DOUG EDGE
Wallflower, 2016
mixed media on canvas
49 x 61" framed

Flora Weigmann, installation view, Made in L.A. 2018, June 3 - September 2, 2018, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Photo: Brian Forrest

CNP will be closed this Saturday, May 26th for Memorial Day.
We will re-open with normal gallery hours Tuesday, May 29th.​

George Stoll, Untitled (4^th of July: dropped American flag #5- double) 2017

Images by JW Pictures

Laura London, Bathroom Graffiti, X Show, The Roxy, Los Angeles, December 29, 2016
 

Still from Eder Santos and Bruce Yonemoto's Barravento Novo, 2017.
Barravento Novo is to be screened in company with Glauber Rocha’s Terra em Transe [Land in Anguish], 1967 at the Tate Modern. 

The ART Hotel brings “An Ocean View” to one of Denver’s busiest traffic corridors

Total Solar Eclipse & Space is the Place

August 21st, 2017 

‘AN ARTS DISTRICT WITH NO ARTISTS’ 

Stakeholders oppose evictions at 800 Traction St. 

We've had such a great run so far with Adam Braly Janes' Memory Song and we're just not ready to let go of it yet. We're extending Memory Song through June 10th, 2017.
Come by and see the show (but not this weekend because just like you, we'll be taking a three day weekend!)

The gallery will be closed Saturday, May 27th for Memorial Day. 

See you at the beach!

Venice Family Clinic Art Walk & Auction
May 21, 2017
12pm-6pm 
340 Main Street 
Venice

Moveable Lab Residency
April 26 – June 13, 2017
18th Street Arts Center and Public Spaces throughout Santa Monica
Major events: April 29, May 28, and June 3

Following a thrilling year in SETI Institute’s Artist in Residence Program, Nina Waisman has brought her Laboratory for Embodied Intelligences (LEI) to The 18th Street Arts Center. She is joined by founding member and movement expert Flora Wiegmann.

c. nichols project congratulates Michel Auder
on his latest solo exhibition 
at Gavin Brown's Enterprise Rome.
 

Michel Auder
Roman Variations,
February 18 - April 8, 2017
opening February 18th.

https://www.gavinbrown.biz/home/exhibitions/upcoming

If you happen to be in Rome this Spring, pop in and see it!

Michelle Fierro will be our first show in 2017, until then check out this great write up about her work in Dave Hickey's 25 Women.

Review by Shana Nys Dambrot

Dance Performance Themed to Myron Hunt Architecture

Dancer/choreographer Flora Wiegmann will present a unique outdoor dance performance on the Occidental College campus on Wednesday, November 2 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The Montalvo Arts Center, with the help of Bruce Yonemoto, Karen Finley, and George Takei, are taking down its racist founder and the Republican presidential nominee in the same breath. 

Article by Taylor Lindsey

Flora Weigmann and Rebecca Bruno perform Halo of Conciousness at the Seatle Art Fair

Love in the Time of War is a traveling exhibition at two sites, with varied work at each space. Curated by Việt Lê and Jennifer Vanderpool, the show will be on view at UC Santa Barbara Glass Box Gallery from August 4-26, 2016 and at SF Camerawork from September 1- October 15, 2016 and will include select pieces from Bruce Yonemoto and Delicious Taste. 

Flora Wiegmann | Halo of Consciousness

Image credit: Flora Wiegmann, Allay Alight (with undertow), performance at 356 Mission, Los Angeles, 2013.

Can you spot John Geary??

Maura Bendett, White Reindeer Antlers, 2016

Bortolami is pleased to announce an exhibition by Robert Bordo and Sam Anderson with Michel Auder. The exhibition explores the contingencies that transpire when three artists present discrete works of painting, sculpture, and video together for the first time. Please click below for more information about the show.

Kathleen Johnson & Leonardo Bravo

with poet and astrologer Stuart Krimko

:::FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:::

TRI (...ed) - Revisiting TRI Gallery                 

Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles

April 30, 2016, 5:00 pm

For their joint contribution to TRI (...ed), Kathleen Johnson and Leonardo Bravo have asked poet and astrologer Stuart Krimko for a joint reading addressing the following core question: “Why are we still connected after 30 years.”

