LAXART presents Safe/Vanish, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Glenn Kaino, and one of the most ambitious projects of the organization’s anniversary year. Safe/Vanish includes a major sculptural installation, a series of new objects and performances, as well as a publication produced specifically for the exhibition.

In Safe/Vanish, Kaino will create a site-specific installation featuring a safe filled with recorded secrets collected from a range of art world and celebrity personalities, among them actresses Pamela Anderson, Jodie Foster, Lisa Ling, fashion and art photographer David LaChapelle and A&M Records founder Jerry Moss, to name a few. By amassing these secrets, which range from the personal to the professional, and from the benign to the criminal, Kaino explores his interest in the archiving of conceptual power and the inherent power in brokering secrets.

Over the past year, Kaino has embarked upon the study of magic and has virtually transformed his studio into a magic shop. The exhibition at LAXART will act as an extension of his studio, providing the viewer with a behind-the-scenes view of the artist’s experiments and the magic conceptual and performance pieces being developed. While technology has broken down the wall of secrecy behind many of the techniques and methods of magic, it has also served to expose the art to a much wider audience, creating a crisis of belief that is a mirror of the postmodern crisis of meaning. In juxtaposing performance space and studio space, Kaino brings the conflicts between method and effect, preparation and performance, and object and ephemeral into full view for public assessment and reinvention. The artist’s preoccupation with magic also extends to his interest in the dialogue between art and entertainment.

Using the history of the renegotiation between magicians and their audiences that took place in the late 19th century as a departure point, Kaino has created a wide array of both performance and conceptual deceptions aimed at exposing, interrogating and reformulating the value of art in a theoretical environment outside of the singular commodity of the object. Safe/Vanish marks an ongoing investigation into the restructuring of the social contract between art and audience. To Kaino, this exhibition marks the end of a journey that can be characterized as, “an artist learning how to believe again through magic while questioning value through the brokering and archiving of secrets.”

About the Artist
Glenn Kaino received his MFA from the University of California, San Diego and his BFA from the University of California, Irvine. His work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, CA; the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA; and the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, amongst others. Kaino was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and in the 2009 edition of Performa, the internationally renowned Biennial of Performance in New York. He will also be included in the upcoming exhibition, The Artist’s Museum, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

About LAXART
Celebrating its 5th Anniversary in 2010, LAXART is the leading independent nonprofit contemporary art space in Los Angeles, committed to the production of experimental exhibitions and public art initiatives. Responding to Los Angeles’ cultural climate, LAXART produces and presents new work for all audiences and offers the public access to the next generation of artists and curators. LAXART supports challenging work, reflecting the diversity of the city and stimulates conversations on contemporary art in Los Angeles, fostering dynamic relationships between art, artists and their audiences. LAXART has produced and commissioned over 100 projects in five years.

LAXART’s programs are made possible with the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the James Irvine Foundation; Danielson Foundation; the G.L. Waldorf Family Fund; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon LLP; City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Glenn Kaino: Safe/Vanish is made possible with generous support from the James Irvine Foundation.

The exhibition is supported by LAXART’s Producers Council; Stefan Simchowitz; Esthella Provas and Lauren Taschen; LAXART Collectors Circle; Linda and Jerry Janger; Catharine and Jeffrey Soros; Gil Friesen; Ben Bourgeois; Deutsche Bank.

The exhibition is made possible with additional support from Eve Steele and Peter Gelles; Pasadena Art Alliance; Benchmark Scenery; Cirrus Editions Ltd.; Maryam and Josh Lieberman; Karyn Kohl and Phil Lord.

Special thanks to our publication partner Paper Chase.

UPCOMING PROGRAMMING SCHEDULE
Zoe Crosher: Billboard
LAXART Billboard
On view through September 2010

Charlie White: Casting Call
LAXART Billboard
On view through October 2010

Kelly Barrie: Negative Capacity
LAXART Gallery One
November – December 2010

Terry Chatkupt: Transferase
LAXART Gallery Two
November – December 2010

LAXART is open Tuesday through Saturday 11am – 6pm
2640 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90034
T. +1 (310) 559-0166
F. +1 (310) 559-0167
www.laxart.org
office@laxart.org

Media Contact:
Elizabeth Reina or Deirdre Maher, Blue Medium
T. +1 (212) 675-1800
elizabeth@bluemedium.com

