Rachel Zoe, 32" x 24" , oil on linen. Courtesy Kimberly Brooks and Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles.

The art world. It’s way more serious and important than every other industry! This thinking at least seems to persist even though the field of contemporary art has maintained an open flirtation with its sassy sister, the fashion industry, since long before even Andy Warhol trotted his wacky wigs around Studio 54 with the likes of Diane von Fürstenberg. There is a mutual fascination between the two fields, and yet it seems that the art world would prefer to keep its consorting with the fashion industry confined strictly to social events, rather than consider fashion (so low-brow!) as a worthy subject matter for actual works of art.

Los Angeles-based artist, Kimberly Brooks‘, current solo show at Taylor De Cordoba gallery in Culver City breaks with this norm to explore the intrigue of the fashion industry’s most iconic stylemakers—without the precept of farce or condemnation. The Stylist Project (on view through April 3rd) presents Brooks’ latest body of work—a series of oil painted portraits of fashion industry insiders, including stylist to the starts and Bravo TV fixture, Rachel Zoe, and award winning costume designer and Madonnaʼs personal stylist Arianne Phillips, among others.

The work on view blends the fields of art and fashion astutely, presenting the fashionable set as they have styled themselves, while at the same time drawing upon the ages-old artistic tradition of portraiture. The regal positions of some of the sitters recall Renaissance royals, and the sprawled poses of others touch on the early Modern depiction of courtesans, such as Edouard Manet’s Olympia.

Arianne Phillips, 30" x 24", oil on linen. Courtesy Kimberly Brooks and Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles.

The Stylist Project is the third solo show for Brooks at Taylor De Cordoba. The first two, Mom’s Friends (2007) and Technicolor Summer (2008), explored much more personal subject matter than the present show. Brooks’ outward shift to now document the fashion industry with this latest series has garnered a lot of attention from media and publications that wouldn’t normally publish gushing articles about fine artists. At the Taylor De Cordoba gallery, they’ve laid out a stack of glossies with Brooks’ name inked onto them. When I asked Heather Taylor, Director of Taylor De Cordoba, to discuss the widespread reception that this exhibition has received, she told me, “The bottom line is that people are hungry for this dialogue and Kimberly is pulling the curtain back on the fashion world, which up until the past year—with the popularity of [the film] ‘The September Issue’ and [the TV show] ‘The Rachel Zoe Project’—had been fairly mysterious.”

New York born, Los Angeles based, Kimberly Brooks maintains her studio in Venice, CA. She earned her BA from UC Berkeley and trained in fine arts at Otis College of Art and Design and UCLA. Her work has been included in numerous juried exhibitions, including at Pleiades Gallery of Contemporary Art, New York; Risk Press Gallery, Los Angeles; and Phillips de Pury Auction House, Los Angeles.

Wind (Rom), 2009; plastic, poster, wallpaper, spray paint, loops, screws; 209 x 202 cm.

In William Gibson’s 1986 novel Count Zero, an abandoned but sentient AI robot composes art objects from detritus found in space.  Despite being built by a computer from discards and rubbish, these objects have a deeply human gravity—both a grace and a yearning for grace—and are highly prized.   It is precisely this evocative use of materials and imagery that Isa Genzken gives us in Wind, her response to the death of Michael Jackson.  This recent work, at Neugerriemschneider Gallery in Berlin, expertly conjures the agitation between glory and coarseness in celebrity culture.

Five monumental mixed-media works, all from 2009, are hung from the walls of the gallery.  The outlier of the group in materials and scale, Wind (Rom), is composed of pages torn from a floral wall calendar, plastic, satin ribbon, spray paint, and tape.  The other four works are larger and a more intriguing mix of temporary and durable materials: the weight and chill of large copper and aluminum plates clashes with flimsy photocopies provisionally clamped to their edges, and the glitz and promise of mirrored disco tiles is defeated by the crassness of cheap blue painter’s tape.  To say that the work is abject would be somewhat misleading; the scale and materials often point to permanence and beauty, even though it falls short of being fully realized.  In Wind, Genzken tells us that true beauty is not possible under current historical and cultural conditions.

Wind (Michael/David), 2009; plastic, poster, colour copies, mirrored foil, coloured paper, spray paint, tape; 200.5 x 276 cm.

