Thinkspace Gallery in Culver City's Arts District

      I've been filming at Thinkspace Gallery in Culver City every Friday throughout the Summer. At first I was drawn to it because it consistently exhibits amazing art, never a let down if you want to see some good art. But learning more about it I was continually more impressed.  It's a really amazing space that boldly breaks the mold in a very rigid art world full of unwritten laws.

     

                                                The Contemporary art world is deceiving in certain ways, especially to the average American. It can look like a subculture with very few restrictions. Looking at art pieces there's a freedom that's very dignified, especially set against our popular culture's stereotypes that are played over and over, decade after decade with "different" musicians, but they all fit the same gyrating half naked mold.

      Year after year I learned more about the art world and I realized it has tons of rules-  talk about your art a certain way, rent a work studio, get a masters degree from a good art college, stop bathing. Anywho, there's a lot of conformity up in here, no one really breaks these rules, it is what it is. But Thinkspace audaciously does things their way. 

      Every Friday they hold portfolio reviews at their gallery. I was really impressed they made the decision to give artists the liberty of bringing their work to Thinkspace. Come on, artists are expected to have a work studio to be taken seriously by dealers? Ask for one phase associated with the word artist and I guarantee you 85% of the responses will be "starving artist." That phase has staying power over the centuries for a reason. And we're suppose to in essence have two apartments or two homes, whatever. There should be a way around this to be taken seriously, perhaps proliferation, but a work studio, grrrrr, I disagree with this practice, but does that matter- no, but I'm not Eli Broad, I'm not a art world titian. I would pay that guy to own my work by the way. 

Thinkspace is located at 6009 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232. Photo credit Thinkspace Gallery

          I'm taking about Thinkspace aren't I? I have to say I can not commend them enough for giving artists the liberty to bring their work into the gallery for portfolio reviews. Co-owner LC Croskey  is a really amazing art dealer. At the portfolio reviews he takes the opportunity to give artists advice about the art world in a business sense. If you want to make it as an artist you really do need to be as business savvy as possible and it's a travesty that information isn't easily accessible, in fact it's really hard to find resources that really give you the information key to being a successful. 

    LC is a really interesting guy, he used to be a graffiti artist back in the 80's. I love that his crew name was I.B.M.- Images Beyond Mentality. He co-organizes a once-a-month portable gallery and performance space called Cannibal Flower. It has been in a lot of ways a stepping stone for a lot of artists to break into the art world and get signed to a gallery. Many of successful artists had there start or had help on there way up from Cannibal Flower, I'm a huge fans of the following alumi -Dabs Myla, Lola Gil, Korin Frought, Craig Skibs Barker,Liz Brizzi and William Zdan. 

www.thinkspacegallery.com Photo credit Thinkspace Gallery.

   Cannibal Flower is a amazing resource where up and coming artists can hone their exhibiting and business skills until they are signed to a gallery. It's a shame there aren't more venues like this! 

   Above is a featurette of the footage from filming at Thinkspace Gallery. I hate that word by the way - featurette. 

Jil Weinstock RE: play at the Walter Maciel Gallery

 
These pieces by Jil Weinstock made an immediate impression on me, very few art pieces achieve that. What I find so brilliant about them is how she has taken a banal everyday object, like balloons and turned it into something elegant and sophisticated. To back up the previous declarative sentence I really must say pictures do not do them justice, they are much more powerful in person- not to belittle her talent in anyway.
           I always think artists are more interesting when I find out they have a Bachelor in a completely unrelated field and end up as career artists. She majored in physics at UC Berkeley, I really see the connection in her work. The art dealer Walter Maciel mentioned a few times that they're molded in plastic. Side note- Walter must be the most handsome, friendly, down to earth art dealer in LA, his husband is a very lucky man. And for all the Latinos who visit his gallery- he's Portuguese not Mexican, so he won't understand you if you speak to him in spanish.

