by Anne Gabriel
LA art week has concluded and here are our impressions:
- Less money and more pop ups. Last year’s art week saw magazines, producers and publishing houses spring for elaborate parties in order to gin up attention for whatever it is they do. It looks like this didn’t work because there was close to none of it this year. Instead, there was an explosion of low-budget, artist-run pop up events and exhibitions of which Barry McGee and company’s 99 Cents Only show was the most mobbed example. When money leaves, artists take over and artists don’t let artists charge money to hang out with other artists. Whether anyone else (like, say, art collectors) came out is dubious, however.
- Literally too many art fairs to count. Along with familiar mononyms like Frieze and Felix and Post there were new ones like Butter, Enzo, Other and Anti. There were so many that I actually, for the first time in my life, felt sorry for collectors. If I was one, I would be so overwhelmed that I most likely would just pick one fair and go deep rather than broad. But then, if I was a collector then I would do everything differently than I’ve ever seen a collector do. Nobody really knows why collectors do anything and art week proves and re-proves that every year
- A disgusting number of openings in every sense. Only a masochist would try to see them all and only a liar would claim they had. Every space in the city seemed to have a special exhibition ready just in time for the only week that might matter. Someone sold something, I’m sure.
- Video art is alive with a vengeance. Art week included a generous curatorial installation by the Julia Stoschek Foundation, whose collection took over five stories of a vaudeville-style theater in downtown LA. We also note that Marciano Art Foundation hosted Bruce Conner’s reverberating films, and even cute-object-centric Post Fair had a small video work on display at the end of a long hallway.
Alas it’s over. The town will go back to its weekends of only 30 exhibition openings on a Saturday rather than having to choose from over 150 art-related happenings. Even if the market has receded, the hunger for art itself—whatever Angelenos think that is—has not. Just ask the people waiting in line around the block to get into a defunct 99 Cents store.
Image: Staff