LUGGAGE STORE - SEX AND CULTURE

IAN ROSS - POPULAR WORKSHOP

11.08.13 Part II



The benefits of offering artist workshops. Click Here.

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The Luggage Store Gallery: Flo Oy Wong - The Whole Pie. Curated by Pamela Wu Kochiyama, Darryl Smith and Laurie Lazer.

Comment by AB: In celebration of Flo Oy Wong's 75th birthday, artists from everywhere "bake up" a most entertaining array of art pies honoring her life and accomplishments. From what I can tell, the pie idea originated with a show at a midwest venue adjacent to a pie shop where Wong, thinking that printed rice sacks might be a little esoteric for the demographic, added some "art pies" to the mix. Also on view is one of her more notable past exhibits, The Baby Jack Rice Story, where she used fabric rice bags as her canvases. A new mixed media sculpture and select additional artworks round out the homage.

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Center for Sex and Culture: Safe Sex Bang - The Buzz Bense Collection.

Comment by AB: The Buzz Bense poster collection is all about having safe sex-- and the consequences you risk if you don't. But more importantly, they chart the history of HIV AIDs and various stages of the prejudice, ignorance, stereotypes and hate that went along with it. The earliest examples in this international collection date from the mid 1980s and range through the 2000s. Check it out.

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Ian Ross Gallery: Made in China.

Artists: D Young V, Akira Beard, Ian Ross, Zoltron, Shark Toof, Jessica Hess, C Kirk, Ernesto Yerena, Eddie Colla, Peter Adamyan, Nite Owl, Robert Bowen.

Comment by AB: The object of the game is for artists to make paintings, send images of those paintings off to China to be reproduced in one of their "art factories," and then for us to guess which is which. I had little trouble. The Chinese reproductions were generally the ones that sucked, with maybe an exception or two. When you don't have the original right next to the copy, identifying a copy as a copy can be more difficult, but there are certain giveaways in Chinese repro paintings that are remarkably consistent from piece to piece, most notable the near perfect straight line edges where the paint stops and the canvas starts (which I'll show you close up in one of the images). Worthy theme for a show.

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The Popular Workshop: PWND - Jonathan Zawada.

Comment by AB: A single sentence from the show statement pretty much sums it up... "Archival inkjet prints, sculpture, video, and interactive works draw upon the visual language of skinning, camouflage and obfuscation to connect the visceral humanist effects that ripple outward from the mixture of masculine teenage angst, puritanical rationalism and militaristic purpose that underpin many of our contemporary digital structures." What a bunch of whack-off. I think my brain just blew a gasket. Who comes up with this drivel? Inscrutable explanatory aside, good art and worth a visit.

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