What also comes to mind when looking at these pieces, as a fabricator myself, is the boldness of what objects she is using. High art does have a mold of what it should look like aesthetically speaking. Developing as an artist from a young age I remember experiencing an anxiety over what was appropriate subject matter to put in an art piece and still have it look like it could be in a gallery. I remember steering away from cats or dogs because I thought it wouldn't fit the mold of what high art should look like. I've heard other established artists struggle with this also. And I always have a lot of respect for artists when I see boldness in the art. I really want my art to look bold and have a pungent beauty. I would love to be an acquired taste. Somedays I think I am already if you know what I mean. Sometimes I do something bold in the hopes that it will somehow come across in my art work- like a simple drawing of a chair or hands. I've had this weird conviction/theory for a while now. I liken it to the odd way people can have mannerisms or facial expressions that give away who they really are, i.e. every creepy looking guy always looks creepy for a very valid reason. Okaaaaay.

Soo Kim; Black Sun at Angles Gallery

(She keeps them in her hand) - Photo credit Angles Gallery

         Soo Kim's work is one of my favorite to date, I was really blown away by her pieces. Every once in a great while I'll see a piece I like so much it affects me physically, it's the tingles. I guess brilliance can affect your nervous system.   

         Looking skyward at tree branches with birds in them doesn't seem to have any clear narrative path, but the subject matter evokes a state of daydreaming and at the same time it keeps me drawn in for a long period of time.  The branches that are cut out and fall down inject an element of elegance and unstructured chaos at the same time. I don't know how to interpret it but the outward physicality of the cut out branches keeps me fixated. I've been captivated by art that is so much more complex and blatantly narrative, but this jumble of golden paper cut out and manipulated by gravity does it. 

      There's large amount of respect I have to give to someone who can create a art piece that is very simple but at the same time is sophisticated and captivating.  The fact that Kim did not have to pull out all the tricks out of the hat to make something so eloquent is also a testament to how talented she is. It's simple, there's only one subject matter. It reminds me a bit of Rauchenberg.  

      When looking at this piece I can't help but interject an third party, more specifically a witness to the subject matter.   I don't know if an art piece has ever made me think about that. I think about a fictional person looking up and how they are viewing this world. This person is either lying on their back or looking up with their head tilled up at an angle. And at the same time I feel this person is daydreaming. I think it's really interesting to note that an art piece has never come close to making me think of a fictional 'point of view.' 

(With a burst of laughter) - Photo credit Angles Gallery

        Kim must have wanted to make art work that was more innovative. I would love to know how many different directions she pushed this idea in before being happy with it, I imagine a lot.

Hey is this a variation on scrabble? These are the titles of her work and she has a MFA in film and critical writing.

She keeps them in her hand

Suddenly he seems to make up his mind

Looking at him in surprise

He exits

She is visible trying to find words

A long pause

She extinguishes the last light

The other two smile

With rising exhalation

(He touches them) - Photo credit Angles Galley

Honing Your Inner Space Cadet

P.D.A. between Keith Haring 
and Basquiat.

             It's passed due, procrastination and the measurement of time is now confrontational and condescending. It's been four years since I graduated art school and I try to go to as many art shows as I can since moving back to LA. When I was in college someone made an observation that has stuck with me throughout the years. I don't remember who, but it was a student at SAIC who said "Artists usually use the same formula and style over and over again to express different ideas." And that's the main reason why I go to so many art galleries. Since 2010 I regularly visit galleries in Chinatown, Culver City and Bergamot Station. I feel compelled to see what amazing and diverse work Los Angeles artists are producing because I have an underlying anxiety that I'll produce artwork that will all look similar and I won't ever push my self in another direction style/creative wise. Another reason I go to so many shows is because  when I was young I remember romanticizing bohemians during the birth of modern art; Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani. The Montparnasse and Montmartre hoods of Paris, France where artists redefined the way you live life. It was the first time I realized I didn't have to grow up and have a desk job. As a young adult I also romanticized the art scene in the early 80's in New York; Basquiat, Warhol and Keith Haring.

                   

Keith Haring in a New York Subway.