As Part of its 5th Anniversary Programming
LAXART Presents Charlie White: Casting Call

Performance on September 11, 2010, 9am-6pm
LAXART Billboard through October 2010

On September 11, 2010, LAXART will open its fall exhibition season with Casting Call, a one-day performance event organized by artist Charlie White. The event will entail a daylong casting call aimed at locating one “California Girl” between the ages of 13 and 16 to appear on a Los Angeles billboard as part of the LAXART Billboard Project series. This live performance will invite viewers to witness the entire casting process within LAXART, where a windowed wall will divide the main exhibition space into two areas: a casting office on one side, and a public viewing room for onlookers on the other.

Casting Call furthers White’s ongoing interest in the complexities of the American teen as cultural icon, image, and national idea. Beginning with Girl Studies (2008) – a series comprised of a 35mm short film (American Minor), an experimental animation (OMG BFF LOL), and a set of five double portraits (Teen and Transgender Comparative Study) – White has carried out an extensive investigation into the processes through which the American teen image operates as a privileged articulation of American pop culture. As the next stage in this study, Casting Call provides a live interrogation into the cultural image and idea construction of the American teen. In exposing the casting process as a nexus of public spectacle and individual ambition, White provides a critical space from which to take part in the discomforts and desires related to the presentation and consumption of the adolescent image. Simultaneously, those taking part in the casting call will experience the heightened awareness of being viewed by a live audience throughout the casting process.

Casting Call is not an open call for talent. The event will be limited to selected applicants provided by the Burbank Casting Company, who, working in conjunction with Charlie White, will select one hundred girls to take part in the daylong process. During the casting call, each teen will have a portrait taken in order to be considered for appearance on the LAXART Billboard during the month of October 2010.

About the Artist
Charlie White lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his BFA from the School of the Visual Arts, New York, in 1995 and his MFA in 1998 from Art Center College of Design. White’s work has been exhibited internationally for more then a decade with recent solo institutional exhibitions at Domus Artium, Salamanca, Spain; The Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo, Norway; and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; as well as numerous group shows at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, China. White’s first film, American Minor (2008), was selected to screen at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. His most recent monograph, American Minor, which includes archived materials, personal collections, and completed works relating to his investigations of the popular representations of the contemporary teen subject, was published in 2009 by JRP|Ringier. He is currently an Associate Professor and the Director of the MFA Program at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Fine Arts.

About LAXART
Celebrating its 5th Anniversary in 2010, LAXART is the leading independent nonprofit contemporary art space in Los Angeles, committed to the production of experimental exhibitions and public art initiatives. Responding to Los Angeles’ cultural climate, LAXART produces and presents new work for all audiences and offers the public access to the next generation of artists and curators. LAXART supports challenging work, reflecting the diversity of the city and stimulates conversations on contemporary art in Los Angeles, fostering dynamic relationships between art, artists and their audiences. LAXART has produced and commissioned over 100 projects in five years.

Charlie White’s Casting Call was made possible with generous support from LAXART’s Producers Council, Helen Lewis, Collectors Circle, Sheridan Brown, Alisa and Kevin Ratner and Grants for New Projects, Renegade Flooring.

UPCOMING PROGRAMMING SCHEDULE
Glenn Kaino: Secret/Vanish
Opening on September 23, 2010; on view through October 30, 2010

# # #

LAXART is open Tuesday through Saturday 11am – 6pm
2640 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90034
T. +1 (310) 559-0166
F. +1 (310) 559-0167
www.laxart.org
office@laxart.org

Media Contact:
Elizabeth Reina or Deirdre Maher, Blue Medium
T. +1 (212) 675-1800
elizabeth@bluemedium.com

Silent Auction 7-9pm / Live Auction 8pm

Special closing performance by Black Cowboy

The Live Auction will be conducted by Andrea Fiuczynski, President of Christie’s Los Angeles.

Tickets can be purchased by contacting office@laxart.org, over the phone at +1 310.559.0166 Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm PST, or by visiting www.laxart.org

Free membership with ticket purchase, visit www.laxart.org for details.

Guests must be 21+ to consume cocktails. Invitation is non-transferable.

With support from Campari, Puma, Interview Magazine, Westfield Culver City, Christie’s, The Rose Group, ForYourArt. Framing by Absolute! Framemakers, Grey Goose, and Fourth Corner Conservation Framing Inc. Flowers by Holly Flora.