Underpinning the question is a genuine curiosity about why some friends, even very close friends, end up drifting apart over the years while others remain in one’s life.  Johnson and Bravo have stayed loosely connected for three decades, throughout various episodes, eras, and life events, when they could have easily and quite naturally gone their separate ways.  Is there any particular reason(s)?

If the artists were being asked to revisit TRI Gallery, i.e. to go back in time, then they wanted to go way back. They provided Krimko with their natal information, as well as a rough timeline of key events and moments in their history—from meeting at Otis in 1986 and their youthful club days, to their show at TRI Gallery in 1992, grad school at USC, and each becoming parents in 2008.  Krimko will interpret their interconnectedness from an astrological perspective, offering insights into the role of temperament, thought patterns, and planetary symbolism.

Hot off the internweb: Jeff Ho: Jonesy's Jukebox / AIRS ON FRIDAY, April 15th @ noon. Tune in!

This exclusive Jonesy's Jukebox – Live! show is the first event in an exciting new strategic media partnership between Juice Magazine and KLOS 95.5 FM Radio. This special edition of Jonesy's Jukebox, featuring Jeff Ho and the Ruen Brothers, will air on Friday, April 15, 2016 from noon to 2pm on KLOS  95.5 FM Radio.

Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, is the host of radio show “Jonesy’s Jukebox”, which features everything from groundbreaking new music from his personal collection to current events discussions and guest interviews of all varieties, with a living-room conversation vibe. The Sex Pistols inspired a punk rock revolution starting in the U.K. during the mid-to-late 1970’s and spread throughout the music world.

   Published: March 4, 2016

DANA POINT – Half a century ago, Steve Walden and his friends from Pioneer High School in Whittier would pile into a friend’s truck and head down to Doheny State Beach to surf every weekend.

Since then, Walden has become a world-renowned surfboard builder known as the “father of the modern longboard.” His “Magic Model” design helped create a resurgence in longboard surfing in the 1980s and ‘90s.

Walden was back at Doheny Saturday morning, the very beach where he learned to surf, to be honored as one of seven inductees to the International Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame.

“This really is the summary of my work shaping surfboards over the past 50 years,” Walden said. “To be in the company of so many other talented people where I got my start brings it all full circle.”

The International Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame was founded in 2000 by Bob “The Greek” Bolen and Mike “Mickey Rat” Ester as a way to honor the unsung heroes of the surf community – the people who build the boards.

There’s no shortage of awards for surfers, Bolen said, but this is the only award worldwide for “shapers.”

“Without these guys, there’s no surfing,” Bolen said. “They’re the ones spending time in the water and time in the factory, and they often get no recognition.”

To date, 78 surfboard builders have been inducted into the hall of fame. They’re often referred to as shapers because of the way they hone down hunks of polyurethane into surfboards.

Every year, the previous honorees select the next class of builders to be inducted, which ensures that the hall is more than just a popularity contest, Bolen said. But that doesn’t mean inductees aren’t ever popular.

Jeff Ho, who opened Jeff Ho Surfboards and Zephyr Productions in Venice Beach in 1971, drew huge cheers when he was given his trophy. In addition to the Zephyr Surf Team, Ho founded the Zephyr Skate Team, better known as the Z-Boys, whose story was show in the 2005 film “Lords of Dogtown.”

Despite his relative prominence in popular surf and skate culture, Ho said being inducted into the International Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame was the greatest honor he could ever achieve.

“This is everything for me,” Ho said. “This is like winning the Super Bowl, the Oscars, the Emmys, you name it.”

For Ho, crafting a surfboard is as much about giving it a unique design as shaping the board itself. He call his boards “performance-based works of art,” with vibrant colors that flow in and out of one another.

C. Christine Nichols is currently displaying six of Ho’s boards in her Mar Vista art gallery. Once a year, the gallery takes a break from displaying paintings, photographs and scultures to show surfboard artistry, and Nichols said Ho’s boards stand above most others in that regard.

“He has an uncanny ability to bridge the worlds of art and waveriding,” Nichols said. “There’s a sort of ‘fetish of the finish’ in the surfing community, and Jeff’s boards always stand out visually and in the water.”

In contrast, Walden has typically been more concerned with the function of his boards. While many other board manufacturers focus primarily on improving performance for the boards that professional surfers would use, Walden said he likes to create boards that improve performance for surfers of all skill levels.

