The
Lamps of Chinatown
LA Freewaves: TV or
NOT TV
Three or four things impress
you greatly here, and lead to an overwhelming discovery.
First, the art galleries
sprouting up on or around Chung King Road are caches of nonentity. Pet rocks
were a flash of social commentary by comparison, they
vie with each other in this regard.
“I’m
nothing.”
“I never was
anything.”
“I never could have been
anything.”
“Not even in your
dreamless sleep.”
Mind you, some pretty big
names promoted this as a happening thing. Shit happens, too. It’s a
happening thing. And speaking of big names, one of the contenders in this
display of video art is one in her own right, a
CalArts professor with a distinguished résumé.
But, as always in a group
show or a literary magazine, one artist slips in unbeknownst to the management.
Actually three artists (and in this sprawling exhibition, only part of a
citywide “celebration,” something might have been
overlooked—but let’s not encourage anyone, as they say in the
universities), who put together a bit of fun projected on to the wall of the
Chung King Road fountain. Angel Nevarez admires The Omega Man and toys
with it awhile. Daniel Martinico & Jesse Arnold take TV action sequences
and loop them as patterns. People talk, things move, you have some sense of the
possibilities in video.
Toxic Titties was a sort of Lesbian street art performance, I
gather, on the half-shell, in the form of wiggy cop costumes being videotaped
for posterity.
A lot of people visit
Chinatown for these openings. Interesting people who do
things and go places. As they sauntered past the galleries it slowly
dawned on them how pitiful the art, and “what a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite
in faculty! in form and moving how express and
admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!”