Host Committee:
Rose Apodaca & Andy Griffith, Jenny Chase Bernstein, Rebecca Bloom & Dave Kurtz, Ruth & Jake Bloom, Laurel Broughton, Nancy Chaikin, Lisa Edelstein, Sima Familant, Oliver Furth, Lauri Firstenberg, Emi Fontana, Eve & Billy Gerber, Emma Gray & Chris Lee, Phil Lord, Richard & Julie Harrah, Alan Hergott & Curt Shepard, Juliette Hohnen & Steven Weber, Adam & Brooke Kanter, Donanne Kasikci, Christine Kim, Chris Klein, Karyn Kohl, Bettina Korek, Josh & Maryam Lieberman, Navi Rawat, Perrey Reeves, Shaun Regen, Loree Rodkin, Mia Romanik, Kathy Azarmi Rose & Rick Rose, Brian Rosman, Sonia & Josh Roth, Stefan Simchowitz, Elaine Sir, Megan Maguire Steele, Larry Mathews & Brian Saliman, Ben Spector, Amber Noland, Viet-Nu Nguyen, Yasmine Mohseni, Eliane-Nicole Henri, Aram Moshayedi, Adam Nathanson & Lauren Waisbren, John Rubeli, Lisa Schiff, Joy Simmons, Eve Steele, Scott Stover & Philippe Cottet, Forest & Keisha Whitaker, Christopher Yin

Opening reception: March 21, 7-9pm

Exhibition walk-through with Walead Beshty and Aram Moshayedi: March 21, 6pm

LAXART PRESENTS LOS ANGELES-BASED ARTIST WALEAD BESHTY’S PASSAGES, A SERIES OF PHOTOGRAPHS, A SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION, AND A PUBLIC BILLBOARD

LAXART is pleased to present a series of projects by Los Angeles-based artist Walead Beshty. The exhibition Passages–comprised of a suite of photographs, a site-specific architectural intervention, a cinematic work, and a public billboard on La Cienega Boulevard–represents eight years of ongoing research into the relationships between the technological image and modernity’s transitory and indeterminate spaces. Each avenue of Passages offers a distinct iteration of themes related to the traffic of images, hinging upon their spatial, representational, and material functions in contexts defined by movement and transition.

Included in LAXART’s main gallery is a series of photographs Beshty produced by passing unused film through airport x-ray machines. The photographs from this series index their own traffic in washes of color and line, offering images of the limbo of air travel which directly represent these sites while resisting wrote pictorial depiction of conventional photographic imagery.

In LAXART’s Project Space, Beshty has installed a work that employs cinematic forms and pictorial imagery. American Passages (2001-) is comprised of an expanding collection of photographs gathered over an eight-year period. This work, centered around the architectural styles of defunct regional shopping centers throughout the country, further engages questions of public space, collective memory, and the role of photography in the comprehension and construction of the American landscape. American Passages provides an archaeology of a building type in the process of disappearance, a condition that is echoed in its interwoven dissolving imagery of emptied and derelict shopping centers. LAXART will also produce a forthcoming collection of this work titled American Passages (2000-2009) as part of LAXART’s publication series.

In addition, Beshty has installed a mirrored floor of shatter-proof architectural glass that runs throughout the installations and into LAXART’s offices and lobby space, framing the exhibition, its architecture, and the works it includes, along with the quotidian activities of the exhibition space itself.

Walead Beshty: Passages is made possible with the generous support of LAXART’s Producers Council chair Adam Nathanson.

LAXART PUBLIC PROGRAM

Exhibition walk-through with Walead Beshty and Aram Moshayedi

March 21, 6pm

Artist Walead Beshty and LAXART curator Aram Moshayedi will lead an exhibition walk-through of Passages, followed by an opening reception for the artist.

LAXART PUBLIC BILLBOARD

Walead Beshty: Dust (2007-2008)

Mounted concurrently throughout the month of March will be a newly commissioned billboard project by Walead Beshty, facing north on La Cienega Boulevard between Venice and Washington Boulevards.