                                                                               
                          I'd like to bust out the flux campacitor and start at the genesis. I started taking art seriously when I was about 10 years old. Believe it or not at that age I had a sense of urgency to decide what I was going to do for a living. I thought "If I start now, by the time I'm in my 20's I'll be good at what I want to do for a living." It was at that time I started taking classes at Mt. San Antonio College. I looked at the schedule of classes and saw a Life Drawing course. I was 10, I read the course description and thought I would be drawing people siting around. I found out later you had to be 18 to sign up for those classes, but I was abnormally well endowed for a 10 year old (there was no training bra phase), my mom dropped me off and my professor was an eastern European artist, so I slipped through the system. I get to my first day of class and the guy in front of me disrobes and the next thing you know I have to draw a naked man. "Half the job of drawing well is really looking at what you're drawing." But it gets better, at the end of the semester my mom comes up to me and says "Show me what you drew in your class." I adjusted. I liked my teacher Julianna Balogh, I kept taking her life drawing classes during the school year and summer up until the 9th grade. She was one of my first mentors. During my freshman year I auditioned for the magnet school Los Angeles County High School for the Arts or LACHSA. I managed to get in on my first audition even though they have a 25% acceptance rate. I took five art classes a semester along with my general ed. It was a great opportunity and from there I developed a lot creatively and learned that I hated art students. They can be a bit like social piranhas that come from wealthy families and feel the need to elevate themselves above everything from the city of Los Angeles to our campus Cal State LA (and how mediocre the college is).

From left to right -Modigliani, Picasso and Andre Salmon.

From left to right -Modigliani, Picasso and Andre Salmon.

              After high school my next calculated career move was to attend a community college for 5 years. I commuted to Pasadena City College because they have an outstanding art department, instead of the community colleges closer to me. Around 2004 I was employed as a portrait and caricature artist at Rubio Arts and leased out to draw in the Disneyland Theme Parks. My overuse arthritis flared up at that time and the pay was bad. In 2005 I was accepted to The School Of The Art Institute of Chicago, it was my first choice because it's known to be a conceptual school, which was an area I was weak in at the time. I was also able to double major in video at that college. All the years of art classes added up and I've taken around 50 cumulatively.  After graduating I moved back to Los Angeles in September of 2008 and have had 38 art shows since, many of them have been at theDowntown LA Art walk. In November of 2012 I signed a lease for a art studio in Downtown LA in the heart of the Gallery District. For the past year I have been researching and working on preproduction of a documentary I am working on which focuses on Los Angeles' gallery scene. It's been a lot of fun, I've gallery sat at Human Resources in Chinatown, an art collective I am focusing on in my documentary. Several art dealers that have galleries in Chinatown and Culver City have agreed to be in it. It's been an exciting labor of love. Like I said when I was younger I spent a lot of time romanticizing the art scene of the 80's in New York and early 1900 of bohemian Paris, France (Montparnasse and Montmartre areas). That's a big reason why I'd like to document Los Angeles' gallery scene. I think this city has a lot going for it, the art work is amazing and the art world in general grew during the great recession; as asserted by Morley Safer on the 60 Minutes segment Even in Tough times, Contemporary Art Sells- "The art market sizzles while the stock market fizzles."   

  

      

From left to right -Andy Warhol,
 Basquiat and Francesco Clemente.

                  I've been talking about starting a art appreciation blog for a while now, I go to galleries so much it feels fitting. I have a album with pictures of all the art work I like from my gallery visits that has 141 photos in it, my goal is to have 250 photos by the end of this year. This blog will highlight my favorite art works I see in galleries across Los Angeles. Some are from shows I went to back in 2010, but the work had a big affect on me so it's okay if I regress, in general this blog will be pretty current though.

                I'd like to end my first entry with a quote from one of my favorite art dealers Jeff Poe of the gallery Blum and Poe. I actually have a huge crush on his business partner Tim Blum. When I met  him he was really nice and completely flattered that I wanted to take my picture with him. His hands are really soft when I shook them and he said "Wow usually people want to take pictures with the artists, sure!" I was so timid and told him "I'm just really infatuated with the art world. I think it's really glamorous." Totally worth coming off like an obsessed weirdo. Back on Poe, he was asked what makes a good art dealer and his reply also describes really well what makes an exceptional artist. "You have to have an eye- a savantish ability to recognize work that is symptomatic of an artist with real intelligence, originality, and drive." 

A ball in Montparnasse, Paris. 

I'm sure la fee verte was in attendance.

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