His current exhibition, “Beautiful Again – Perpetuating the Myth of Paradise” has traveled to Barcelona, Spain and Santa Barbara, California, and on August 27 opened in Bristol, England. The exhibition showcases 26 of his digital compositions, dizzying introductions to alternate worlds that are all constructed with abandoned adornments from a bygone era.

© J.T. Burke - Portal to a Beautiful Place, 2010, 40x30 inches

His production process begins by scouring flea markets across Southern California for interesting or unusual bits of old costume jewelry. Pieces with blemishes, chips or the natural patina of wear and old age are the preferred subjects. Back at his studio he photographs each piece from a variety of angles, catalogs them and then digitally layers, blends and distorts those elements together to create his compositions. Equal parts baroque excess and Dr. Suessian farce, Burke’s work evokes fantastical worlds full of gold and gemstones and oddly heroic mythical figures.

© J.T. Burke - Beautiful Ball of Life

© J.T. Burke - Big Opening Number,' 2009, 58 x 42 inches

© J.T. Burke - Evil Boy and His Minions

Whether one defines paradise as true heaven or a facade of hope is the underlying question Burke poses in this series. Like the works of Hieronymus Bosch, Burke’s visions of paradise can sometimes confound a clear narrative. But the dazzle and whimsy he infuses into his images makes the experience of viewing them the satisfying goal, and leaves the task of unraveling the mysteries of paradise to the viewer.

More information about J.T. Burke can be found at JTBurke.com.

J.T. Burke’s exhibition Schedule:

• The Brooks Institute Gallery August 5 - 29, 27 E. Cota St., Santa Barbara, California
• The Grant Bradley Gallery August 27 - October 2, Bristol, England, reception, August 27, 7p.m.

The Hotel Estela Barcelona July 2 - September 28, Barcelona, Spain

Story by Alexandria Sivak

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Edward Cella Art + Architecture is more than an art gallery—it’s an exhibition program with a mission. Over the past ten-plus years, first in Santa Barbara and on LA’s Miracle Mile since 2009, the gallery’s expansive activities have explored the ages-old dialogue between fine art and architecture with a sophisticated and nuanced series of exhibitions, artist grants, and public forums. Reflecting the modern taste for interdisciplinary boundary-blurring, specifically the extensive overlapping connections and resonances between painting, drawing and modern architecture, ECAA is not an advocate of any particular aesthetic style. Rather, its focus is on illuminating the character of the creative process—through the lens of Cella’s personal curatorial, scholarly vision.

Abstraction’s natural inhabitation of spatial, structural elements of form, its natural facility for depicting the spaces inside and between objects, makes it a natural idiomatic counterpart to the psychologically compelling quality of architectural renderings; and the history of mutual influence, as well as tension between the practices of artists and builders, is certainly a story worth telling. In terms of what gallery-goers are likely to encounter, ECAA remains essentially a painting and drawing gallery—though there is a hefty presence of “alternative-process” photographers in the program; and despite its predilection for minimalism and abstraction, the work of more than a few fine figurative painters adds considerably to its depth.

Frederick Fisher • Looker House Study, 2010 • Watercolor and graphite on paper • 7 x 10 inches

A recent exhibition of meditative, elegant, and quirky abstract geometrical watercolors by the renowned architect Frederick Fisher is a perfect exemplar of the ECAA mission. A delightful exhibition in its own right, the extensive series of intimate color sketches revealed a great deal about the way Fisher plays with space and mass, theorizing by hand, if you will, as he seeks a clearing, a balance, a certain harmony—almost like working on a puzzle. Carl Jung once wrote, “Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain,” and it’s exactly that kind of process made visible that is the goal and privilege of ECAA. The current exhibition of large-scale abstract paintings, Depth of Field by Mark Harrington (who lives and works in Bavaria, also underscoring ECAA’s international scope) presents a very different exhibition experience; however, the artist’s articulated interest in the optical and quasi-spatial experience of the receding picture plane makes both a compelling topic for abstract painting, and an ideal overlap with an architect’s creation and encapsulation of empty interior spaces waiting to be fulfilled by encounters with sentient, mobile individuals.

