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Song Kun at the Hammer Museum

Painting by Song Kun It's My Life 05-08-31 2005 Oil on canvas. 10 5/8 x 13 3/4 in. (27 x 35 cm)
Painting by Song Kun It’s My Life 05-08-31 2005 Oil on canvas. 10 5/8 x 13 3/4 in. (27 x 35 cm) Courtesy of UniversalStudios-Beijing, Beijing, China

Several great exhibits at the Hammer Museum

Today, our final day in LA, we headed over to the Hammer Museum to see Eden’s Edge: Fifteen LA Artists: Ginny Bishton, Mark Bradford, Liz Craft, Sharon Ellis, Matt Greene, Elliott Hundley, Stanya Kahn & Harry Dodge, Monica Majoli, Matthew Monahan, Rebecca Morales, Lari Pittman, Ken Price, Jason Rhoades, Anna Sew Hoy, and Jim Shaw.

Death Rider (Virgo) by Liz Craft
“Death Rider (Virgo)” by Liz Craft
New Moon and Palm Trees by Sharon Ellis
“New Moon and Palm Trees” by Sharon Ellis.

On our way out, we almost missed a small show by emerging Chinese painter Song Kun, who filled a small gallery with 97 daily paintings of her life…fabulous! Her work ranges from part drawn, partly painted canvases to fully realized and very well-done representational works to a number of blank canvases. At first, I took one quick pass through the gallery, intending that to be it; then went back and looked at each painting more closely, then went back again, by this time fully drawn into her mesmerizing paintings. This was my favorite art of all that I’ve seen on this coastal trip!

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The MOCA in LA…

Nancy Rubins’s Chas’ Stainless Steel Mark Thompson’s Airplane Parts
Pictured: Nancy Rubins’s Chas’ Stainless Steel Mark Thompson’s Airplane Parts About 1000 Pounds of Stainless Steel Wire Gagosian’s Beverly Hills Space at MOCA (2001/2002)

Whenever we vacation in LA (to visit my husband’s father and his wife) I always try to see as much art as possible.

Sculpture at the MOCASo we made a new plan to go to the MOCA downtown. As it happened, they were installing a new show, so they only had a couple of rooms of art to view. The sculpture above, made of crashed airplane parts (if I remember right), and the figure on the right (with live birds) were in the courtyard outside the museum.

I had researched in advance to find some compelling exhibits, but once here, I sadly discovered that the painter I so much wanted to see at the ACE Gallery, David Amico, was not in fact showing there.

Inside were fabulous sculptures and drawings by LA artist Matthew Monahan. His sculptures are conglomerations of all sorts of materials, including sheetrock and wax, but we really enjoyed the heads he so beautifully drew and then folded into head shapes, sort of like origami — very beautifully done!

MOCA Focus: Matthew Monahan