KrossD Awards (2016 Can Fuck Off Already edition)

"Images of Police Brutality #4" by Steven Thomas Higgins

This is gonna be short and sweet. I didn't even want to do it all. Just 10 days into this year, I woke up to the news that David Bowie had died. I was completely unprepared for the degree to which that would hurt me. The shit snowball just gained velocity after that. Merle, Prince, Leonard. Then, in November, because of an arcane electoral system (that was put in place to exploit slaves), my country elected a megalomaniac racist, peeping tom, pussy grabber to the most powerful position on the planet. But even that wasn't enough for 2016. No, it had to take Carrie Fisher and her Mom away too. Fuck you 2016!

I'm forced to write this one because the best art of 2016 was so damn great, and I worry that you didn't notice. I've been kind of selfishly busy with my own career and haven't been writing about others as much as usual. I'm sorry. I owe you this much.

ARTIST OF THE YEAR: Steven Thomas Higgins

The one single shining, glorious bright spot of this horrible year, has been watching Steven Thomas Higgins work. He hasn't been loud about it. His name doesn't turn up in every group show around town. He's just been quietly, diligently, slaving away in his studio, exploring color, tonal duality, textures, and themes.He has dedicated himself to his craft, and doesn't seem to care if you're paying attention. I am. I know a few gallerists who might read this. I'm writing this for you. You need to be watching this guy. You need to be showing this guy. We need his art. Pay attention!

"In Groups" by Steven Thomas Higgins

"Lines in Blue and Red" by Steven Thomas Higgins

BEST SOLO SHOW OF THE YEAR: Public Secrets - Abel Alejandre at Coagula Curatorial

You've heard me fawn about Abel before. He has a way with line that just wrecks me. "Public Secrets" was a show that delved into myth, conspiracy theory, and family that may have been the most honest exhibit of the year.

"Ebola" by Abel Alejandre

BEST GROUP SHOW OF THE YEAR: "Sticks and Stones" curated by Douglas Alvarez at Cactus Gallery.

The theme seemed simple enough, create something that reflects childhood lessons/experiences. Who knew that that this would take every artist in the show out of their comfort zone (and signature styles) to create deeply personal, and touching work? Who knew that Alex Schaefer and Jennifer Korsen had shared memories of prismatic fascination? I spent a good chunk of the opening sitting on a forklift and being fittingly delinquent with good friends before we had to chase zombies (long story). Also, this show had my single, favorite work of art of the year in it, by Snow Mack.

"Jackson Browne Goes Downtown in his Jacks on Brown gown" by Snow Mack

NINTH WONDER OF THE ART WORLD: Leigh Salgado's laugh.

If you've never felt the healing powers of this woman's laugh, I feel sorry for you. It makes everything okay.

MOST TEARS SHED: Tfail (aka Tina St. Claire).

Although we had many mutual friends, and rubbed artwork elbows a few times, I never got to meet Tina. But her art always grabbed me by the throat, and made Los Angeles an insanely beautiful place to live. For all the heroes that fell this year, I cried the most about losing Tina. Please remember her!

Tfail

...and while I'm at it...


WORST ARTIST OF THE YEAR: Milo Moire

Yep. Her again. This year Milo actually invited strangers to grope her through a mirrored box. For fucks sake! You can talk to me until you're blue in the face about how this was a profound statement regarding consent. I'll quietly listen as you tell me that the mirrors reflect our inner perversions. I might even nod as you talk. But after you finish explaining art to me, I'm gonna walk far, far away from you and hope to never see you again.

Fuck off, 2016!

Alex Schaefer Feels Even Weirder (Part Two)

My initial conversation with Alex Schaefer got cut short by a heinous act of art terrorism. While the saga of "the last burning bank painting" rages on, I thought I would try to ease Alex's mind, and just talk about other things. How do you think that went?

So, how are you holding up, Alex?

Whatever, you know?! I'm just having fun with it, and when you get to a certain point, where you don't give a fuck...

Alright, let's not rehash all that right now. You told me you used to work on video games. What kind of work did you do?