At 67 years old, Walden hasn’t stopped working on boards with his own hands. In fact, he brought a board with a new design with him Saturday, which he was considering taking for a test ride in the afternoon.

“Surfing and shaping keeps me young,” Walden said. “I still think I’m 25.”

“Age sometimes catches up with the body, but in the mind I’m still going.”

Contact the writer: 949-667-1933, cyee@ocregister.com and @ChrisMYee on Twitter

2015 Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame inductions set for December

Published: November 20, 2015

Posted: November This year’s International Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame inductions, along with the Longboard Collectors Club annual swap, will take place Dec. 5 at Doheny State Park.

It’s a great event that I always try to make it to. It’s one of those “see all your old friends and make new ones too,” sorta deals.

I just received this year’s inductees list from my pal Mike, a.k.a. “Mickey Ratt” Ester, who puts the Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame event together each year with Bob “the Greek” Bolen.

We have both the East and West Coasts represented as well as Australia. The inductees are selected each year by the previous year’s inductees, kind of the ultimate surfboard version of a jury of your peers.

Starting off the list is a former Huntington Beach surfboard shaper, now living in Ventura – our very own Steve Walden. Steve built his first board in 1961 and by the early 1970’s was spoken of in the same category as the top shapers on the planet.

One of the few 60’s surfboard builders to survive even to this day in a very difficult business, Steve not only got by but also thrived. He has become one of the biggest and most respected surfboard builders in the world. His wildly successful “Magic” model is at the forefront of best sellers and has been for a long time. Good to see Steve getting some love from the Hall of Fame.

Next up is Santa Monica surf and skateboard legend Jeff Ho. Jeff was a part of the “Dogtown and Z Boys” skateboard crew that radicalized that sport – well documented in a movie of the same name. He’s known for his innovative surfboard designs as well as his skills in the water and on concrete.

Another Southern California boy getting the nod is the late Rick Stoner. Rick started building boards with his pal Bing Copeland and eventually opened his own business under the name Rick Surfboards in Hermosa Beach. Both Rick and Bing were students of the great Dale Velzy himself.

One more California boy on this year’s list is Oceanside’s Gary Linden. He’s known for his skills in big surf, even today in his 60’s, and for his amazing hand-made balsawood surfboards. In the age of shaping machines, where people do very little of the real shaping of boards anymore, Gary is one of the few who can still cut out a blank and do the whole job with his hands.

The last entry from California is a master of the craft from Encinitas, the one and only Tony Channin. He’s known as the manufacturer of some of the highest quality surfboards in the world, top of line shapes and beautiful fiberglass work. From the early days of Channin Diffenderfer surfboards, with the renowned shaper Mike Diffenderfer, to evolving into his own super star, Tony has been one of the main men in the business for many decades. Great guy.

From the East Coast is the long-time surfing and shaping legend Pete Dooley from Florida and Natural Art Surfboards. Natural Art has been at the top of Eastern-built surfing equipment since the early 1970’s and Pete is an icon of the region. Also inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame in 2004, Pete remains at the top of his craft.

And rounding out the group is this year’s thunder from down under, Pat Morgan. Pat hangs his power plainer in the chilly yet extremely surf-fertile Australian state of Victoria. It’s a place with cold and rugged surfing conditions and dedicated and innovative surfing industry creators. And also the home of Brian Singer and Claw Warbrick, who brought us Rip Curl Wetsuits. Pat is not as well know here in the U.S. as some of our other inductees but is a huge hero in the land of Oz.

If any of you are anywhere near the O.C. on that day, I strongly recommend you head down to Doheny Beach and be a part of this really cool event. I might even see ya there myself.

René-Julien Praz and his partner Bruno Delavallade, have a long history that involves the two contemporary art scenes in Paris and Los Angeles. Since 1989, they lead one of the best edgy art galleries, then rue Louise-Weiss in the 13th district, Praz Delavallade gallery, and now in the 3d District, rue des Haudriettes.
 

Alongside with the gallery, René-Julien Praz has always been a curator. He was asked by French auctioneer Piasa, to curate a show of emerging artists from Los Angeles. Praz was an obvious choice because no one knows better than him the Emerging scene. For personal reason, Bruno and he got the chance to travel to L.A. each year, and for more than thirty years that, of course, allowed them to understand the very heart of the LA art scene. They don’t have a false romantic idea about LA. They know that the freedom that characterizes at first the making art of Angelinos artists can lead to the worst but also to the best creative artwork.
 

