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reviews globetrotters
In his 1997 SPIN magazine article ‘Too Cool for School’, Dennis
Cooper pinpointed a Los Angeles art scene, not in the city’s New
York-fed galleries or local art celebrities, but in the young blood of
the UCLA graduate studios, making West Coast MFAs the new
focus of the artworld. Revisiting many of the artists and artworks
Cooper used to prove his point (like Evan Holloway and Jason
Meadows), Globetrotters – a group show of sculpture curated by
Sister gallery’s Katie Brennan – is a succinct reminder of what was
and still is interesting and different about LA artists and, moreover,
why they have endured since their late-1990s trendsetting.
Brennan’s survey of seven pre-midcareer LA-based artists
offers a kind of alpha-and-omega sampling of works, with each
artist represented by both early and more recent pieces. For
example, Amy Sarkisian’s modest 1999 sculpture Mauling Bear Claw
sits in proximity to her fussy 2008 Table and Chairs Sculpture: Fusion,
a prefab IKEA dining set customised with adhesive vinyl patterns.
The simple unfinished aluminium of Meadows’s Trailer (1999) stands
out against the worked stained wood of his Relativity Demonstration
(2006), a complex structure composed of swinging saloon doors
and modernist formal conventions. Three pieces by Katie Grinnan
reveal the artist’s maturing consistency over the past ten years, each
mixed-media construction building upon her use of physical versus
photographic space.
On view in Chinatown’s newest untitled project space
– an overhauled two-story theatre that feels vaguely like a crime
scene and will host other local galleries in the coming months
– Globetrotters comes across as a showcase of bizarre toys, torture
devices, curiosities and primitive machines. And for a serious
sculpture show, this is a welcome change of pace. The weird mood
is heightened by works like Pentti Monkkonen’s man-size Cockroach
Suit (2003), which is framed on the wall like a naturalist’s specimen,
or Evan Holloway’s notorious Smell Oven (1997), a plywood box
that cooks bacon and pipes the scent out of the gallery for people
on the street to enjoy. But perhaps the most delightful of these
globetrotters
odd sculptures is John Williams’s Record Projection Table (1998),
a wooden platform that balances on two speakers and displays a
sister, los angeles collection of 45 RPM records, each topped with a small assemblage
25 january – 23 february made from cast-off clutter like crystals, dish scrubbers, hair rollers,
plastic party favours, sequins, batteries, drinking straws and bows.
At the edge of this table, a slide projector is aimed at the cellophane
surface of one of the assemblages, which is affixed to a Beastie
Boys record spinning on a turntable below. Amplifying the record’s
crackles and scratches, this piece is one of several sound sculptures
that eerily resonate throughout the space.
Situated somewhere between High Modernism, process art,
the slacker attitudes of the 1990s and the slick studio techniques of
today, Globetrotters begins to define a school of sculpture that pits
functional objects against a cultivated dysfunctionality. A strong and
john Williams, Coat Rack, 1998, mixed
clearly defined show, Globtrotters is proof that the cultural fallout
media, 94 x 61 x 396 cm. Photo: joshua
White. Courtesy sister, los angeles from late-1990s LA only gets better with age. Catherine Taft
Artreview 136
REVIEWS_April Part 1.indd 136 3/3/08 13:40:32
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