About LAXART

Responding to Los Angeles’ cultural climate, LAXART questions given contexts for the exhibition of contemporary art, architecture and design. With a renewed vision for the potential of independent art spaces, LAXART provides a center for interdisciplinary discussion and interaction and for the production and exhibition of new exploratory work. LAXART offers a space for provocation, dialogue and confrontation by practices on the ground in LA and abroad. LAXART is a hub for artists based on flexibility, transition, spontaneity and change. The space responds to an urgency and obligation to provide an accessible exhibition space for contemporary artists, architects and designers.

LAXART’s programs are made possible with the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Peter Norton Family Foundation, the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, Danielson Foundation, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Campari, Eileen Harris Norton, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, ForYourArt, Art Services Melrose, Sima Familant, Lisa Schiff, John Rubeli, Laurie Deer, Marcia Goldenfeld, Gary Greener, Will Kopelman, Andrea Longacre-White and Brendan Fowler, Deborah Schneider, Joseph Varet, and the LAXART Board of Directors, Producers Council, Curators Council, founding members, and patrons.

This exhibition is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.

Upcoming: May 16 – June 20, 2009: Drew Heitzler: Untitled (Baldwin Hills) and Chris Oliveria: A Garden for Losing One’s Head

LAXART is located at 2640 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90034 T.310.559.0166 F.310.559.0167 office@laxart.org www.laxart.org

LAXART is open Tuesday through Saturday 11am – 6pm.

CONTACT MELISSA GOLDBERG
323-951-9790, LAXARTPRESS@LAXART.ORG

July 19 – September 6, 2008 (closed for summer, August 24 – September 1)
Opening reception July 19, 7-9pm

July 19, 6pm
Walk-through with artist Miguel Angel Rios and guest curator Gilbert Vicario

LAXART is pleased to present a new sculptural installation entitled RANK by Los Angeles-based artist Kori Newkirk. Centered upon a highly polished mirrored podium exaggerated to architectural scale, RANK mimics the visual logic and cultural pervasiveness of a recent and forthcoming political theater. By restaging this trope of public speech at a time in which the nation awaits the upcoming presidential election, Newkirk heightens the charge and urgency surrounding this ubiquitous form. Otherwise rendered inconspicuous as a medial device, the functionality of the podium is herein transformed by a manipulation of scale and the application of a mirrored surface to give way to both formal abstraction and pure spectacle. Conjuring both ideology and the body, RANK offers an unspecific monument in which meaning and content are delivered through tensions of presence and absence. It is in this context that Newkirk’s intervention animates the theatricality of minimalist sculpture, implicating viewers through devices of reflection, while also interrogating the role audiences play in the rituals of political discourse.

Kori Newkirk currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993 and his MFA from the University of California, Irvine in 1997. His work was the recent subject of a ten-year survey at the Studio Museum in Harlem—an exhibition that is currently on view at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Additional recent solo exhibitions have taken place at The Project, New York (2006), MC, Los Angeles (2006), the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2005), and Locust Projects, Miami, Florida (2005). Notable group exhibitions include the 2006 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, DAK’ART: 7th Dakar Biennial in Dakar, Senegal (2006), the 2004 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California, and Only Skin Deep at the International Center of Photography in New York, the Seattle Art Museum in Seattle Washington, and the San Diego Museum of Art in San Diego, California (2003).

House of Campari presents LAXART Project Space
Miguel Angel Rios: Crudo
Curated by Gilbert Vicario

LAXART is also pleased to present the premier of Miguel Angel Rios’ single-channel video entitled Crudo, 2008, selected by Gilbert Vicario, assistant curator of Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Filmed both in New York and Mexico City, Crudo takes the viewer on a theatrical, percussive journey led by an unidentified white-suited man, wielding pieces of raw meat, who encounters a group of angry dogs. Mixing elements of dance from Veracruz, American tap, and Argentinean malambo sureño, the dancer’s percussive footwork drives the narrative tension of the scenario, counterbalanced by the tethered pieces of raw meat that swing around to provoke the angry animals – here hired to perform and engage with the dancer’s movements. Although strikingly different from Rios’ monochromatic and poetic videos of spinning tops, the characters in Crudo delineate order and disorder, control and unpredictability. Operating through metaphor, Crudoplays with a range of overwrought dichotomies particular to relationships of power, while questioning their logic and maintaining a narrative structure that remains opaque and without resolve.