Well, it was pretty early on in the video game thing, so it was still Sega Genesis, and Super NES stuff that I was doing in the beginning, for five years, and about four years for Disney. I contributed, basically, to every project that Disney worked on from "Little Mermaid" to "Pocahontas" and "The Lion King", all those movies. I also worked on a team that created a completely original Donald Duck game. After that I worked for Insomniac Games, on the team that came out with "Spyro the Dragon". Then, from about 2002 to probably 2008, I was just doing a lot of random stuff. NOT engaging in the art world. But I think a big influence on me was meeting John Kilduff and starting to hang out with him, to be on his show. He had such a different perspective on the art world. You know, he's always made a living as a painter, and he's got a house, and a mortgage.The guy has just never had another job his entire life.He's constantly sold paintings. He's got an eBay account from a month after eBay opened, you know? He had a YouTube account, that was so old...he had all these grandfathered in powers that they took away from people. So, he's always taken advantage of technology. He's got a whole painting booth set-up, with walls and counter weights, and he goes to every single plein air painting thing, up and down the coast, from San Diego to Laguna to Malibu to San Francisco, and sells his work. He does art fairs, all the time. The plein air is a little easier to sell then if you're just doing crazy, fine-arty stuff. It's easier to sell, just generally, to people. They understand it. To a lot of people, painting means representation. But the other thing that's hard to sell, and John's a great plein air painter...I'm good at it too. I've got a good color sense. People complement my colors and light. You know, I kind of get that really well. But the sloppy stuff, the painterly stuff, is always a harder sell. People think it's easy. It's just a different kind of hard. It's not Robert Williams butt-clenching, wrist-straining doodling, which has it's own pain in the ass suck factor.

People don't realize how easily that can go wrong. I find it really difficult to paint super loose.

Yeah...and you put it on, because you like that. You know, I read Matisse saying that it's always been the illusion of spontaneity. You just sort of play it, but it's happening. That's like when John gets on the treadmill, or he's painting on his bike, or whatever. It's a way of putting on that out of control-ness. I can see why certain artists get fucked up and paint, like de Kooning. I mean, I understand that. To me, it's like jazz. Painting is like jazz, and I'm into it like that. It's not like installation art.

I was going to ask you about music. You seem like a classical music guy.

Here's the truth about me and music, I grew up in a home where my parents just didn't listen to music. They had maybe five LPs. Half of them were Christmas carols, and maybe they had 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' and the best of Bread, a Neil Diamond album, and then they had a few eight tracks in the car. They might pop in Dionne Warwick, or Air Supply. My parents had cheesy taste in music, and they never listened to it. So, I didn't grow up with that habit. I kind of missed out. I'm glad that I have friends that are totally into music and music history. I have them come over and just type shit into Spotify. You should just type a list for me someday of rad bands. Because, you know, I had not a lot of exposure to music.

So, when you work in here, you just work in silence?

I do, often. Yeah. But I'm trying to learn to use the music, for the energy it creates, rather than just, I don't know, drink.

I assume you went to art school.

I did, yeah. I went to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena from '89 to '92. Art Center is an interesting place, because there's always a flow of teachers coming and going. There are only a handful of teachers, at least in the illustration department, that are just, around, you know? Then there's a lot of teachers that just come and go. I've taught there for about ten years, so I've been around for a while. But I've never been someone whose been engaged in the school life...I'm going off on a tangent. But I had some good teachers. There was some good timing that happened between me and some teachers that I came across. I was kind of late coming into the art game.I think I'm late just figuring out everything. I hope I live a long time. My grandma's 98, so...maybe I'll figure it out one day. But I came into the very notion that you could be an artist late. I had no idea what I was going to do when I was 17, and I graduated high school early...and I was clueless to life. I mean, I liked math and I thought I could go into science. But I was never really super into anything. I was good at a lot of things. I could sing well. I could harmonize. I could pick up music super easy. I could write well. But none of these things really caught fire for me. I had some kids I was in high school with, that were into movies, and then I kind of got into movie make-up, special effects, for a little bit. I volunteered to work as a P.A. on a couple student films, and that was just a nightmare. I was not cut out for that industry. I was just a mouse. I was a pipsqueak...and I didn't have any stories to tell. So, I started doing a comic strip. I saw in the newspaper that there were political cartoons and stuff, and they said to come on down to the journalism department, and we'll give you some pencils, and you can fucking draw a cartoon or something...and I GOT that somehow. I would get an article. I would read it. I would draw something. It was like, oh wow, illustration. That's what this is. Then I started taking classes and tried to put together a portfolio, and applied to Art Center and a bunch of other schools and got rejected completely. I just sucked. It was terrible. But I stuck with it for another year and a half., and I worked down in San Diego. Then I went to Mira Costa College and I took drawing classes. So, the second time I applied to Art Center, I got in. Then I was just into painting. I just loved it, and it came to me pretty naturally. The way that I understood music, color and light was easy to figure out...and that's what I teach now.

