October 11th art adventure...

We went out this Saturday and hit up most of the big openings about town. We started the night off at the Ben Maltz Gallery on the campus of OTIS. They were in the midst of their Alumni weekend celebrations and the focul point of the whole event was Phantasmoria which featured a massive mural installation from Mark Dean Veca... images below...

The mural was sprawling and really must be seen in person to really appreciate the scope of it... the man of the hour is seen below chatting it up with Ben Maltz curator Meg Linton (also curator of In The Land Of Retinal Delights)...

After taking in all the details of Phantasmoria we headed over to Culver City to take in the 2nd show at the new location of Roberts & Tilton to take in Flowers As They Are In The Field (Hana Wa No Ni Aruyouni) featuring new works from Ai Yamaguchi as well as a killer installation in the middle of the gallery with a beautiful wrap around painting within...

Seen below is one of the two 'benches' featuring in the exhibit... how nice would that be to have sitting about the ol' home? Just not sure how one would really display and fight dust, seems you'd have to put it in a large case... regardless, very nice to behold and they really pop the exhibit off along with the install in the middle of the room...

Seen above is an interior shot of Flowers As They Are In The Field... beautiful show. After grabbing a quick bite we resumed our art adventure and headed down to Kinsey / Des Forges (formerly BLK/MRKT) to take in the debut LA solo show of local artist Lisa Solberg...

Definitely a different show for Kinsey and crew, but super colorful and huge works, worth a visit if over in Culver City for sure. After that we headed over to see the new joint venture between Project: and Cerasoli (ex-Lab 101), the new Cerasoli : LeBasse Gallery. The Blender group show was laid out really nicely and featured a very intensive installation from Japanese artist Ogi (aka Ryuichi Ogino). Blender also featued works from Vincent Hui (whose work didn't photograph well due to glare on glass, but must be seen - great find there for sure), Melissa Haslam (grouping of works featured below, and all had sold by end of night I hear... believe Hung-Hei from the Artchival board/Arrested Motion first found her and started posting about her work), Deth P. Sun and Mari Inukai (work pictured directly below) plus in gallery 2 they had new works from Jennifer Davis and Suzanne Sattler...

Above is the one and only Jack from Vinyl Pulse and Beau's camera shy wife Christine... almost got her :)

Above is Ogi's floor to ceiling install and below is the collection of smaller works from Australia's Melissa Haslam...

After hangin' out a bit at Beau and Freddi's new digs, we headed up the street a bit to take in the new show at BSFA (Billy Shire Fine Arts). They were featuring the 2nd solo show at their gallery from collage artist Miriam Wosk. Paradise and Wildlife featured sprawling collage works and a simply stunning install in the middle of the gallery (see below 2 shots)...

After taking in the show at BSFA we headed out towards downtown Los Angeles to a deserted area where one would never imagine to find an art show. Down a dark part of East Washington we came upon the BOXEight rental spot to take in Native Sons featuring new works from Sage Vaughn that was curated by his European representatives Galerie Bertrand & Gruner. Due to this, all the works were priced in Euros and definitely a huge increase over last year's showings... but word has it that he's been doing great over in the UK and Europe and this tour de force show was testament to that... one stunning over-sized work after another lined the walls of what turned out to be a very cool spot to have an underground art show...

The exhibit featured a great array of both his 'Wildlife' and 'Wildlives' series and also featured almost a dozen of his nail bat sculptures that we were lucky enough to have exhibited a few of back in one of our Picks of the Harvest group shows... just love the bats!

The man of the hour is seen below with my wife Shawn in front of one of his massive showstoppers... big ups to Sage for really delivering one hell of a show...

We headed out from the depths of nowhere LA on the outskirts of downtown into downtown proper to hit up the Zero One Gallery... far removed from gallery row near a strech of new lofts. On the way to the spot, we strolled into what we thought was another opening but we quickly figured out it was someone's loft party.. we could have crashed it, but we had art shows to see damn it! So onward to Zero One it was to take in the one and only Mear One's new solo exhibit. Upon entering you were greated by a sprawling wall of his new works along with segments of his new DVD (also being released this night) being projected upon the upper portions of the gallery's wall....

The downstairs featured Mear One's larger acrylic and oil works on canvas and board (seen below from the upstairs balcony) to smaller acrylic and ink works on paper in the loft/balcony area (seen above)

After taking in Mear's show and finally tracking him down to offer up congrats on a great show we loaded into the ol' VW to head over to Bergamot Station in Santa Monica to hit up our final stop of the night to catch Copro Nason's new show with Laurie Lipton. Day of the Dead was a full on display of skill. Laurie's graphite works were just intense. I highly suggest swingin' through Copro to catch this show next time you are out at Bergamot this month...

On the way to Copro, we almost threw in the ol' towel since it was close to 11PM and we'd been hitting up shows since 5PM, but upon arriving we ran into good friend and mega-collector Ryh-Ming Poon (with my wife Shawn above) and also collector Chris Ward - both of whom have a great eye for the works they chose to add to their collections...

I will leave you with Laurie's masterful "Angel of Death" (shown above)... my photo doesn't begin to do this work justice. Be sure to go out and catch this show in person.

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