Postcards

Postcard from Los Angeles

I’ve said it before. I love LA. It has warm weather and great art. On my most recent trip, my pal Johnny and I engaged in a few hours of art touring. The art gallery, Regen Projects, could be the setting for Antoine Wilson’s recent novel, Mouth to Mouth. Big white box, open rooms, concrete floors, hidden office, and off-limits staircases. And the requisite security guy dressed all in black, sporting black shades.

Like every large indoor space in LA, it’s air-conditioned. Right away, the large pieces by Kevin Beasley took me to summer, a humid Southern summer, where sweaty bathing suits, towels, and all kinds of fragments are forgotten, tossed aside. Cotton fills the spaces. Cotton, picked in the south. Memories from Beasley’s roots in Virginia.

In one room, a tall pole sends out noises that the artist has collected. This connects, at least emotionally, to a community project he did on land that he bought in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. Sound has been an important part of his work for a long time. Is it a sign of privilege that I like to look at art in quiet?

When I was a kid, resin came into favor with conceptual and minimal artists. The material is what probably led to artist Eva Hesse’s demise. But here the toxic substance brings together the real dazzling world of southern summers and plain cotton. Beasley’s mentor at Yale, Mark Bradford, layers the detritus he finds and then cuts into it. In contrast, Beasley’s work feels additive and dynamic. He appears to make his rejects participate in a great dance and, like children at play, all freeze midmotion.

In the center of one of the large rooms is a sculpture, a bathtub made of resin and cotton. Unlike the other pieces, there is an absence of color and implied movement. It feels like a place to take a nap.