Arts Preview: Sept. 9, 2010
This week in Southern California Arts:Stop by LAXART on Saturday, September 11, between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. and watch L.A.-based artist and filmmaker Charlie White conduct an all-day casting call to find a "California girl" between the ages of 13 and 16 to be photographed for a billboard. While the event sounds totally exploitive, White's work invariably plays with the tension between viewer complicity and disapproval, and his almost maniacal focus while working is fascinating. (I wrote about White previously here and here.)
The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena will open Convergences: New Sculptural Media on Saturday, September 11, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. presented by NewTown. The ambitious show features sculptural assemblages by 11 artists who use various components of media technology. "The exhibition will be a multi-station journey through a labyrinth of interactions, aesthetics and technologies, from garage pillaged elegance to experimental circuitry," promises NewTown; the participating artists include Nancy Buchanan, Heidi Kumao, Lisa Mann and Trixy Sweetvittles, among others.
Acclaimed South African artist William Kentridge is profiled in a new feature screening at the Hammer Museum on Tuesday, Sept. 14 at 7:00 p.m. William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible, produced by Art21, offers an introduction to one of the most creative artists working today.
In the documentary, Kentridge talks about his process for making his mesmerizing charcoal animations, in which he draws figures and landscapes, and then rubs, erases and redraws, creating an ever-moving portrait that transforms onscreen.
"I made a decision that I would never ever write a script, I would never write a storyboard, I would never ever write a proposal on the basis that even if I wrote them, the act of codifying like that somehow killed the project." - William Kentridge
Watch the full episode. See more ART:21.
Also screening at the Hammer next week (on Wednesday, September 15 at 8:00 p.m.) is the Flux Screening Series, a selection of terrific experimental short projects including Everynone's new piece, Words. Everynone is a production company composed of William Hoffman, Daniel Mercadante and Julius Metoyer III divided between New York and Los Angeles. Their short is a series of images linked by keywords in a kind of visual poem. It's part of a longer series that finds magic and poetry in quotidian moments. The show will also feature Miwa Matreyek, dubbed "brilliant" by Flux curator Jonathan Wells; she showcase a new live video performance project.
For more events this weekend and beyond, visit KCET's Event Calendar.