From that best, famous names came out as to be also known across the Atlantic: Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Chris Burden, Charles Ray, Paul McCarthy, Jim Shaw, John Baldessari, James Turrel, John McCracken, Robert Irwin, Ed Ruscha, Douglas Huebler, Michael Asher, Bruce Nauman, Raymond Pettibon, Vija Celmins, Bill Viola, Jeffrey Valance, Billy Al Bengston.
 

As French Curator & Art dealer René-Julien knows better than others whose artists French Collectors could be ready to like. We wanted to ask him a few questions to get to know what guided him for the show he curated at Piasa:

be-Art magazine: What do you like so much in the “made in LA” art?

be-Art magazine: So many good artists emerge these days in Los Angeles; did you have specific criteria for your selection?

As I said previously, L.A. is a city of images  outrageous and elusive, open and generous and above all indefinable, seeing the extend to which this metropolis flirts with the very limits of what is possible. From assemblage to pop art or from minimalism to conceptual art, L.A. ‘s artists express this same sensation of excessiveness, a desire to mix and experiment with hybrid art forms. 

L.A.’s art draws its creative nourishment from the very complexity of this city/ world, were underground movement mingle with more mainstream Californian culture and its communal expression, as seen in such makers of dreams as Hollywood and Disneyland. No wonder then we can’t think of specific criteria for selecting artists as creativity is free and that numerous visual artists of the 21 st century have cast aside conventions, movements and schools of thoughts.

be-Art magazine: You chose a piece by Matthew Carter, who we do like too.  To my opinion, he combines the best of LA, and it is everything but boring. Why did you choose him?

René-Julien Praz:

Matthew is the perfect example of this new generation of L.A. artists whose characteristics are not enough to explain an art form that has found a continual source of inspiration in its diverse interactions with Eastern art, European culture and multi-ethnic neighbourhoods.

be-Art magazine: At bAm we try the most we can to build bridges between the two communities of collectors from France and Los Angeles to get the chance to know each other. In that spirit would you share three names of Emerging artists from France you’d discover?

René-Julien Praz:

Although I’m much more familiar with the L.A. art scene than the french  art community, I must say that the Paris scene is  currently blossoming and some major artists are emerging. Just to name a few, I’m thinking of Julien Nédélec, Laurent Pernod and Fabien Mérelle. 

Interview conducted via emails by Beatice Chassepot in Los Angeles, October 12th, 2015

 

October 14, 2015

Royal College of Art

Jane Wilson joins as Senior Tutor in Moving Image, School of Fine Art, and a new MA in Contemporary Art Practice

Jane Wilson joins the Royal College of Art as Senior Tutor in Moving Image, School of Fine Art this academic year.

Moving Image has been a core strand of teaching in the Royal College of Art (featured in Art & Education's School Watch) for many years, and was developed into a taught pathway under Stuart Croft. Jane Wilson takes over as the School introduces a new MA programme in Contemporary Art Practice, which locates moving image, performance and the consideration of critical practice and the public sphere alongside concentrations in Painting, Photography, Print and Sculpture.

For over two decades, Jane has been half of an artist collaboration with her twin sister, Louise Wilson. Their work often centres on abandoned buildings that are imbued with the presence and ideology of the original occupants. They have explored some of Europe's least accessible sites: among them, a former Stasi prison in Berlin, the Star City complex in Moscow (key site of the Russian Space Programme), and the British Houses of Parliament.

In 1999, the Wilsons were Turner Prize-nominated for Gamma (1999), which continued their thematic concerns in the meditative study of an American military base at Greenham Common in Berkshire, UK, that housed cruise missiles during the Cold War.

Working with photography, installation and moving image, the Wilsons are keenly engaged in investigating how we receive images and what this means in the continuing dialogue with cinema as an art form. In their practice, the moving image becomes an installation—an expanded form of cinema and lens-based media—that generates atmospheric, immersive environments to produce an immediate effect on the spectator.

As Professor Juan Cruz, Dean of the School of Fine Art, notes, Jane Wilson joins the RCA at a pivotal point in the development of the ethos of the School: she brings "amazing professional expertise and art world know-how, together with a deep critical intellect and great ambition for our students."

