this in a more proper context I would have to cite all my years of reading art history - the Bohemian 1900's in Paris, 80's New York, Andy Warhol's factory in the 60's, Tony Shafrazi tagging "KILL LIES ALL" on Picasso's Guernica. In other words I have spent multiple decades reading about the art world, assuming it was feral and off-kilter. Now I go to a lot of shows, chat with a decent amount of art dealers and I thought things would be different, I thought the vibrant art scene would be palpable and it wasn't. The art does not disappoint though. But then there's Human Resources. In Los Angeles I have not came across another gallery that feels as vibrant, cutting edge and forward thinking as Human Resources does. They have performance art, noise bands and art shows. When attending I regularly get the feeling that I'm privileged enough to be part of something amazing. It feels like I'm witnessing creativity being pushed to it's most avant guard boundary by seriously talented and intelligent artists. The art work shown here really projects the best Los Angeles art has to offer. I've lived in Chicago, the liberalness of this city is good for creative souls. 

    I can't say how much I love this art collective. It used to be in a much smaller spot in Chinatown, it moved to a former Kung Fu Theater on Cottage Home St. For a while it was a porn theater, but it still has a neon sign above in chinese characters. It's a really amazing space. 

   A prime example of an amazing performance there was Bret Nicely, Hecuba & John Knuth show Fading Horizon. When I was there I felt like what was happening was special, it lives up to all the years of reading crazy shit from the art scene of the 80's or Andy Warhol factory days. Most of all it feels very cutting edge in the best possible way.

   Fading Horizon was a performance piece that evolved through out the show. When I first walked in it was dark and smelled like dessert. John Knuth walked around the room and had bags of sugar, I think they might have been around 10 pounds. He proceeded to pour sugar on top of various light bulbs across the room. The light bulbs had soft mounds of sugar on them and evolved so beautifully, they would glow and transform from white to brown and sometimes bubble. Knuth would move some of the mats that were placed under these mounds and expose the lightbulb so the room would elegantly transition to a brighter space. It felt brilliant and improvisational, he would sometimes move the mats with the sugar and pour it on another light bulb. Standing there I felt really lucky to have found a gem of a art space like Human Resources, I just feel like the performances there are of the highest caliber, period. 

   The art collective is made up of several co founders, mostly from band members of  Lady Noise and LA Fog and another well known performance artist Dawn Kasper.  I really enjoy running into them because they're pretty down to earth. 

Mat Gleason and Coagula Curatorial

Banksy's The Room in the Elephant. 
I just thought it fit themes addressed.

        Mat Gleason is an amazing art critic/curator/gallery owner. He's had vibrant art shows with d.j.s that flood Chung King Road. Since opening Coagula Curatorial there the amount of people attending the openings have increased by leaps and bounds. It's sad more people don't attend openings on Chung King Road, they are really missing out. I always enjoy reading Coagula Art Journal or his entires in the Huffington Post. He's just hilarious. All in all he's added so much vitality, wit and passion into LA's art scene and the art world overall.

        The art world is complex and it  tends to brew art work that is conceptually unattainable. Mat Gleason is one of the few art critics who takes away the haze of inaccessible optical vocabulary that can only be decoded by someone who has a masters in art. Not to mention Gleason's brutal honesty is always hilarious and refreshing. In his Editor's Life Unedited he really just sums up what everyone is thinking but very few curators address.

    The Basic Big Problem With Much Art. Some of my favorite quotes are "This baggage is basically just excuse-making. There is an excuse as to why the art is so shitty - it is some rhetoric as to why the art has barely mustered up enough of one (and only one) element and can rationalize stopping there."…"Your intentions aren't shit. You can come up with convoluted analytics and propositions all day and all night but until you at least fetishize your ideas, they are not art. And you likely have to do something with them even after doing that."

     His writing reminds me of William Powhida's solo show at Charlie James Gallery 'Bill by Bill'. Powhida's m.o. is much different than Gleason's, but Mat's approach is more accessible. Although they're both equality amusing and address some of the same topics

Here is my favorite excerpt from all of his entries - from the article "Twelve Art World Habits to Ditch In 2012"

Academic Curators

The realm of the visual is inherently non-verbal. Academia is a lecture-based system of auditory and linguistic learning. Pretty much the polar opposite of art. And yet here come the pinheads with their Ph.D. theses (rhymes with feces) ….Their ruse is the implication that art is intellectual. Art is sensual. Academics are not. Sleep with a few (your grad school professor is almost always willing) and tell me I am wrong.