Mark Harrington • Star Spangled Odyssey, 2010 • Acrylic on linen • 93 1/4 x 71 1/4 inches

Other artists and architects represented in the gallery’s holdings, whose work spans the last century, help expound on the asymmetrical balance at ECAA. From Ed Ruscha’s own well-documented enchantment with LA buildings (notably, Standard Oil and Sunset Strip edifices), not to mention his famous, ongoing collaborations with Frank Gehry—also represented in the ECAA stable; to Lucas Reiner’s urban landscapes depicting the contortions and DIY vernaculars that pop up in response to the blunt instruments of committee-ordered, aesthetically analgesic, neglectful civic maintenance. From Lee Friedlander’s photo-based images poetically interpreting the experience of inside places and personal, creative spaces; to Wayne Thiebaud’s flirtations with abstraction, expressing the effects of distance, perspective, and motion in the experience of a city—ECAA examines the architecture/art discourse from every angle. Deconstructivist icon Peter Eisenman; the progressive, interdisciplinary practices of Carlos Diniz, Ball-Nogues and Lead Pencil Studio; the rarely seen personal works of titans like Le Corbusier, Neutra, Schindler whose efforts have inspired not only future architects, but also painters, photographers, scholars, and aficionados for generations—all of these elements and many more of equal stature give ECAA a flavor not unlike what a campus gallery at the Bauhaus might have had—expressing the free dialogue between equal branches of artistic endeavor, deliberated housed under one roof.

Davis Burks • Spiral 69, 2010 • Permanent Ink and Acrylic Paint on Canvas • 51 1/8 x 51 1/8 inches

Philip Johnson has said that, “All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space,” and Constantin Brancusi called architecture “inhabited sculpture.” But when it comes to ECAA, it’s fittingly the words of Frank Stella that best express the open-ended experiment underway on its walls: “Architecture can’t fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn’t real.”

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Brewsie and Wille

The pure physicality of the ensemble’s performance not only embodies the rhythms and cadences of the words, but the emotional and intellectual schisms that confront and confound them, as they await an uncertain future. The incessent need of  the two main protagonists, Brewsie and Willie, to give form and shape to these questions creates both an explosive energy and controlled tension, drawing all the others into a wrenching  personal and political debate. Their hopes and fears, idealism and sense of futility, reveal deeply imbedded and often contradictory  values in the American psyche - the idea of the pioneer, the frontier spirit, individualism and the self-made man, progress  vs. tradition,  and the unsettled and unsettling matters of race, and sex.

Questions and challenges reverberate about the oppressiveness of capitalism, the destructiveness of industrialism, the emptiness of consumerism, the lies of the media, the necessity of work and the meaninglessness of a job in which you are a faceless cog in the wheel. It is as if they anticipate the deadening comformity of corporate and suburban life of the 1950s. And ironically the questions they raise are the very ones their children will act on in the social and political revolutions of the 1960s. The same questions any new college graduate might face today.

Staged under a canopy parachute in a raw penthouse loft space with windows looking out at an anonymous city skyline, and shadowy projections of hotel signs on the walls, the set blurs the boundaries between then and now, inside and outside. The soldiers pace and spar, ramble and stand at attention, on a canvas floor strewn with piles of sandbags, their rants underscored by the improvisational wails of a melancholy saxophone.

Produced by Cal Arts Center for New Performance, the discipline and precision of this beautifully orchestrated work, demonstrates what great experimental theater can be, and pays tribute to the exceptional talents of a collaborative team of musicians and designers too many to mention, as well as the performers and director.”Brewsie and Willie” may end on August 1, but new work by The Poor Dog Group, as well as Travis Preston’s next production, will be seen in Los Angeles in the future.

Words: Jacki Apple (www.jackiapple.com)

• Performances: Wednesday-Sunday through August 1st
• 533 S, Los Angeles Street, 7th floor penthouse, L.A. 90013
• Tickets: brownpapertickets.com

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Mattia Biagi – Femme Modular Revolution, 2008, bicycle and tar in plexiglass box, 75 x 28 x 44 inches

Trading designing space for enhancing space, in 1993 he founded Art Seen, an art consulting business specializing in professional art procurement. Being a success in a niche business for 17 years, Fabrik Magazine asks Leonardo, the 40-year-old affable art consultant, what it takes to make ‘art seen.’ Fabrik sits down with Leonardo and discusses the art of art consulting…

Fabrik: What does an art consultant do?

