The Corey Helford Gallery was the definition of “packed” on Saturday as art fanatics flocked in to see the debut of “Animal Kingdom,” the new collection of paintings by Josh Agle, aka “Shag.” Walking into the show, the first thing we heard was a gentleman utter, “Everything’s sold!” A quick glance around confirmed that nearly every painting had a red “I’m sold” dot plastered to the right of it and those that didn’t were being swarmed by contemplating consumers.
Create Fixate is a fabulous organization that strives to “connect emerging artists with a new generation of art enthusiasts by producing curated site-specific art exhibits in Los Angeles.” As they’ve been around for a decade, they decided it was time to throw a 10th anniversary shindig. The event, “I Art You,” was just in time for Valentine’s Day, as it couldn’t have been more Cupid themed.
As “I Art You” festivities kicked off, guests made their way to the Valentine card making station where they used tools like markers, Little Mermaid stickers, and Elmer’s Glue to craft a love note for their special someone.
Hungry for art, but unsure of what you’re in the mood for? Right now, La Luz De Jesus gallery has a show up that will satisfy all your cravings, whether you’re feeling like photo-realistic pop art, spooky fare, or eerie erotica. Between Matthew Bone’s “Paradise Lost”, Soey Milk’s “Malus Sieversii”, Bonny Raid’s Cartes de Visite” and “Christine Wu’s “Shhh…”, La Luz has you covered.
White Walls Gallery is pleased to present Oceanic Awareness Collaboration’s first annual traveling benefit art auction, Art on the Move. OAC is starting a series of annual road shows beginning this year in the fog city, San Francisco, and they have partnered with White Walls Gallery to bring SF’s largest charitable group show to life.
If Britain’s esteemed photographer, Rankin, had a mantra, it would be that art is more fun when it teeters on the scandalous side. The renowned portrait and fashion photographer is known for his sassy shots of celebs like Heidi Klum, Liv Tyler, Britney Spears, Kate Moss, David Bowie, and more. After years of turning heads in the UK, Rankin decided to grace the United States with a rotating collection of his last 20+ years of working behind a lens. Due to it’s progressive and continuously creative landscape, Rankin chose to launch his first stateside venture in Los Angeles.
People flock to West Hollywood’s The Standard Hotel for it’s chic atmosphere, exclusive lounges, and A-list pool parties. Last Tuesday, however, the famed hotel’s parking lot was the place to be.
As part of the ongoing celebration of the birth of the L.A. art scene, LAXART transformed The Standard’s parking garage into a dynamic performance art gallery. The project was a collaborative effort by Warren Neidich and Elena Bajo and included a group of locally recognized artists who came together to create this “choreography on wheels.” To the artists, the parking garage represented a site of unlimited temporal potential “where multiple times and spaces collide.”
After entering The Standard, we were escorted to the back of the hotel and sent down an industrial flight of stairs. We walked through the door and into the parking garage to find over 20 artists in action. Every parking space had it’s own artistic twist. Here were some of our favorites:
On Saturday, the Bergamot Station Arts Complex flooded with heavy foot traffic headed straight for Copro Nason Gallery, where strange sea creatures, aliens, robots and mutants anxiously waited on the walls and floor displays. It was opening night for the second installment of Chet Zar’s Conjoined, The Sequel – In 3D exhibit, and the art-hungry masses were fired up.
If you went to a rave in the ‘90s, there’s a good chance you’ve gaped at the work of VJ and visual artist Vello Virkhaus. Back then, his O.V.T. crew was at the cutting edge of live video mixing for electronic music events. They did literally hundreds of gigs.
Ironically, the Michigan-born Virkhaus hated his first rave. The year was 1991, and the music was all whooshing, vacuum-cleaner techno. “I didn’t like it at all.”
At a later event in Chicago, where he was enrolled in the same art school his grandfather had attended, he discovered Richie Hawtin and Juan Atkins. He also discovered that if he took some of the video feedback and looping experiments he had conducted as teenager in his mom’s basement, and projected them behind the DJ, the kids went nuts for it.
3 shows. 4 artists. 1 journey.
The Mint Museum will once again break new ground by bringing together three exhibitions comprising the largest and most significant examination of Surrealism and Surrealist-inspired art ever presented in the Southeast. Surrealism and Beyond opens to the public at Mint Museum Uptown on February 11 and runs through May 13.
The Hive Gallery recently launched a joint art show featuring the renowned Renee Lawter and her talented husband Jeff Lawter. The show, “Broken Dreams and Fairy Wings,” focuses on living in a world of environmental imbalances and man-made destruction. In addition to the gallery being the first major collaboration between the husband and wife duo, it features the couple’s first collaborative painting, “Broken.” Individual works include Renee’s vintage framed watercolors, which incorporate her trademark cuddly monsters, while Jeff’s ink and dyes on wood portray powerful messages and call out injustices.
ChinaShop recently sat down with the artistic couple to discuss the challenge of combining their very different styles and plans for future art shows together.
