detail view of one wall in Sterling Ruby's exhibition
Michael Gillespie and John Thomson run one of the smartest galleries around, Foxy Production, and these two guys are also just about the nicest people around, in or outside of the art world.
Unfortunately we messed up our [very modest] responsibility to the outside world last month by not getting to their exhibition of L.A. artist Sterling Ruby's work until the very last day, but some images are available on their site, and several of the works themselves can still be seen in the back space of their gallery.
I thought I needed some help when we first walked in, but Michael was easily able to set the scene for us. In fact however the work can stand on its own, once eyes and mind adjust to an eccentric aesthetic exercised in as many media as are found here. Beautiful things smartly done, and not easily revealing their layers of real intelligence.
We did get to the opening of their current show, "CIVILIZATION IS OVERRATED", of sculpture and works on paper and mylar by Ester Partegas. The single, large [ok, it's literally gallery-sized] construction in the main room, of mostly paper and vinyl, seems to be at least partly a comment on the trash we consume and the trash we create. But it and the three framed works in the rear may be the most beautiful dreck I've ever seen.
Ester Partegas, detail from her installation, "CIVILIZATION IS OVERRATED" (2004) plastic, wood, paper, metal, enamel, 13' x 13.2' x 13.2'
Ester Partegas Polylumplous Tetraflacidontics (2004) enamel paint on mylar, 29" x 82"