Miguel Angel Rios was born in Catamarca, Argentina and studied at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Selected solo exhibitions include Aquí at EVO Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico (2007) and at the University of Houston, Texas’ Blaffer Gallery, curated by Terrie Sultan (2007); Miguel Angel Rios: Love at the Miami Art Museum, Miami, Florida (2006); Concentration 49 at the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas, Texas (2006); and A Morir – ‘til death, curated by Lauri Firstenberg, at Artists Space in New York (2003) and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in Los Angeles (2004). He has also participated in various group exhibitions including Portraits and Places at The Bronx Museum of Art, New York (2004); Special Projects: Summer 2001 at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2001); and The Discovery of the Amazon: An Interpretation of the Chronicle of Friar Gaspar of Cavajal at CRG Gallery, New York (1999). His work has been included in such notable exhibitions as the 2002 Biennale of Sydney in Sydney, Australia, the 2000 Gwangju Biennale in Seoul, South Korea, and the Havana Biennial in Havana, Cuba in both 1997 and 2000. Rios currently lives and works in Mexico City and New York.

Gilbert Vicario is assistant curator of Latin American Art and Latino Art Coordinator, International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where he has curated such exhibitions as Indelible Images (Trafficking between life and death) (2006) and Constructing a Poetic Universe: The Diane and Bruce Halle Collection of Latin American Art (2007). Vicario was named U.S. Commissioner for the 2006 Cairo Biennale with Daniel Joseph Martinez and is currently serving on the Federal Advisory Committee for International Exhibitions (FACIE) for the U.S. State Department.

LAXART Public Program: Exhibition walk-through with Miguel Angel Rios and Gilbert Vicario

July 19, 6pm

Artist Miguel Angel Rios and guest curator Gilbert Vicario will lead an exhibition walk-through of Crudo, followed by an opening reception for Rios and Kori Newkirk.

About LAXART

Responding to Los Angeles’ cultural climate, LAXART questions given contexts for the exhibition of contemporary art, architecture and design. With a renewed vision for the potential of independent art spaces, LAXART provides a center for interdisciplinary discussion and interaction and for the production and exhibition of new exploratory work. LAXART offers a space for provocation, dialogue and confrontation by practices on the ground in LA and abroad. LAXART is a hub for artists based on flexibility, transition, spontaneity and change. The space responds to an urgency and obligation to provide an accessible exhibition space for contemporary artists, architects and designers.

LAXART’s programs are made possible with the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Peter Norton Family Foundation, The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, Cirrus Editions Ltd., Larry Mathews and Brian Saliman, Danielson Foundation, The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, Campari, Eileen Harris Norton, Chris and Eloisa Haudenschild, Joy Simmons, Debra and Dennis Scholl, Mary and Bernie Arocha, The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, ForYourArt, Uber.com, The Standard Downtown LA, and the LAXART Board of Directors, Producers Council, Curators Council, founding members, and patrons.

Upcoming: September 13 – October 25, 2008 Walead Beshty: American Abstracts and Kara Tanaka: Dissolver (The Filthy Detritus of Transmigration)

LAXART
2640 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034

T.310.559.0166
F.310.559.0167
office@laxart.org

www.laxart.org

LAXART is open Tuesday through Saturday 11am – 6pm.

PRESENTED BY HERMÈS
SILENT AND LIVE AUCTION AT LAXART
2640 SOUTH LA CIENEGA BOULEVARD
LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA 90034

VIP RECEPTION AND EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW
4pm to 6pm

LIVE AUCTION WITH CHRISTIE’S AUCTIONEER ANDREA FIUCZYNSKI
6pm to 7pm

SILENT AUCTION
7pm to 9pm

To Benefit LAXART’s Future Exhibitions, Public Projects, and Publications
For more information visit www.laxart.org/auction/

PURCHASE TICKETS NOW
LIMITED NUMBER OF PRESALE VIP TICKETS AVAILABLE
VIP ticket includes cocktail reception and preview presented by HERMÈS, “buy it now” option, and access to live auction

SILENT BENEFIT AUCTION TICKETS
Ticket includes entry to silent auction

To purchase tickets contact Aram Moshayedi at T.310.559.0166 or benefit@laxart.org or send check to LAXART 2640 South La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034