MA Contemporary Art Practice
Launching in 2016, MA Contemporary Art Practice, with its studio-based pathways in Critical Practice, Moving Image, Performance and Public Sphere, extends the range of Fine Art specialisms at the RCA, both materially and also in how we consider our approach to history and tradition, enhancing our intellectual scope and enabling us to embrace and test important contemporary discourses including post-colonialism, exhibition studies and archival studies, among many others.

While many artists continue successfully to evolve their work from recognised material traditions, a growing number of practitioners are now generating work rooted in more diverse and ubiquitous platforms such as the Internet, social media, institutional structures and other academic and creative disciplines. The Contemporary Art Practice programme is flexible and adaptive to new and emerging interests and potential areas of research, and is designed to work alongside the existing Fine Art programmes in an increasingly integrated and collaborative structure.

The programme is delivered through four distinct pathways:

Critical Practice is delivered in collaboration with MA Critical Writing in Art & Design, offered by the School of Humanities, and provides a focused postgraduate programme for artists who wish to extend and develop the critical dimensions of their practice.

Moving Image, led by Jane Wilson, caters to artists using film and video, along with practitioners working in the areas of documentary, dance film and fiction cinema—artists who wish to draw upon, challenge and re-map established realms. This diversity is the new reality of contemporary moving image: it is post-dogmatic and intercontextual.

Performance, led by Professor Nigel Rolfe, happens in the "here and now" and not the "there and then." Unlike many practices, wherein time is historic and the image presented is necessarily an archive or record, "being and doing" are more immediately significant in live time, and the expectation is that in the contemporary, artists are often presenting work that is not made in advance.

Public Sphere is a studio-based pathway that supports artists wishing to expand their engagement with art and its publics, as well as to deepen their understanding of art's social function and its role in the formation of contemporary culture and civic life.

Pathways operate within the programme as a way of supporting students to develop their practice alongside other students, researchers, and academics with whom they share some material and philosophical concerns. Pathways provide opportunities for the formation of focused peer groups and the establishment of a supportive learning framework.

Applications for entry in 2016/17 have now opened. Please visit www.rca.ac.uk/applications for further information.

The ocean sometimes gets the best of those who love it most. The title of Alison Frey Andersson’s exhibition, “86’d” offers a surfer’s take on the hazards of that beguiling body. The Venice-based artist, who regularly succumbs to the pleasures of riding the waves on a glassed foam board, educes the essence of the sea with this show, and smartly distills the lifestyles of the ocean’s devotees into artworks that challenge the already slippery distinctions between painting, furniture and design.

Although Andersson’s objects elaborate an aesthetic of deterioration, a thread of serious painterly investigation lashes through the exhibition, oscillating between troughs of chic interior decoration and crests of raw elemental evocation. She craftily channels the her raw materials into a mergence of oceanic elementals with the stylish scrappiness of surfer habiliment.

Bailer (all works 2015) conjures thoughts of a storm surge plunging through a window; surf and curtains become one. Break Deep and Adrift recall ripped jeans and bloody bandages, respectively. These allusions to destructive oceanic power enliven her erosive investigation of painting’s boundaries.The ocean sometimes gets the best of those who love it most. The title of Alison Frey Andersson’s exhibition, “86’d” offers a surfer’s take on the hazards of that beguiling body. The Venice-based artist, who regularly succumbs to the pleasures of riding the waves on a glassed foam board, educes the essence of the sea with this show, and smartly distills the lifestyles of the ocean’s devotees into artworks that challenge the already slippery distinctions between painting, furniture and design.

Although Andersson’s objects elaborate an aesthetic of deterioration, a thread of serious painterly investigation lashes through the exhibition, oscillating between troughs of chic interior decoration and crests of raw elemental evocation. She craftily channels the her raw materials into a mergence of oceanic elementals with the stylish scrappiness of surfer habiliment.

Bailer (all works 2015) conjures thoughts of a storm surge plunging through a window; surf and curtains become one. Break Deep and Adrift recall ripped jeans and bloody bandages, respectively. These allusions to destructive oceanic power enliven her erosive investigation of painting’s boundaries.

Dark Seas at Night is a nocturnal seascape contrived of indigo-dyed canvas strips stretched around a frame. Horizontal lines formed by pleats and breaches become waves. Its fibrous levelness is also reminiscent of a bedspread or pillow. With warps of canvas and wefts of twine, Sunrise and Green Flash simultaneously suggest blinded windows and radiant aqueous reflections. A Place to Sleep occupies miles of space but is least evocative, elaborating little more than a decorative rug on the wall.

