The Standard

As one of LA’s busiest art weeks of the year gears up, we had Bettina Korek, the city’s consummate culture plotter behind ForYourArt give us the who, what, when and where …

The Pacific Standard Time Public Art and Performance Festival alone features over 30 new works (including this one at The Standard, Hollywood), plus several re-inventions, and multiple art related happenings taking place across Los Angeles. And then you have a bevy of concurrent art fairs such as Art Los Angeles Contemporary, LA Art Show, and Affordable Art Fair, so this itinerary is a great cheat sheet to ensure you hit all the highlights this opening weekend.

Left: Judy Chicago Right: Ellsworth Kelly

Judy Chicago’s Disappearing Environments, a structure made of 25 tons of dry ice, will generate an incandescent fog at Santa Monica Airport’s Barker Hanger, shrouding the entrance to the Art Los Angeles Contemporary Art Fair. Inside, expect work displayed by both U.S. and international galleries ranging from “established blue-chip” to “top emerging.” The spectacular illumination of Chicago’s piece will commence at dusk when the fair opens to VIPs at 5PM, followed by the opening reception, which is public, at 7PM.

Across town, it’s opening night at Matthew Marks’ gallery from 6-8PM. On view will be “ Ellsworth Kelly: Los Angeles with a monumental sculpture by Kelly on the façade marking the spot of the landmark building designed by L.A.-based Peter Zellner.

Wind the night down in Hollywood at Liz Glynn’s Black Box, “where anything can and will happen, unannounced.” Fresh off her Engagement Party series at MOCA, which explored the theme of resurrection, Glynn is one to watch. Black Box will be the nightly place to check in throughout the festival from 8PM-2AM.

Left: Hirokazu Kosaka Right: Daniel Arsham

Artist Hirokazu Kosaka, known for his large-scale performative works, will transform the Getty Museum into an environmental installation called Kalpa, through which he investigates the passage of time. The legendary experimental Los Angeles Free Music Society, founded on L.A.’s Eastside in the early 1970s, will follow Kosaka with LAFMS Shoe, a series of duets that seamlessly transition from musician to musician. Be sure to RSVP in advance!

Stop by Kayne Griffin Corcoran gallery (6-9PM) in Santa Monica to check out the Ken Price and Larry Bell exhibition that traces the extremely different paths these two artists took in making art despite the fact that they both began their careers at L.A.’s Ferus Gallery in the early 1960s. 
 Back in West Hollywood, N.Y.-based Daniel Arsham opens his first solo show in Los Angeles, Daniel Arsham: The Fall, The Ball, and The Wall, at OHWOW Gallery from 6-9PM, presenting three bodies of work — each in different media — that manipulate architecture (think walls that look like they’re melting) and play with the notions of illusion and perception.

Left:John White Right: Judy Chicago

Start your weekend with a small road trip and head to Pomona for a triple-header, starting with a re-creation of John White’s engaging 1971 work, Preparation F, at 5PM at the Memorial Gymnasium, where the Pomona College football team will enter wearing normal street clothes and carrying their uniforms. Over the course of the work, they will proceed to undress, put on their uniforms, and scrimmage inside the space.

Continue to the college’s Merritt Football Field at 6PM for another dose of Judy Chicago with her new polytechnic performance, A Butterfly for Pomona, which uses flares and commercial fireworks to “soften and feminize” the environment. James Turrell will provide the grand finale (around 6.45PM at nearby Bridges Auditorium) with a visual spectacle using highway flares. Audience participation will be encouraged!

On your drive East, why not make a pit stop at Din Tai Fung for their famous soup dumplings? After the performances, grab a beer at the Black Abbey in Claremont, where 28 craft beers are served on tap and over 100 by the bottle.

If you can’t make the trek, check out For The Kids, opening at Country Club Projects from 6-9PM. This selection of “fantasy sports” lithographs from the archives of John and Tock Costacos was a hit at Salon 94 in New York and will incorporate many West Coast works shown for the first time alongside pieces from Jeff Koons’ first solo exhibition in 1985, Equilibrium.

Left: Lita Albuquerque Right: Richard Jackson

After brunchtime, head to the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook to check out a gorgeous view of the city and artist Lita Albuquerque’s Spine of the Earth 2012 (12-2PM). The Overlook offers a bird’s eye view of the large-scale performance below, which is a dramatic re-interpretation of her original Mojave Desert earthwork, Spine of the Earth, from 1980. This performance celebrates L.A. and the ephemeral, a concept central to many of the works in the Festival. (Parking at the Overlook is $6, but the event is free.)

At 4PM, Richard Jackson will mount a performance in which he crashes a remote-controlled model airplane filled with paint into a 20-foot wall reading “Accidents in Abstract Painting” at Arroyo Seco near the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. (The performance will last roughly 30 minutes.)


As the weekend comes to a close, you can spend a late afternoon at LACMA with the first retrospective of Ellsworth Kelly’s prolific print practice since the late 1980s. It opens today and features more than 100 works on paper in addition to a selection of paintings from local collections. Both Ray’s and Stark Bar at the museum will be open late on Sunday for all your dinner and libation needs.