13ThingsLA: February 4
Paradigmatic for your art calendar
New exhibitions this week fill your art calendar with deeper looks at the paradigms and practices that operate behind the surfaces—of art, architecture, nature, the body, poetry, and disco shoes. Visit LMU Laband Gallery, Chuck Arnoldi’s studio, Art/Space 114, La Luz de Jesus, Julia Stoschek Foundation, KP Projects, LAUNCH LA, The Gamble House, CMay Gallery, Not Shockboxx, Arcana Books, Oxy Arts, and the Music Center.
FEATURE
Julia Stoschek Foundation presents What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem opening Friday, February 6, 9pm-midnight at Variety Arts Theater. The definitely not haunted vintage glam of downtown’s old-timey Variety Arts Theater gets the cinematic intervention treatment, as a series of exquisite moving-image works from the Julia Stoschek Foundation are situated among its eccentric spaces from the main stage and throughout. Organizer Udo Kittelmann promises, “a sweeping odyssey into the depths of human experience,” as videos by artists like Marina Abramović, Dara Birnbaum, Wu Tsang, Douglas Gordon, Ulysses Jenkins, Maya Deren, Ana Mendieta, and Anne Imhof appear alongside early cinema including old school Disney—illuminating repetition, choreography, myth-making, and ritualized violence as a toolkit for both delight and control. Public programs extend that circuit through live screenings and performances by artists including Doug Aitken and Arthur Jafa, with reading- and performance-based nights organized by writers and artists such as Barbara T. Smith and Harmony Holiday who scrutinize these dynamics in their own work. Free; open Wednesday-Sunday, 5pm-midnight through March 20, downtown; jsfoundation.art. —SND