Concomitant with the terrene ruggedness of her materials and her musings over the fury of the ocean, Andersson’s work provokes questions over the advancement of painting’s structures: Can a painting also be a place to sit?

Composed of blackish jean-fragments and hot pink twine stretched over steel, Volcano Chairs and Bench pause between painterly and practical. Sitting on them collapses the traditional distance between object and viewer, along with the distinction between painting and furniture. In Andersson’s hands, art objects become housewares; paintings are, at their lowest function, textiles, though they may also exist on a higher plane. 

Andersson’s work is rooted squarely within painterly conventions—pigment, canvas, stretcher. Considered within the tradition of Supports/Surfaces, the 1960s–’70s French movement whose recent resurgence is spawning new strains of work investigating the possibilities and limitations of painting’s protocols, it offers new possibilities. Painters are rolling up their sleeves to surmount, rather than surrender to, the idea that “it’s been done before.”

LA painters Jennifer Boysen and Noam Rappaport are associated with this trend; but Andersson’s work is more environmentally specific. Her interest in evoking locality aligns more with New York painter Joe Fyfe’s creation of paintings from detritus salvaged from Asian travels. While questioning painting structures, Andersson and Fyfe’s environmentally specific invocations also investigate frameworks of culture external to art.

Andersson employs tropes of seaside décor to question painting’s place within domestic, artistic and environmental milieus. She weaves disparate references into California-esque tapestries of distinct flair, though her inquiries transcend locality.

Check out Jason Yates' illustrious new website with recent press & past and and present projects!

Christine Nichols has built her career on listening and watching. She understands artists' approach to their work, whether it be works on paper or formed by fiberglass. She is careful in her curating, generous in her exhibitions of their work as she studies their methods. She embraces their marks as she creates room for them breathe in her space, called c.nichols project.

It's a special environment in her gallery and in her back parking lot too, usually featuring tasty food (green and good) and various quenching beverages alongside her fully stocked and prepared surf van. It's a great place to rest after a days-long hunt for decent art. Her latest show, featuring Lisa Rosel, Laura London, and Kathleen Johnson is called Trio.

Kathleen Johnson has created Mars-like landscapes that carry you into the loneliness of an empty planet. They are part of her work as a member of a "crew rotation" at Mars Desert Research Station in Southern Utah in 2004.

Laura London's work in this show focuses on a single model, using somewhat filmic techniques in her approach to the subject, in created spaces that reflect her use of effectively theatrical elements of placement, costume, and presence.

Lisa Rosel's work reflects a need to prowl and photograph her territory, capturing elements of the female form and pose in advertising in it's various incantations throughout her beloved Sunset Strip and other parts of her world. She'll often take photographs while driving with a longish focal length on her camera, compressing the images that crop up in ways that make you aware of the environment, the flora and fauna the advertisements live in. And live they do. Sometimes she'll jump out of her car to capture an image as she waits at a light. Time is fleeting. These images have a tendency to give the impression the women are watching you, challenging you to confront them, as if you're on safari -- in the odyssey that is LA.

The show is up until May 2. Go see it before the sun goes down. c.nichols project is located at 12603 1/2 Venice Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90066. Emial info@cnicholsproject.com for information.

Follow Juri Koll on Twitter: www.twitter.com/veniceica

KCET  /  ARTBOUND
Jason Yates' Colorful Examinations
By Tanka M. Laden     Posted February 24, 2015  

Originally from Detroit, artist Jason Yates has been living in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years, with stints in places such as New Mexico and Arizona as well. He came out here to earn his MFA at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design, studying under the likes of Mike Kelley, Mayo Thompson, and Liz Larner. Since completing the program in 2000, Yates has forged a successful career as an artist (though he's loathe to call it a "career"), yet watching L.A.'s increasingly commercial art scene has given him a different perspective, one that he explores in his art. "I have a love/hate relationship with this town," says Yates. "There's times when I feel absolutely suffocated by it and there's times when I feel completely inspired by it. I'm going through a period now where I'm feeling suffocated by it."

Recently on view at c.nichols project, Yates' "did i stutter did i ever" was a colorful examination of virtue and vice, success and failure, and the vicious cycle of self-doubt that plagues artists who are not necessarily hell bent on achieving financial success, yet who still want to remain true to their own creative vision.

