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.