Saturday gallery marathon

We made a day out of going into LA on Saturday. Starting with visits to Culver City (including an unsuccessful Nova Color stop - they were closed), afternoon at Bergamot Station, dinner at the grove with old friends and rounded out the evening with our trusty ACME opening crew.

Sorry, I forgot about the whole taking pictures thing in Culver City, but there will be plenty from tomorrow's shows there. I highly recommend the current show at Kinkead Contemporary. They have a great little space and the paintings of Jered Sprecher, though elementary on first glance, have a very powerful visual vocabulary that I really enjoyed.

Onto Santa Monica - The much anticipated Allison Schulnik show, "home for hobo" is now up at Mark Moore Gallery. While Schulnik's extravagant use of meaty paint is intoxicating to the painter in me, the work is on the grunge side. This decided aesthetic seems a little over used to me. Her recent success in the past few years, brought on by her depictions of the clown/hobos have been valuable because of the complex irony of the subject matter, paired with her confident application of much paint. A clown, intended for the purpose of laughter and happiness is a character often riddled by other darker associations in connection to the circus, or the dual life someone like that might lead. The dark depiction of other characters of the night are strangely paired in this show. Dismal pieces were offset by a bright, large-scale landscape on the far wall and a few floral still life peices, in the same meaty/painterly fashion. Im a fan of the raccoons here (to the right)... See the amassed paint from this angle. Where her work really shines is in her novel use of motion stop claymation, like the kind I grew up on but translated to the adult art world. It perfectly marries sculpture, performance art, painting and music in one. If you haven't seen the Grizzly Bear Video, you should check it out. The first time I saw it I couldn't take my eyes off of it.
Also at Bergamot, showing at Rosamund Felsen Gallery , were some collage pieces of C.K. Wilde. For those of you who dont know me, I am a map artist. I love all things map, so I was instantly drawn to these pieces.
The use of various maps to create an iconic landscape was nicely done. I can image all of the culling it took to amass all the maps needed for especially the large pieces. What I am unsure of is the repeated mustang form in each piece. I think the smaller works capture the language and the beauty of the maps more successfully. The coastline of the map (below) offers a more interesting mountain range/horizon line and creates a dialogue relating the sea as the sky.
After seeing all that and more at Bergamot we ventured to Beverly Hills to visit some friends. On the way to dinner, at the Grove, in the middle of the busy city, from the elevated view of a parking garage, I was awarded by the most beautiful sunset. Regard, LA:

More to come about the show at ACME.