FEATURING OVER 100 WORKS FROM ESTABLISHED AND EMERGING ARTISTS

Edgar Arceneaux, Kamrooz Aram, Ethan Ayer, John Baldessari, Kelly Barrie, Justin Beal, Whitney Bedford, Walead Beshty, Andrea Bowers, Mark Bradford, Brian Bress, Kimberly Brooks, Jedediah Caesar, Jeff Chabot, Terry Chatkupt, William Cordova, Meg Cranston, Gregory Crewdson, Zoe Crosher, Krysten Cunningham, Francesca DiMattio, George Dinhaupt, Sam Durant, Brad Eberhard, Shannon Ebner, Lisa Eisner, Kirsten Everberg, Rob Fischer, Harrell Fletcher, Eve Fowler, John Furmanski, Charles Gaines, Shelly George, Ken Gonzales-Day, Joe Goode, Alexandra Grant, Sherin Guirguis, Wade Guyton, Terry Haggerty, Karl Haendel, Marc Handelman, Micol Hebron, Drew Heitzler, Leslie Hewitt, Evan Holloway, Salomon Huerta, Marie Jager, Danny Jauregui, Vishal Jugdeo, Adrià Julià, Isaac Julien, Glenn Kaino, Matt Keegan, Mary Kelly, Karen Kimmel, John Kleckner, Marcus Knupp, Terence Koh, Alice Konitz, Jason Kraus, Elad Lassry, Lauren Lavitt, Thomas Lawson, Glenn Ligon, Kalup Linzy, Mara Lonner, Michelle Lopez, Matt Lucero, Shana Lutker, Nathan Mabry, Euan MacDonald, Erlea Maneros, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Alexander May, Kevin McCarty, Julie Mehretu, Yunhee Min, Julio Cesar Morales, Kori Newkirk, Eric Niebuhr, David Noonan, Chris Oatey, Ruben Ochoa, Yoshua Okon, Chris Oliveria, Catherine Opie, Eamon Ore-Giron, Arthur Ou, Virginia Overton, Laura Owens, Marlo Pascual, Florencia Pita, Raymond Pettibon, Paul Pfeiffer, Antonio Puleo, Michael Queenland, Michael Rashkow, Marco Rios, Amanda Ross-Ho, Peter Rostovsky, Allen Ruppersberg, Robert Russell, Analia Saban, Dean Sameshima, Eduardo Sarabia, Matt Saunders, Julia Scher, Maya Schindler, Kim Schoenstadt, Anna Sew Hoy, Alex Slade, Meredyth Sparks, Greer Howland Smith, Lisa Tan, Joel Tauber, Mungo Thomson, Lesley Vance, Mark Verabioff, Kelley Walker, Jim Welling, Mary Weatherford, Mark Wyse, Liat Yossifor, Brenna Youngblood, Carrie Yuri (list in progress)

–

ADRIÀ JULIÀ: A MEANS OF PASSING THE TIME
MICHAEL RASHKOW: CIRCLE PICTURES

November 16, 2007 through January 5, 2008
Opening reception November 16, 7-9pm

LAXART is pleased to present the United States debut of Adrià Julià’s newly commissioned film A Means of Passing the Time, produced by LAXART with support from the American Center Foundation. Filmed in collaboration with former USO entertainers, A Means of Passing the Time aesthetically documents the “representation of home” and the static signs and values that help situate oneself geographically and psychosocially. Centering on a 16mm looped film projection, Julià’s site-specific installation explores the fixity of representation, space, and time through the intersections of film and performance.

The narrative structure of A Means of Passing the Time focuses on the act of mumming–a brand of home entertainment involved with questions of social ethics, wherein neighbors appear unexpectedly and perform in each other’s living room. Former USO entertainer Mark Gower has described mumming as a symbolic interaction between individuals that manages to reveal the perception of social roles within communities. While USO entertainers and “DoD Overseas Shows” provide, for the United States Military serving abroad, the equivalency of a show from “back home,” foreign military bases come to serve as virtual cities, staging the concept of “home” through such familiar icons as currency, postage, and American retail products. The act of mumming therefore operates within this logic, in which case USO entertainers adopt this discursive strategy to carve out shared geographies and local references between both spectator and spectacle. Mimicking this informal tradition, A Means of Passing The Time is the product of a collaboration between Julià and two former USO performers who visited US military bases around the world to provide entertainment to American troops overseas.

