by Anne Gabriel
It’s odd to walk away from an art exhibition that takes over almost an entire office building—where funding has been provided to a number of artists to essentially make whatever they want as long as it’s some interpretation of a “lamp”—and think, “Wow, I’m surprised artists can make such boring stuff.”
Welcome to the Lamp Show, the brainchild of AUTOBODY autobody, held in its current configuration at Wilshire Online, a new 13,000 square foot co-working-creative-habitat-office building set at Wilshire and Fairfax (a stones throw from The Academy Museum and LACMA). The Lamp Show, an exhibition of approximately 50 “lamps” or pieces “inspired by lamps,” brings together a collection of works by local Los Angeles artists and designers, and according to the AUTOBODY autobody website is intended to:
“work with the structure of transformation itself, turning the building’s liminal moment into an immersive investigation. It reflects that unfinished rhythm, revealing the architecture of absence: the late-stage capitalist cathedral, the ruin of the office, the residue of work.”
The residue they speak of is the large national lamp chain—Lamps Plus—or at least a version of Lamps Plus that is far less interesting than an actual Lamps Plus, but which is just as squarely centered on commercial viability—because the Lamp Show is less art show and more product showcase.
In the Lamp Show, AUTOBODY autobody has succeeded in bringing together artists not much interested in light design and not ambitious enough to take a truly avant garde interpretation of “lamp” together with designers not much interested in expanding what a lamp could be. What was achieved is an expensive and navel-gazing iteration of a high-end retail fixture store.
The obvious question is why would AUTOBODY autobody spend so much time and money on a show that is essentially a survey of basic lamp shapes and ideas? The animating sentiment seems less the idea of experimenting with form than with the supposed value of the idea that “an artist made them.” Here’s the thing though, artists, even good ones, make a lot of really boring stuff. AUTOBODY autobody seems to have found a lot of it and filled an entire office building with them.
The rectangular standing floor lamp made of ash and walnut with Japanese/Shaker vibes by artist Snyder DePass priced at over $1500 has been done over and over again in various iterations for centuries.
The Lamp Show offers several lamps made from burlap by Lorenzo Lorenzetti priced at over $3000 each that could live quite nicely with, yet aren’t more interesting than, say, Lamps Plus Aveline Natural Jute Pendant Lamp Shade 32x32x5.5 (Spider) ($102) or bali & pari’s Jeneth Natural Rattan Pendant Lampshade – Ceiling Light Cover ($122).
Rectangular mult-colored lights by Casa Ysasi, priced at over $1500 each, look like the rectangular Maxim Sky Panel 48″ Wide White 4000K LED Ceiling Light ($238), placed on a wall instead of the ceiling and whose glass has been painted.
There are a few standout pieces including Ian Cato’s Draco+ (2025), a sweet and weird handmade ceramic dragon/monster lamp, and Ginger Quintanilla’s Echo Chamber (2025), a large room-sized neon chandelier made of rainbow colored rectangular words/squiggles, but again it’s hard not to like something that brings color and size to an otherwise empty office space filled with glowing beige.
The reality is the failing of this show is not so much a failing of the invited artists or designers or even the office space of which they occupy but the result of a curator who believes their own vision is strong enough that they can give artists assignments without regard to their individual interests or strengths.
Image: Courtesy AUTOBODY autobody