Jessica over at Insurgent Muse was kind enough to forward me her Top Ten list so here it is. Be sure to check out her blog as there is always some interesting art related topics to be found there.
1. Tracy + the Plastics
There is this new movement out there that I like to call “post-punk electro feminist performance art.” Examples include Le Tigre, Chicks on Speed and Peaches. Blurring the lines between visual art and music, these women carry on the tradition of sound and video artists like Laurie Anderson and Yoko Ono. Tracy + the Plastics is the most innovative and talented of this new generation of art-school musicians. Wynne Greenwood (Tracy) uses keyboards, bass loops and drum samples, along with powerful vocals and interactive video works, to deliver her own brand of lesbian feminist art theory.
2. Robert Smithson @ MOCA
Smithson was one of the first artists who really blew my mind as an undergraduate art history student. So having the opportunity to experience the full scope of Smithson’s work was such a thrill. Smithson had that perfect blend of intellect and humor, and a lot of the work left me speechless. It’s such a goddamn shame he died so young.
3. Gregor Schneider @ MOCA
I loved taking unsuspecting friends to see Gregor Schneider’s Dead House Ur at MOCA. The installation was both playful (reminiscent of the childhood experience of the haunted house) and emotionally and psychologically chilling. It seems as if Schneider has one-upped himself with his new public work, Die Familie Schneider, which opened in London's East End this year
4. The Getty scandal:
What good entertainment that unfolding drama provided for a couple of weeks. Let’s hope something good comes of it rather than watching the great Getty crumble like in the last days of Pompeii.
5. 2004 California Biennial @ The Orange County Museum of Art:
Ok, so this is kind of an easy one. Twenty-eight of California’s most talented emerging artists in one show, how could it not be great? But the real surprise is the Orange County Museum of Art itself; they are coming up with some of the freshest and most interesting shows in Southern California. Who knew something really great could come out of the OC (aside from the television show, of course).
6. The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960-82 @ The Hammer:
So I’ll admit that photography is not my favorite medium, a lot of it just doesn’t do it for me. But this show was so fabulous. Covering a 20 year period, it was the first major examination of work by artists who think of themselves as artists, rather than photographers, and it encompassed the diverse and unconventional use of the camera in movements such as Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Arte Povera, and Postmodernism.
7. Silverlake:
Living here almost makes me forget that I live in L.A…in a good way. I like to think of it as the Brooklyn of Los Angeles (for all of the good and bad that entails). It feels like a real neighborhood, something that is hard to come by in this sprawling city. But I fear that it will become more like the SoHo of Los Angeles, with all of my friends and me getting priced out as it becomes too hip. There was even rumor that Aaron Spelling was working on a new pilot entitled Silverlake, thank god that one got nixed. Next time you’re in the area check out local galleries JUNC and Ghettogloss.
8. Hammer Projects
The Hammer is the only thing that kept me sane during the few months I lived in Westwood, and it is still the best reason to venture West of La Brea. Their programming is phenomenal: special exhibitions, lectures, and the glorious Hammer projects featuring artists such as Pae White, Tara Donovan and Santiago Cucullu.
9. San Diego:
It’s my home away from home when I need to escape from Los Angeles. Without a doubt, the best thing about San Diego is the food. Must haves are the cheap and plentiful Vietnamese dishes at Dao Son and the vegetarian potato rolled tacos from El Zarape (someone please tell me if you know where I can find these in L.A.) There’s nothing better than strolling the streets of Hillcrest on a warm, sunny day or shaking it to the local djs at the Whistlestop.
10. Tim Hawkinson
This is a little premature, but I am already getting excited about Los Angeles-based artist Tim Hawkinson’s survey exhibition which opens at LACMA in June 2005. It is the first comprehensive survey of Hawkinson’s career and his first major museum exhibition on the West Coast. “The exhibition of nearly two decades’ worth of work includes an overview of Hawkinson's steady evolution of his obsessively detailed drawings, minute constructions, inflated latex casts, and uncanny mechanical contraptions. Varying in size from his visually and compelling miniature sculptures of birds and bird eggs, assembled entirely from his fingernail clippings, to his sprawling mechanical wind instruments constructed of inflatable plastic tubes and ducts, Hawkinson’s oeuvre is a meditation on the body in all its physical manifestations and on human consciousness in all its metaphysical aspects.”
If you haven't noticed already I tend to be partial to Photography when collecting. So I was happy to discover Zoe Strauss via Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof's Philly based Blog. I was also especially happy to receive four of her photograph's this week.
Photo LA is just around the corner and it is always quite an event with quite a crowd. Last Jan. I purchased a triptych by young German artist 