Perform Chinatown at Coagula Curatorial; part of the Carlos Batts/April Flores exhibit. Courtesy of the Pleasure Chest.

Perform Chinatown 2013 - Natalie Loveless & Novelty Acts

        
  Natalie Loveless -  I really enjoyed her performance, it was really heartfelt, what struck me the most about it was how skillful she was at communicating the frustrations and anxiety of being a homemaker. There was a feeling of genuine authenticity and her talent showed in how well she conveyed her emotional state mind with so much transparency, I haven't seen a lot in other performance art pieces. it reminded me of Martha Roslers' Simiontics of a Kitchen. I love when artists make themselves vulnerable by opening themselves emotionally, it conveys a sense of integrity. Just watching Natalie Loveless' piece it's very visible how talented and clever a performance artist she is. 

      

                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

 Novelty Acts performed by Allison Wyper, Esther Baker Tarpaga, Rebeca Hernandez and Hind Benali, along with Ryan Hawk -    

 I was really impressed by this piece, it was very sensual and I was pretty much captivated the whole time. Yes the  performers were sexy but at the same time their movement was very elegant and the lighting reminded me of Caravaggio's paintings. It also conveyed a sense of complexity and interpersonal conflict. One of my favorite parts was when Esther Baker Tarpaga walked around and touched everyone. I'm going to say this one was my favorite out of all of them. 

Perform Chinatown 2013

          Perform Chinatown 2013 was amazing. I went to Perform Chinatown 2012 and there was five times as many people at Perform Chinatown 2013 as there was in 2012. It felt so vibrant and anyone who knows me well enough knows I'm a huge fan of Chung King Road. If you look on artslant.com and see more than one opening (perfect combination is Charlie James Gallery, Coagula Curatorial and Jancar Gallery) I highly recommend attending. They have quarterlies four times a year that are completely vibrant and most of the art galleries in the alley have openings that night. Chunk King Road is so full of charm, beauty and culture. It's the perfect combination of dozens of chinese lanterns, arching graceful pagodas and world class contemporary art. 

         A lot of these performances were very clever and sharp-witted, looking at them over and over again I thought to myself that it's sad so many people are automatically closed off to high art or performance art, I think there are a lot of people who would watch these performances and appreciate the message and themes they're exploring. 

           Vela Phelan @ 0:40 - Whenever artists address subject matter within our culture I always like it more. Some haters have pointed out that making art can be such a self absorbed thing to do with your life. I think the people who say that don't have the first clue about how much artists sacrifice to be prolific and established and not to mention all the under appreciation that comes with it. Taking a traumatic international event like the financial crisis of the Great Recession and acting out the coping mechanisms arising from the vulnerability of the power of cooperations and the realization of how disposable we are compared to any high powered CEO made for a amazing performance piece. It's especially important because there are so many guys out there who aren't inclined to verbalize the overwhelming anxiety experienced when they were surviving the great recession. Even if they do have the personality to articulate it a lot of men have too much pride to open up to others. That's why I really appreciate this performance piece. 

          Mideo Cruz & Racquel De Loyola @ 4:50 - I loved this one too, I think one of the best things you can do with art is use it as a vehicle to change someone's perspective of a cultural norm. I found it really intelligent, I had a huge smile the whole time I was filming it. It's extremely endearing when performance artists mocks power and dominance, if done right it makes for the best performance art. It reminded me of The Yes Men's Management Leisure Suit, if you write that in a Youtube search it will be 2:41 minutes of your time spent wisely. 

       Vasan Sitthiket @ 6:05 - Yes that's me laughing in the background. I just thought this performance was so fun and at the same time the subject he was tackling was very significant. 

         Well yes Perform Chinatown in late July, and it's November. I wanted to get all the artists I liked from Thinkspace up since I posted the blog about Thinkspace. 

It

is 

freaking

hard 

to 

wooooork 

on 

a documentary 

when you have 

three jobs. 

         I now only have two jobs but in October had three.  I was just talking to a guy in my building who's doing a documentary and we were both venting, he's just saying it's so common for it to take five years. I now have someone who is willing to help with the editing so I should be faster with things. I'm actually really excited that I have someone who will be my co-producer and assistant editor. Yay!

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