A lot is in store on the arts scene this week, from esoteric world building to fantasy video collage, intentional futures, unreal reality, visualized sound-based sculptures, avant-garde feminist film festivals, an unconventional materials challenge, an arts party, comedy to benefit reproductive justice, photography to benefit sex workers’ rights, yoga in community, dance about war, and photography elevating daily commutes.
Thursday, August 11
- Steven Arnold: Theophanies. Venue: Fahey/Klein Gallery. Arnold’s labor uses themes of sexuality and spirituality, oftentimes with immense humor, all the while referring to traditional world religious philosophies and iconographies. Through his many films, photographs, drawings, and sculptures, he explores mystery and myth, beauty and andrygony, artifice and humor, morality and life, using complex B&W photographs that depict reimagined gods and goddesses, archetypes, and spirit guides.
- Jimmy Edgar: Oxygen. Venue: Vellum La. Continuing the artist’s forays into exploring the metaphysical as well as the literal phases of matter, and at the same time playing with digital domain immateriality, this exhibit has 13 novel works that explore portraying ideas as vaporized forms of physical creations, as well as ways in which they might materialize in reality. Using what he calls “digital condensation”, Jimmy makes the imagination solidify as literal objects; the creative mind’s inner workings are addressed, as are the way ideas convert organically from the abstract form to the tangible.
Friday, August 12
- Art Genesis: The Beginning of Legacy. This compiles original works by 11 artists from around the globe that have a commitment to advancing black culture. Emerging originators hail from countries including Congo, Canada, Jamaica, Ghana, the US and Nigeria. This installation has Mashonda Tifrere—curator at Art LeadHer—not just seeking to combine a broad range of artists but also to have them use various mediums to express needs, personal beliefs, and visions.
Saturday, August 13
- Les Femmes Underground International Film Festival. Venue: Aero Theater. Revolving around the unique, subversive, and innovative, this installation serves as a platforms for artists trying to redefine the ways women get represented in mainstream cinema, through the use of feminist inter-sectional music, art, and celluloid fantasies. Showcasing films from more than 30 countries and ranging in genre from experimental to documentary, horror, narrative, psychotropic and female sexuality, the programming delves into esoteric areas of witchcraft and feminism as a means of imparting independence, equality, and empowerment.
- Within Sound: The Acoustic Sculptures of Michael Brewster. Venue: Mt. Wilson Observatory. This is an immersive auditory encounter arranged by the late Michael Brewster, designer of sound waves inside architectural spaces that engages listeners inside auditory fields. His works, as much science as they are art, have been crafted expertly to fit the famous 100-inch Dome of the site. You can experience this art one of two ways: from a performance accompanied by a reception and a lecture, or a performance in tandem with observation through a 100-inch telescope.
- Jerry Peña: You Ain’t Gotta Lie to Kick It. Venue: Le Maximum. Peña comes up with artworks grounded in material and visual realities of life in LA. The assembled object — checkered Vans, crushed beer cans, a work glove, smashed car windshields, and broken hubcaps — invoke habits common to working class neighborhoods such as scavenging, making, fixing, and breaking. Peña himself hails in one such neighborhood, and that’s where he summoned the distinctive grit-and-beauty sources from.
- Venice Heritage Museum Film Festival. The Venice Heritage Museum team has compiled a collection of short films which celebrate LA’s artistic, cultural, and historic legacy in collaboration with UCLA Film & Television Archive, Venice Arts, Herman Paramount Pathe News, and Venice Institute of Contemporary Art. To be screened in collaboration with Why Not Coco? Productions are curated clips from VHM Oral History Project which feature Joan Huff and Harry Perry. The evening will celebrate Venice culture and history told in the short form film format; there will be local and food vendors, with proceeds going towards benefiting the museum’s projects.
- Getty 25 Community Arts Festival: Crenshaw. One thing that’s going to continue this year are Getty’s free community festivals across LA, and this summer they’re celebrating the 25th anniversary with one weekend in Crenshaw. It’s the perfect place to get immersed in art, culture, and history revolving around the city’s Black arts district. Here you’ll get to hear stories from elders, take part in hands-on workshops, and learn about a rapidly developing community of artisans, artists, performers, and educators. There will also be photo booths, food vendors, and giveaways to enjoy.
- Outside The Box 3 – Artworks with unusual mediums. Venue: bG Gallery. This is set to be a quirky and singular group exhibition displaying unexpected approaches to techniques and materials such as thread, glass, text, metal, candy, toys, sound, concrete, shadow, light, paper, wood, found objects, paint, and more. The curation was done by artist Joella March and features work done by Michelle Kingdom, Stephen Anderson, Carol Milne, Olga Skorokhod, Steven Roberts, Dan Levin, March herself, Cindy Chinn, Alexandra Dillon, Danny Kaplan, Gary Raymond, Carol Powell, Meghan Willis, YaYa Chou, Tm Gratkowski, and Suzanne Walsh.