Leonardo Ledesma: We, meaning the artists and I as a team, are available to consult for anyone or any company who has a valid interest in art no matter how big or small the project. We do a number of services including selecting and acquiring artworks, defining budgets, commissions from concept to completion, framing, art placement and installation.

LL: I find out what they envision for their home or office. Sometimes they have no clue and are starting from scratch, then my job becomes more complex but at the same time it gives me more freedom to pick a direction. It gives me a lot of joy when a client gives creative license to find the right artist for their space and usually they are very happy with the results.

Miguel Osuna – Chase, 2008, oil on canvas, 72 x 80 inches

Fabrik: What kind of clients do you art consult?

LL: Healthcare, corporate, hospitality, residential and individual. Each one of those is a very unique experience and I’ve learned a lot with each. I also work with interior designers quite often.

Fabrik: How do you convey the value of art?

LL: I bring original art to clients so they can feel and experience the tactile nature. When clients are face to face with it, they realize how compelling it is. I do send them digital images, but I also try to engage the client with art in person by either inviting them to an artist’s studio or going to them to place the art in their space.

Michael Moon – Pathways #84, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches

Fabrik: How does art consulting differ from being a gallery owner?

LL: Art consulting is much more of a pro-active, direct process. A lot of the times my clients don’t have the luxury of time to do the research and visit galleries. I don’t compete with galleries. I work parallel to them.

Fabrik: What drives your decision to represent an artist? Is it purely on commercial merit?

LL: It’s a mixture of what excites me and the commercial value. What has to be the discerning factor is choosing art that represents a certain image for my business.

Brad Howe – Dedao, 2008, stainless steel, 81 x 47 x 12 inches

Fabrik: Can you tell us a success story of an artist you’ve discovered?

LL: Yes, there was an artist I discovered that was just painting for fun, painting on the weekends in his garage. I fell in love with his work early on, before he was selling his work at all, then I slowly started to show his works to my clients and began to sell it. Then things really started to evolve for him where he secured gallery representation and things took off.

Fabrik: How has the economy changed your business?

LL: You have to adjust and find new ways of marketing yourself and keep the relationships that you have. I’ve been fortunate that I do have a loyal client base and I’ve been around long enough that they trust me and the artists I represent.

Fabrik: Do you think it’s a more realistic art market now?

LL: I think it brought a level of clarity to the art world. The people that are buying art are more careful, are educating themselves more. The more savvy art buyer will win at the end of the day in this market.

Fabrik: In the future, do you see yourself continuing in the art consulting business?

LL: Yes, my goal is to keep expanding to bigger projects. For example, I’m in talks with a biotech company about creating an annual sculpture show on their grounds. I will get to be the curator and feature a new artist every year. I also want to expand in the Asian art market.

Fabrik: Just for fun, what do you think art is by definition?

LL: Doing something dangerous with style. Dangerous being defined as communicating a new idea or commenting on society.

Todd Williamson – Already Gone, 2009, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

Fabrik: And another $64,000 question, what makes an artist an artist?

LL: Someone who is devoted to their craft unconditionally, cultivating their work over time in a very powerful, compelling way. The test of time is what defines an artist to see their evolution.

Fabrik: Can you tell us about the upcoming event we are co-hosting on June 10th?

LL: Yes, ArtSeen and Fabrik Magazine are celebrating the launch of the new ArtSeen website as well as holding an art auction to benefit the non-profit Identify Foundation at the W Hollywood Hotel. And the date of the party is also coincidentally significant because it falls on the 17th anniversary of ArtSeen opening its doors.

Click here to read about the auction at the W Hollywood and see pictures from the event.

For more information about Leonardo Ledesma and ArtSeen, visit www.laartseen.com.

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W Hollywood

What better reasons for a party? On June 10, 2010, Fabrik Magazine and Art Seen hosted a swanky blowout at the new W Hollywood Hotel in honor of Leonardo Ledesma’s Art Seen website launch.

Under the orange glow of the LA sky, women donned the latest fashion trend of miniskirts paired with gladiator-themed heels on the arms of men in rolled up vintage jeans and sport coats. Club music peppered the festive air. Fire pits and candle-lit lanterns positioned around Station Hollywood, one of two outdoor bars in the hotel, illuminated the artwork on display.

With cocktail or wine in hand, guests snacked on French and Mediterranean appetizers along with divine desserts such as macaroons, gold-flecked lemon tarts, opera cake, and individual chocolate mousses catered by Delphine Eatery & Bar.

