Unfortunately due to low energy and lack of time, I could only attend the LA Art Show for a few hours to grab this interview and have a quick look around on one of the days that this was here.

INTERVIEW:
My radio interview with Kim Martingdale (click here for his bio) and others is now up:

click here to listen

REVIEW:
My first stop was the live “graffiti” art in the entranceway. Three artists were simultaneously working on three large murals brought to the LA Art Show by the LA Art Machine Gallery curated by Bryson Strauss. World reknown artists El Mac and Retna collaborated on a monochromatic portrait of a Latina done in aerosol with text. Mear One was working on a deconstructed cityscape with LA’s Watts Towers in the background and a figure of a boy in the foreground with butterflies flying from his chest. Coffee was painting a cubist monochromatic piece.

Next I visited what was probably my favorite exhibit at the LA Art Show, a show called “Signs” (click here to read press release). Sundaram Tagore Gallery curated a grouping of Islamic artists. The paintings were heavily text-based because depictions of the figure are prohibited in that culture. What you have then is text used as a textural element in most of the pieces, text abstracted to symbols. Text sources could be anything from poetry to holy books. The alphabet and its forms was also emphasized.

I then stopped off at the Uruguay exhibit. This year’s LA Art show debuted their guest country program featuring Uruguay. Uruguay is the second smallest country in South America, but it boasts a healthy democratic government, high economic development with a high GDP per capita and the 47th highest quality of life in the world. It sits nestled between Brazil and Argentina and its art scene is world class. They did not have anyone English speaking at the booth so I was not able to interview them, but the artwork shown consisted of contemporary painting and installation work, with a video exhibit as well.

Sister Cities had an collection of artists work from sister cities of Los Angeles. Pete Sterns of London had a very calming color field piece which he rendered as both a richly pigmented painting and as a computer animation. Nori, an artist from Japan, had two paintings representative of “every city.” His work is heavily influenced by jazz.

The Luce Foundation, a photography incubator, curated the Group LA exhibit. The main video element was a series of slideshows from different artist of their neighborhoods.

Finally, I found myself at the cluster of Korean art galleries. My favorite Korean artist is Yong Deok Lee who is known for his concave sculptures. The images are carved into a flat plane.

(YouTube turned up a few examples which gives an idea of the visual illusion created of 3-dimensionality when the viewer walks around his pieces:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SaG271TqqE)

I was happy to see a new piece, an aerial view of a swimmer underwater.

PHOTOS:
I didn’t have much time to appreciate the artwork this year, but this is a small sampling:

[View with PicLens]