The particular mix of images gives the work lyric force.  Wind (Michael/David)—made of plastic, poster, photocopies, mirrored foil, colored paper, spray paint, and tape—depicts Jackson in his prime: styled, dancing, iconic.  Gold spray paint adorns the cheap posters, giving Jackson a top hat or circling his exposed chest.  The composition is also inflected by a centrally-placed image of the famous marble statue; a small copy of Lochner’s Altar of the City Patrons; and multi-colored curving marks that look like an enlarged thumbprint.  In this way Genzken points the viewer to the distinction of Jackson’s oeuvre, inviting connections that signal individuality, singularity, and exceptionalism.   But on closer inspection she undercuts her own assertions: the posters of Jackson are printed with © Annie Liebowitz, the original author of the photo; ripped from a book, the tattered reproduction of Lochner’s altar has his name and information about the piece at the bottom.  It’s as if Genzken wants to build a new Oz, and then perversely delights in drawing back the curtain on her own construction: The gold? Cheap paint. The rainbow? A tacky photocopy. Our heroes? Well…

Wind (Michael), 2009; copper plate, aluminium plates, colour copies, tape, spray paint; 260.5 x 315.5 cm.

And yet, there is a scavenged poetry, too.  Wind (Michael) uses repetition to evoke a sense of loss.  Against a background of alternating copper and aluminum panels, the piece depicts Jackson in concert, leaping into the air in a dance routine.  The photos (more cheap photocopies) are attached to the first two of the three copper panels, establishing a visual rhythm that points to the blankness of the last panel.  Despite the heroic scale of the piece, the apparent permanence of the metal, and the brightly colored papers, the piece is cold and despairing.

The various compositions of the pieces are anarchic but not disorganized.  Materials, too, are severely contrasting but not completely unharmonious.   If the work is, as stated in the press release, “concerned with the depiction of this immaterial force of nature,” it seems that Genzken shows us a wind that can simultaneously elevate and sully.  In the end, the work feels less specifically about the adoration and dejection of Michael Jackson than about the society that produced him.

Jeff Koons, Couple (Dots) Landscape, 2009, Oil on canvas. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Jeff Koons, November 14-January 9th, Gagosian Gallery

“To live outside the law you must be honest,” sang Bob Dylan in 1966, in his brash classic Absolutely Sweet Marie. It’s a line Dylan presumably appropriated from Don Siegel’s dark 1958 noir, The Lineup, a fact Jonathan Lethem insightfully pointed out in his 2007 essay ‘The Ecstasy of Influence.‘  Siegel’s film used the more unwieldy “When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty.” No matter which way it’s said, the sentiment rings true. It’s honesty that distinguishes the unlovable, often spineless villain from the law-breaker who nihilistically disregards conventional morality and candidly embraces his renegade status.

For two decades, Jeff Koons’ has been a lovable villain precisely because of his lawless honesty—a certain purity of motive has run through his otherwise amoral oeuvre. His art ads, made in the 1980s—in one, a bathrobe clad Koons surrounded himself with nearly nude models whose perfect skin compliments the brightly colored foliage—were insouciantly crass, so self-contained as to be unaware of the institution they were teasing. Later, the bust of his porn-star/diplomat wife and himself also seemed completely sincere as a floozy: as sultry as a romance novel and as pristine as any classical Greek statuette might have been in its hey-day. Then there were those oversized stainless steel keepsakes, like the Hanging Heart valued at $20 million, and the overstimulating collage-like paintings with surfaces as slick as Vogue’s ad-space.

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Currently on view in the project space at Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles is a solo presentation of work by Montreal-based French artist, Turf One, entitled Shining Darkness. Often perversely proportioned, Turf One’s curious depictions of bowler hat and imperial mustache-donning men read like the lineup of a Coney Island sideshow act. His mixed media constructions of the seemingly dark side of kitsch reflect this aesthetic as well, with vintage-inspired depictions of a fortune telling monkey or a palmistry booth being presented inside the dark dimensions of ornate wooden frames. In possible homage to Francis Bacon, the grim-faced man in the piece entitled Meat holds a sow’s head out in front of his shirtless body, the folds of his stomach and tufts of his dark chest hair peeking out from behind it. Shining Darkness is the first offering of Turf One’s new work on the West Coast, and it brings a fresh approach to the canon of work being produced or shown in in Los Angeles by artists with roots in–and inspiration from–comics and street art.