The Art Seen and Fabrik Magazine event also raised awareness and funds via an art auction for the non-profit Identify Foundation, who recently worked in Rwanda to benefit the endangered Mountain Gorilla. Identify Foundation designs missions to help save endangered species, address critical environmental issues and human rights issues.

The MC and live auction host, Charity Winters, enthusiastically kept the party focused on its philanthropic mission. Thousands of dollars were raised from the sale of artwork from Art Seen’s roster of artists such as Todd Williamson, Gil Mares, Dean Styers, Mattia Biagi, Michael Moon, Luc Leestemaker, Laddie John Dill, James Verbicky, Debra Van Tuinen and many more.

Following are photos from the event…

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Mary Heebner – Wetlands Muse

Born and raised in the Los Angeles, Heebner came from a family of musicians, but found her love for painting at an early age. She attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has made the city of Santa Barbara her home for over 30 years.

Married to photographer Macduff Everton, Heebner has been his companion in their travels around the world, and uses the traditions and aesthetics of the ancient cultures she encounters to inform her own painting. Working on the floor of her studio, Heebner approaches her painting aerially from all angles, using her hands to develop a close connection with large sheets of rough-hewn paper she uses in her work. Drawing inspiration from the “Anonymous Ancients,” or prehistoric art seen on cave walls or fashioned from bone and stone, Heebner roots her painting in the earthly connection between the present and past.

Heebner’s work from her travels in Chile has strongly informed her current exhibition. She has visited Chile over a dozen times, and has also developed a strong connection with the poetry of Chile’s most famous poet, Pablo Neruda. After several visits to Chile, Heebner created a series of paintings inspired by Neruda’s Isla Negra home and the Pacific Ocean. She showed these to preeminent Neruda scholar and translator Alastair Reid, suggesting a collaboration. This became a bilingual limited edition artist’s book, titled “On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea by Pablo Neruda.”

Mary Heebner – Thunderhead

Heebner’s work effectively synthesizes her esteem for the earth and the cultures that are borne from it, and also offers a strong literary narrative using Neruda’s poetry.

“The inspiration for this exhibit is twofold,” said Heebner. “It explores the connection between figure and ground, that we literally carry landscapes within us. Second, the exhibit is animated by the exchanges between word and image – poetry and painting illuminating one another.”

Intimacies/Intimismos visually explores Neruda’s presentation of love through Heebner’s delicate, yet powerful display of male and female nudes that appear writhing, dancing and remaining distinctly still within the swirling spirit of nature. Using a palette of watercolor, shimmering copper pigment, graphite and acrylic, Heebner imbues each drawing with a tactile, skin-like effect. A warm palette of Copper, Ochre and Rose offers abstract renderings of the human form, as seen through the seductive lens of Neruda’s poetry.

Marie Arana, Book Critic at the Washington Post says the following of Heebner’s work:

Heebner’s nudes, rendered on handmade paper in watercolor washes are at once grounded and fragile. Like Neruda’s poetry, they relay what Heebner calls the ‘naked, exposed, and vulnerable’ aspects of love.

In the end, Heebner’s work seeks connection with the world’s oldest made things and materials from which they are shaped. It is this connection that brings the viewer to an understanding of the eternal marriage of nature and human experience. It also points to the importance of documenting and preserving human history through visual art, evoking a modern cave painting.

Additional Information: The exhibition is sponsored by El Consulado de Chile, the Chilean Trade Commission and ProChile, in celebration of the country’s 200th anniversary. Due to the recent earthquake in Chile, the gallery and the artist will give a percentage of all sales of paintings and books to earthquake relief and will be accepting relief donations through the exhibition’s closing on April 17.

In conjunction with the exhibition, there will be a bilingual poetry from both books with Mary Heebner and Latin American scholar Enrico Mario Santi on Saturday April 3rd from 4-6p.m. To RSVP, please e-mail ali@caapr.com or call 323.525.0053.

For more information about Mary Heebner’s exhibition and events, visit www.edwardcella.com or www.maryheebner.com.

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The 15th Annual Los Angeles Antiques Show will be held April 21-25, 2010 at Barker Hangar at Santa Monica Air Center. It is one of the most prestigious, highly-regarded show among West Coast collectors.