From his home in Chico, California, where much of A Means of Passing the Time was filmed, Gower has described this relationship between performer and audience:

It was December 1996, and only two days before Christmas an unusually strong winter storm had blanketed much of Eastern Europe in snow. Even the American military had grounded most of its planes because of severe weather conditions. Overnight and throughout the day the snow got worse and it is now Christmas Eve. We are snowed in with the American military, and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders are also snowed in, and a magician from Connecticut. We are given our orders; we are told to put on a show!

About LAXART

Responding to Los Angeles’ cultural climate, LAXART questions given contexts for the exhibition of contemporary art, architecture and design. With a renewed vision for the potential of independent art spaces, LAXART provides a center for interdisciplinary discussion and interaction and for the production and exhibition of new exploratory work. LAXART offers a space for provocation, dialogue and confrontation by practices on the ground in LA and abroad. LAXART is a hub for artists based on flexibility, transition, spontaneity and change. The space responds to an urgency and obligation to provide an accessible exhibition space for contemporary artists, architects and designers.

LAXART’s programs are made possible with the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, American Center Foundation, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Campari, Eileen Harris Norton, Ruth and Jacob Bloom, Jenny Chase and Andrew Bernstein, Richard Massey, Daniel Avchen, Foundation for Contemporary Art, FORyourART.com, Uber.com, and LAXART founding members and patrons.

January 19 – March 1, 2008: Yunhee Min and Scoli Acosta

LAXARTPRESS@LAXART.ORG

Kevin Appel
Untitled

The seed of Ten by Ten blossoms into Uber Art this April. Ten by Ten, now in its third edition, is a portfolio exhibition curated by Uber.com and non-profit art-space LAXART. In its original germinative state the exhibition served as a venue for emerging artists to commingle with art critics for the purpose of review, debate and discussion. In April this communicative functionality is disseminated throughout the arena of Uber Art.

Art critic Shana Nys Dambrot debuted her Uber Art blog in March of 2007; she is now joined by Andrew Berardini. Both writers hail from Los Angeles, but each presents a highly subjective take on contemporary art. Vassar grad Dambrot brings with her a breezy, matter-of-fact style and a body of work that has been published in venues from Modern Painters to Artkrush. CalArts graduate Berardini writes in the style of an acerbic academic, covering topics from Dennis Cooper and bathroom graffiti to the Center for Land Use Interpretation and Stephane Mallarmé. Together they provide deep perspective on the arts community of a global metropolis from which trends and assertions emanate internationally. These blogs are but one indicator of the continuing evolution and expansion of Uber Art and Ten by Ten.

Uber Art also features an array of video art, an archive of reviews from past editions of Ten by Ten and a growing directory of artists on Uber.

What do you think? Come let us know at Uber.com/art.

The third edition of Ten by Ten includes commentary and criticism on painting, sculpture, photography, video art and more. Reviews will become available throughout the month.

Gean Moreno on Cathy Akers
Andrew Berardini on Kevin Appel
Laura Richard Janku on Anna Celli
Anjali Gupta on Anna Kim
Aram Moshayedi on Jason Kunke
Jeffery Uslip on Patrick Pato Herbert
Shana Nys Dambrot on Charles Huntley Nelson
Daniel Chamberlin on Nichole Van Beek
Naomi Beckwith on whatwedoissecret
Sharon Mizota on Carrie Yury

About LAXART: Responding to Los Angeles cultural climate, LAXART questions given contexts for the exhibition of contemporary art, architecture and design. With a renewed vision for the potential of interdisciplinary discussion and interaction and for the production and exhibition of new exploratory work. LAXART offers a space for provocation, dialogue and confrontation by practices on the ground in LA and abroad. LAXART is a hub for artists based on flexibility, transition, spontaneity and change. The space responds to an urgency and obligation to provide and accessible exhibition space for contemporary artists, architects and designers.

May 5th one night performance with Ojo 8-10pm
Passing Through the New Amazing

May-June Vincent Johnson: Civil Air Defense Project #1
Matt Lucero: Travelogue

July-August Charles Gaines: Greenhouse
Florencia Pita: Alice

To support Joel Taubers Public Project Sick Amour contact office@laxart.org

About Uber.com: Uber is a new way to experience art, information and entertainment. We’re an artist-driven network of musicians, makers and discerning media users coming together to develop an optimized interface to the world of visual art, music, video and web-based detritus.

To take part in Uber Art go to www.uber.com/art

For more information on LAXART programming www.laxart.org