Yates' show was composed of three separate works that function on their own, as a triptych, and even perhaps even as one work of art. "I usually work on one piece at a time, but this group of work, I was rotating between three of these, so something specific happened," Yates says.

Left: Jason Yates, "Friends Forever," 2014. Mixed media on canvas. 97 x 78 inches. Right: Jason Yates, "Why Sleep," 2014, Mixed media on canvas. 97 x 78 inches. | Courtesy c.nichols project.

Jason Yates, "did i stutter did i ever" installation view. | Courtesy c.nichols project.

All three tell a story, beginning with a piece that began as a commission and somehow found itself into the exhibition instead. "Why Sleep... When we're having so much fun," it reads in shiny metallic letters. Next is a piece with the phrase "Friends Forever" and "This is going to be our little secret," featuring a table with a mirrored tray of glittering mock-cocaine, rolled-up foreign currency, and crushed-out cigarette butts, alluding to the tacit shame that sometimes accompanies social drug use. Finally, a third work reads, "Nobody cares... Maybe partying will help (again)," thus ending -- and once again beginning -- the same cycle of misadventure all over again.

Not installations, collages, assemblages, sculptures, or paintings, the group of works somehow manage to exist as all of the above. For lack of a better term, Yates simply refers to them as "works on canvas," but whatever they're called, they sustain attention and engage the viewer much more than your average 2-D object. Each mixed-media artwork features a multitude of elements such as different fabrics, whimsical patches, odd stickers, and hand-drawn art that Yates may or may not have re-appropriated. Together, the seemingly disparate components form a type of visual narrative that tells a darker story in a way that's cute and fun, at least on the surface.

Yates' intentional misappropriation of "cuteness" comes from one of the conversations he used to have with the late Mike Kelley, himself known for incorporating stuffed animals into his own art practice. He says Kelley believed stuffed animals were always cute, but Yates found himself believing otherwise. "I don't have a problem with the cuteness of a particular object," he explains, "But if I can bend its meaning, if I can subvert its cuteness to open up to a larger critique, commentary, or conversation, I'm going to attempt it. Cuteness is often a tool for manipulation. That's when it becomes more interesting to me: when 'cuteness' is a weapon."

Jason Yates, "Nobody Cares," 2014. Mixed media on canvas. 96 x 78 inches. | Courtesy c.nichols project.

The artist says he hasn't had this much fun making art in years. Still, he acknowledges that working on the exhibition helped him work through his own issues, among them, the increasingly disenfranchised role of the artist in the face of creative entrepreneurship. In many ways, his show is about the death of the artist and the notion that in today's art world, people are dangerously close to valuing success over ideas.

"There's been a great deal of talk about the 'creative entrepreneur' of late," Yates says. "There doesn't seem to be much room for error in this business model. When an artist makes a mistake, that's really exciting to me. I want error. I want to see the 'good' work and the 'bad' work. The creative entrepreneur is about business, about having a career, selling a product, a lifestyle -- preferably both together -- throwing great parties and hash-tagging the shit out of everything."

To Yates, the change is especially palpable in Los Angeles, where he feels the art scene was more interesting before the importance of the commercial aspect of it came into the fray. "The galleries that are now huge powerhouses were just more charming," he says. "Blum & Poe was more charming when they had their shitty little space in Santa Monica, you know?"

With a show coming up in France this Fall, Yates is thinking of taking his family and moving there for the summer, where he can work on his art instead of making it here and then shipping it abroad. But if the past is any indication, he'll be back in Los Angeles, and maybe that's not so bad.

"Ever since I came here, LA -- the community -- wanted to be recognized as an internationally relevant place to be. The problem is, they always were. They always have been," he says. "But it's exciting for younger artists to be here and there's a lot to do... That's a good thing."

About the Author

Tanja M. Laden is a writer, editor, and producer born and raised in Los Angeles.

(Photo: Courtesy of Steve Christensen)

Review: Rory Devine paintings, video at CB1 Gallery

February 27, 2014
By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times art critic​

Rory Devine, "Untitled (Women Laughing I)" 2013, acrylic on… (CB1 Gallery )

Devine Deception : Artist / Gallery Owner, Interested in 'Distributing Ideas,' Attends His Own Lecture