 So, you're still teaching there?

I do, yeah. Although I'm starting to put together some private classes. Like a six to eight student class at a place in the brewery that has the room. I want to start doing more of that. I feel guilty that Art Center costs as much as it costs. It's not just Art Center. I was talking to someone else last night at Blackstone about hoe their son is getting into debt, to the tune of  $48,000.00 a year, going to some college, getting a degree in something. I mean, my God, you're going to end up $150,000.00 in  debt, six percent interest rate?! That's a crime against the future! Fuck these vampires, man! The government should just come in and make it zero percent interest on these loans, and force the colleges to, across the board lower their tuition and force the loan amounts down and cram all that shit down to a reasonable level. Because it doesn't lend to a spirit of innovation and creativity that we need for a vibrant idea-based economy, if some kid graduates in all this student loan debt, and they just want any kind of job to start making money. It's...whatever. It's all part of the suck. 

Note: There will be a part three of this interview. However, I make no promises as to when that will happen. In the meantime, you can usually find Alex at either Blackstone Gallery or The Hive.

Studio Visit: Leigh Salgado vs.the Jet Set

Airports are obviously not the ideal setting in which to place fine art. Sure they are awash with eyeballs, but the eyes are attached to frenzied and/or exhausted psyches with singular focus: being somewhere else. This hasn't stopped nearly every transportation hub in the country from attempting to inject a little culture into the experience. Many years ago David Cross did a great bit, about a 9 panel series of paintings at the the Seattle airport, which fairly summed up the sadder aspects of this peculiar trend. This summer however, people traveling through LAX will have a chance to see a caliber of art not generally found in such places; the sublime, intricate work of Leigh Salgado.

It's easy to go overboard with superlatives when writing about Leigh's art. "Sensual", "opulent", "delicate", and "flowery" are commonplace in articles about Leigh. But while those terms may hit on the feminine grace inherent in Salgado's paper transformations, they do little to convey their power. Lace, petals, and Victorian lingerie aside, these are robust, potent works of art. They have been carved out, painted and burned by a strong, commanding hand. The mystique here may be equal parts Betty Friedan and Marilyn Monroe, but it never panders. I've heard tales of people being uncomfortable, and even aroused by Leigh's art. The extent to which the work is erotically charged has, as always, much more to do with the viewer than the artist. Would the art incite your libidinous id less if it had been made by Tom Wesselmann, or Lari Pittman? If there really is any abstraction here, it's in the way the work is absorbed by it's audience. Leigh's art demands consideration from a multitude of perspectives, ultimately drawing you in so close that you're breathing on the work. So, maybe it's that intimacy, that seduction, which unsettles people.

I first interviewed Leigh a couple years ago, and I was really nervous about it. Her art had seized my attention rather forcefully. I had struggled to discern a clear historical lineage or influence in her work, and to this day I've yet to see anyone, working within the same themes, approach them quite like Leigh. Once I heard her laugh though, I was instantly put at ease. Leigh Salgado has one of the best laughs I've ever heard in my life. It's a warm, wholehearted, and endearing sound. I was happy to hear it again last week when I visited her studio to see what she was making for the Tom Bradley Terminal at LAX. The work, which will go up mid-May and displayed through August is, appropriately, a series of interpretations of some Los Angeles points of interest. Some well known, others lesser so. Leigh walked me through it:

