WeHo Standard Time:
ARTES y ARTISTAS By Shana Nys Dambrot
From a traveling public sculpture to landmark surveys of queer Latinx artists, this fall, the city of West Hollywood’s WeHo Artes engages the Getty’s sprawling Pacific Standard Time: Latin America | Los Angeles initiative, staging eclectic and important visual arts in venues within and beyond WeHo city limits. The history of art in Los Angeles is deeply intertwined with Latino culture—not only the richness of the region’s Mexican and Chicano heritage but the dynamic global diaspora from Europe and North, Central and South America. A follow-up edition to its citywide initiative of a decade ago highlighting the accomplishments of regional artists from 1945 to 1980, The Getty Foundation’s new PST:LA|LA undertakes a deliberate, focused approach to scholarship of the Latino presence and influence in all its myriad forms and mediums. With literally hundreds of galleries and institutions offering thematic programs from September 2017 and into 2018, PST is covering every township and surrounding county that could possibly be considered part of Greater Los Angeles, and communities are encouraged to see themselves reflected in the programs they host. To that end, the robust WeHo Arts organization created WeHo Artes, a slate encompassing both official PST exhibitions as well as additional original projects distributed between the Public Library, the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives Gallery, MOCA at the Pacific Design Center, LAXART, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Great Hall/Long Hall in Plummer Park and Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) in West Hollywood Park. The scores of artists represented practice video, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, installation and more; their work speaks to art and cultural historicism and the avant-garde, the intersection of LGBTQ and ethnic experiences and identities, public culture, politics, immigration, class, race, gender, the environment and even the origin story of the Disney empire. Already on view at the Public Library is a collaborative exhibition featuring works by Ramiro Gomez and David Feldman, occupying several spaces throughout the building. The centerpiece is a monumental and majestic new acrylic and cardboard on canvas painting by Gomez called West Hollywood Park, which Gomez created for the site. Gomez’s work is known for merging aesthetic references of SoCal modernism with political commentary about the social invisibility of L.A.’s majority-Latino working class. Well, for a work about invisibility, you can’t miss it. At 84-by-156 inches, it occupies a rather operatic perch in the wide sunny stairwell, combining his trademark cardboard-cutout technique with his skills as a painter to depict a scene in which the Latino caretakers are seen, and not seen, attending their wards in the neighboring park. A common sight, never seen. More intimate works by Gomez are installed along with a series of photographs by his life and art partner, David Feldman, documenting witty placements of Gomez’s lifesize cut-out figures throughout the city. The exhibition is on view through March 15, 2018; with a November 15, 2017, screening of Los Olvidados, a short film the pair made with David Hockney, a major influence and frequent muse for Gomez as well as a close friend. Meanwhile just outside the library, in the very park Gomez was inspired to paint, anyone can experience the moveable sculptural feast titled Sense of Place by Guadalajara-based artist Jose Dávila. Organized by the nonprofit public art foundation LAND, this abstract modular sculpture is reconfigurable and mobile. It’s in the park now, but there are plans for a tour of multiple sites around L.A.’s urban landscape—the better to highlight and contrast varieties of the Angeleno experience. The angular square structure will be on view until November, when its first decampment begins. It will move and reorganize its shape again in January 2018 and then again in March before returning to WeHo in April and May. Functional and inventive, this is Dávila’s largest public undertaking to date and his first major exhibition in Los Angeles. One of the most anticipated events of the PST: LA|LA moment is Queer Califas, a curatorial project by Queer Biennial founder Ruben Esparza, opening in early November at Long Hall. A group exhibition featuring a diverse selection of interdisciplinary and multigenerational LGBTQ Latinx artists, Queer Califas includes paintings, drawings, photography, experimental media, soft sculpture and performance—all from the queer Latinx perspective. Queer Califas will open at Great Hall/Long Hall in Plummer Park with a reception on November 4 and continue through December 9. Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. is organized by the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives and will expand to occupy the MOCA at PDC annex as well as its home at the ONE Gallery through December 31. Its mission is to “map the intersections and collaborations among a network of queer Chicano artists and their collaborators from the late 1960s to the early 1990s,” with a focal point being the late artist Edmundo “Mundo” Meza (1955–1985), who worked with many of the more than 40 featured artists.
68
• www.westhollywoodlifestyle.com •