Born Jean Labourdette, Turf One has had his work exhibited internationally, including this summer in the group show, Beach Blanket Bingo, at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York, and in the two-person exhibition, Life Size, at Yves Laroche Galerie d’Art in Montreal. He is currently putting the finishing touches on a film project he’s been working on for the past three years with his partner Lela.

Infinity, curated by Andrew Schoultz is a collection of 15 contemporary artists’ interpretations of a boundless theme. Scion Space in Los Angeles hosts the exhibit, which opened Saturday, October 10th, and will continue through November 7th, 2009. Prior to the opening, I chatted with some of the artists as well as the curator, who revealed how relative concepts are strategically woven into the pieces, whether through mathematics, metaphor, science, or technique.

Schoultz chose artists who frequently question life’s immeasurability, like Ryan Wallace. During the process of completing oil paintings such as Fulcrum, Wallace explained that he saves pieces of tape used to mask off sharp-edges. Wallace then uses the tape and other appropriate odds and ends in his studio to make pieces like Quest. Throughout his process, Wallace experiments with how variables involved in the chemistry of oils, alkyds, acrylics, mylar, paper, and tape affect the surface of his painting. He enjoys “letting each material have its own voice based on chemical properties.” Further, his imagery questions aspects of physics that might be in play. For example, Fulcrum features two intersecting walls; yet, one cannot determine which wall is acting as the support for the other. Therefore, the walls take on an endless “push-pull” scenario. Similarly, Quest features a central orb created by light tones in the center of the panel surrounded by darker vertical strips. The sphere-like shape hovers and can be seen as an ascending or descending point simultaneously.

Chris Natrop scrutinizes the concept of infinity on a more microscopic level in that he thinks of his cut out shapes as “molecular bombardments.” Infinity features one of Natrop’s first, stand-alone sculptures, different from the room-sized installation pieces he is used to creating. In all of Natrop’s work, he deals with shapes that he has captured from his memory–spindling, interweaving forms he spontaneously cuts with a knife and hangs with transparent string. Also new to his work is the inclusion of two-way, acrylic mirrors that he had fabricated specifically for the piece displayed at Scion.

Contemporary collage artist, Hilary Pecis, is represented in the show by two of her collages. One of her works were created specifically for Infinity, as well as some of her new video installations. Pecis’s collages stay true to her fundamental aesthetics. She continues to entrance viewers with meticulous depictions of angular patterns, whether they are the varying facets of cut gemstones or the repetitive planes of her trademark ink drawings. Pecis pointed out the underlying theme of “limitless combinations” in her work. For example, she sought out multiple sources to represent white in her new collage. In the past, she may have used a single source, like fabric from a wedding dress, to fill the white spaces. Now, however, she has substituted many different magazine images in addition to other white fabrics. As usual, Pecis depicts cosmic landscapes brimming with glimpses of society’s prized commodities. She reiterated that the landscapes are basically the same place, but the seasons are different. Seasons change in her work due to the fact that the countless magazines she uses change intervals from spring, summer, fall or winter. Pecis admitted that her reliance on print media will likely shift as digital media becomes more relevant. Her video installations feature segments of her multi-faceted ink drawings interspersed with translucent, floating, shapes, some of them different types of diamonds. In one of the videos, crows horde a pile of diamonds, CD’s, and other “bling”–metaphorically showing that the “continuum of desire is never fulfilled.”

In addition to curating the show, Schoultz contributed an intricate ink drawing that speaks to “the infinite unraveling of history.” The drawing, which is reminiscent of both Indian miniature painting and 14th century German map-making, is chock full of military symbolism. The upper half of the composition is dominated by a labyrinthine mixture of vertical flags, all emblazoned with the masonic eye, and a variety of unraveling ribbons, culminating into the shape of a horizontal 8–the undeniable symbol of infinity. The lower half of the composition shows a military horse carrying a turban-clad man with his eyes closed and hands raised as if in meditation. To Schoultz, it is important to portray the duality involved, so there are references to peace as well as war, just as the infinite must also contain the finite.

Other artists who participate in the show are Ryan Travis Christian, Richard Colman, N. Dash, Noah Davis, Chris Duncan, Andres Guerrero, Joseph Hart, Andy Diaz Hope, Xylor Jane, Butt Johnson, and Aaron Noble.

Karl Haendel

Play With Your Own Marbles is the title of a new exhibition currently on view at San Francisco’s NOMA Gallery. The exhibition, which is curated by Betty Nguyen, Creative Director of First Person Magazine, brings together three Los Angeles-based artists in an examination of artistic process and its relation to utility, both in object and image. The exhibition highlights the objects and cyanotypes of Walead Beshty, the meticulously rendered photorealist drawings of Karl Haendel, and the formal concrete “paintings” of Patrick Hill.