I chose different areas of L.A. county, to do kind of a fashion statement. Places tourists might want to visit. A couple of the places are popular destinations, but a couple of them aren't. But they're all named after a street. For instance, "Rodeo Drive". I don't go there very often, but I really like the window installations. It is kind of a fun place to take a walk, and also check out ACE Gallery and Gagosian. Then there's "Pacific Boulevard", which is really close to here, and there's a lot of Quinceanera shops. I just love those dresses. I always loved ball gowns. I don't buy them or wear them but I enjoy looking at them. "PCH" features elements of the Santa Monica Pier, like the Ferris wheel. I have a lot of nostalgic feelings towards Pacific Coast Highway. I rarely go to the beach anymore, but when I first moved to L.A., I went all the time. I used to be a big beach girl. The next one is "Pioneer Boulevard", where Little India is. That's a really fun place to visit. There are a lot of fabric stores and such. The first one I did for this series, and probably the most literal is "Fairfax Boulevard", where Little Ethiopia is. Which has restaurants, bakeries and thrift shops. The fashion aspects has to do with the thrift shops, but the green, white, and red pattern is influenced by the Ethiopian flag. Then there will be some smaller ones, which are kind of like accessories; gloves, hats, and sunglasses.

Now, I realize that my writing about this may be frustrating for those of you who won't be able to see the project. It's a post 9/11 world, and you can't just go to the airport on a whim, roam around and people-watch. But there's a certain poetic irony to this gorgeous work being encased in glass and staged within a highly stressed, otherwise ugly environment where people have to stumble upon it. The other reason I wanted to write about this is that I don't think Leigh Salgado gets shown enough. There are artists in L.A. that seem to be included in every damn group show that comes down the pike. Oh, there's the bunny guy again. Oh, look, it's the other bunny guy...again. Leigh isn't over-saturated. But now, with this project, Leigh's work will potentially have an audience, all over the globe, with thousands of people everyday. I can think of few artists who deserve that more.



LA World Airports, Exhibitions & Installations/City Of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs/Tom Bradley International Terminal, May-Aug, 2014

5/21/2014 Author's note: This project has been pushed to July or August, due to construction at LAX.

Pacific Boulevard

PCH

Pioneer Boulevard

Fairfax Boulevard

5 Questions with OM BLEICHER

Om Bleicher hails from Australia. He came out to California to visit family about nine years ago, and was taken with what he calls 'the wild west art scene' in Los Angeles. This led him to open bG Gallery in Santa Monica. Om is an interesting cat to say the least. He's a soft spoken gent, but in the short time I've known him, I've overheard him debating the relative merits of self-importance, and seen him strike up a spur of the moment chat about quantum physics.

Om has just opened a second gallery at Bergamot Station. The first show at the new space, Spectrum Gestalt (co-curated with Daniel Rolnik), is a sprawling group show hung salon style and grouped by color. Hanging the work this way ends up having a unifying effect on the art. Nothing is clashing, or at odds with one another. It's fascinating, and strangely soothing.

The second of his 'Spectacle' shows Art of the Spectacular opens this Saturday. I caught up with Om yesterday to throw 5 Questions at him.

1) It’s hard enough to run one gallery successfully. What possessed you to open a second?

Well, I just saw the space and it seemed pretty cool. I don’t know, I just have ideas and I want to make them happen.

2) Is Spectrum Gestalt an exercise in color theory? What prompted the idea?

I’m an artist as well as a gallerist. I have a few installations that use gestalt ideas. It’s a way to bring all the artists that I’ve worked with in the past together and introduce them to a new audience.

3) What kind art are you looking to show here?

I’m not afraid to show art that crosses genres. For instance, I’m not going to NOT show an artwork from the illustration world next a conceptual artwork. I’m looking for art that taps into the human condition, across fields.

4) What do you consider the most nauseating trend in art?

Hmmm, Damien Hirst dots? I think I’m sick of seeing, just people not taking risks, and gallerists second guessing their audience. Trends just come and go, you know?

5) Has a work of art ever made you cry?

Brought tears to my eyes? Yeah. There’s a piece by Courtney Reid, whose one of my artists, about three years ago. It’s called “Bald People” or something like that. Just the way that she paints---like, there’s no eyes in her paintings. So, it allows you to connect with it on a visceral level.

"Art Of The Spectacular" opens March 25 

bG Gallery at Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Avenue
Space G8A
Santa Monica, CA 90404

Stunning cross-stitch by Ellen Schinderman

Stu Rappeport stacked.

"A Freedom To Be Free" by Daniel Rolnik

"Untitled" by Mary Delioussina

"Blank" by Douglas Alvarez

"Scooter" by Hadia Finley

"Bob Floated To Tiffany's" by Nancy Larrew