Play With Your Own Marbles is not only linked through the evident formal and aesthetic concerns of each artist, as the show is remarkably connected through its homogenized temperament, graphically monochromatic palette, and overall deconstructionist sensibility, but each artist also plays with a strong sense of irony through material, form and method of display.

Patrick Hill

Patrick Hill has applied thick bands of concrete, absorbed and stained into a black velvety surface revealing small crevices of color, opening a dialogue between a strictly modernist approach to painting and the everyday utilitarian material of concrete.

Walead Beshty’s FedEx Kraft Box………… sculpture, which contains custom shatter proof glass cubes placed inside standard Fed-ex boxes, displays the evidence of wear as an object travels from one location to another. These ready made materials are further “improved” by the imposing alteration of travel. In addition to the sculpture, Beshty also presents several photographic images of isolated objects produced by placing the otherwise utilitarian forms on photosensitive paper, rendering them useless of their original function. Images of crumpled paper and eyedroppers begin to resemble abstracted paintings, drawings and monoprints further removing the viewer from the object’s original state and placing it more in the realm of the artifact.

Karl Haendel’s photorealist graphite drawings subvert functional objects by manipulating scale, content and source imagery. Haendel’s imagery and method of presentation is generous in it ability to be easily recognized though careful rendering and specific depiction of everyday materials such as paper, razor blades, nails and paper clips. However, the work subtly unfolds and challenges the viewer through its coded symbols and methods of display. Haendel presents a delicately drawn image of ripped paper on a plywood platform supported by stacks of art magazines, which plays with the viewer’s physical perspective to drawing and the repetition of material (paper) through multiple forms. This work is presented along side images of blades mounted to wood gently resting against a wall and large scrolls of paper containing references of would be titles for the exhibition, all of which playfully discuss the relationship between concept and material.

The collections of work in Play With Your Own Marbles are subtly seductive, engaging the viewer first through a whisper and later through a tug of the ear. Each work takes the utilitarian object and subverts it to reveal new potentials that have the ability to exist on a sliding scale of completion, remaining in a state of flux both formally and conceptually.

Play With Your Own Marbles will be on view in San Francisco through October 3rd.

Emily Floyd, The Cultural Studies Reader (2001) Photo; Eva Fernandez

For the exhibition, Why do we do the things we do, nine artists turn the mirror on their creative process with honesty and biting self irony. This group exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Australia, curated by Jacqueline Doughty, tackles the often misunderstood process of making art, with many of the artists playing on the ambitions, anxieties and pressures that filter into their practice.

The romantic image of the artist as genius, or perhaps idiot savant, receives particular scrutiny. Doughty positions this selection of mostly text-based works in relation to the written artist’s manifestos that accompanied many 20th century movements, which she notes “are generally characterized by a boldness of language and a utopian conviction in their objectives and their methods”. While the text works in this exhibition are manifestos of a sort, they also lack any trace of the optimism, certitude and confidence of the heroic modernist artist.

Tom Polo’s Continuous One Liners are a collection of roughly painted phrases on ready made surfaces which quote offhand remarks: “sore winner”, “well done”, “I’m worst at what I do best”, “maybe try video art”. This stream of consciousness narrative parodies the insecurities of the emerging artist trying to make it big.

Rose Nolan’s monumental text work “Big Words – LESS IS HARDER” uses the visual language of 20th century propaganda to express the private uncertainties that would ordinarily be kept from public view.

Rose Nolan, Big Words – LESS IS HARDER (2009) Photo: Eva Fernandez

Emily Floyd’s The Cultural Studies Reader: 38 Topics for a Group Show parodies the theoretical impulse that can afflict artists in academic contexts – bunnies scrawl ambitious proclamations in wavering chalk script between building blocks, sporting key quotes: “My work is about the relationship between Malevich and electronica”, “I am making a post-colonial critique of history by restaging colonial paintings in alternate color schemes”, and “I am subverting the dominant paradigm”.

Despite its pathos, the playfulness of “Why do we do the things we do” keeps it from descending into melancholy, with each artist still striving to transmit an experience to the viewer. Doughty reflects, “It is the optimism of this gesture that encapsulates why we do the things we do”.