Sixty-five exhibitors from across the U.S. and Europe will be featured in room-setting vignettes representing all design movements from ancient to modern including 17th, 18th and 19th century American, English and Continental furniture and decorative arts, 20th century modernism, Native American Indian and tribal arts, Asian, and African arts. The antique show will feature two new very prominent exhibitors this year: Bernard Steinitz of Paris and Carlton Hobbs of New York, both highly respected dealers of Continental furniture.

SATINWOOD AND HAREWOOD COMMODE WITH DEMI-LUNE MARBLE TOP, ITALIAN C. 1920, CARLTON HOBBS, NEW YORK, NY

Among the returning exhibitors are Daniel Stein Antiques and Chappel & McCullar of San Francisco, and Kentshire Galleries of New York, featuring English furniture; Downtown, Dragonette, Ltd., and Reform Gallery of Los Angeles featuring 20th century design; American Garage of Los Angeles and Gemini Antiques, Ltd. of Lebanon, NJ presenting folk art; David Brooker Fine Art of New York featuring 19th century paintings; Craig Evan Small of Los Angeles, Didier Antiques of London, and Kentshire of New York featuring antique and estate jewelry; Joel Cooner Gallery of Dallas and Jacaranda Tribal of New York featuring tribal and African arts; The Silver Fund of London featuring Georg Jensen and sterling; Rick Scott of San Francisco featuring objet de curiosite; and Inner Gardens of Los Angeles featuring garden ornamentation.

The Antiques Show opens with an early buying preview gala benefiting P.S. ARTS held from 7 to 10 p.m. Wednesday, April 21. Preview tickets are $150 per person and available in advance at www.losangelesantiqueshow.com An exclusive Collectors’ Preview will be held in advance of the gala from 6 to 7 p.m. The Opening Night Preview Party is produced pro-bono by Carleen Cappelletti, president of Bounce.

Los Angeles-based interior designer Kim Alexandriuk will serve as the Designer Chair of the antiques show this year. A dramatic entrance tent will be designed by interior designer Martin Lawrence Bullard, whose recent work includes the new Los Angeles apartment of Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish. A special designer panel discussion will be featured on Friday evening. This event was very successful last year with more than 100 designers in attendance for the panel discussion and cocktail reception held inside the antiques show. Additionally, a series of special guest lectures will be featured during the course of the antiques show, to be announced shortly.

1930 PYRAMID TEA SET DESIGN BY HARALD NIELSEN FOR GEORG JENSEN AT THE SILVER FUND

The Antique Dealers Association of California, founded in 1924, is a group of knowledgeable dealers pledged to integrity and fair dealing in the buying and selling of antiques. Members are experts in their individual fields with inventories ranging from 17th century baroque to Americana, from 18th century ceramics to fine rugs and textiles, from fine art to Asian antiquities to 20th century photography and design.

P.S. ARTS is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of children by bringing arts education to underserved public schools and their communities. P.S. ARTS currently provides more than 11,000 students attending our 25 partner schools throughout Southern and Central California with comprehensive programs in visual arts, music and theater. 1stdibs, DeWitt Stern, Los Angeles Times, Luxe, and Magazine Antiques are sponsors.

The Los Angeles Antiques Show is open to the general public from April 22-25. Show hours are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $20 and includes return entry and show catalog. For more information including the list of exhibitors please visit www.losangelesantiqueshow.com.

To view the schedule of lectures, click here.

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GAETANO PESCE LA DONNE LOUNGE ITALY 1969

A much anticipated annual event drawing collectors from across Southern California and the U.S., the modernism show will highlight the works of celebrated 20th Century designers including Wright, Sullivan, Le Corbusier, Van der Rohe, Rohde, Eames, Noguchi, and many others. All merchandise offered for sale at the show is authentic; with no reproductions permitted.

Modernism dealers participating in this highly stylized event will come from London, Paris, New York, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Philadelphia, Detroit, as well as many very prominent Los Angeles antique and art galleries. The exhibition and sale will feature a full range of high quality 20th Century furnishings, decorative arts, and fine arts in room-setting vignettes including furniture, lighting, paintings, prints, silver, porcelain, art glass, pottery, rugs, textiles, bronzes, vintage clothing, and more.

VERNOR PANTON VP GLOBE DENMARK 1975

The early-buying preview party will be held from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, April 30. This charity event which will offer great food, open bar sponsored by Grey Goose Vodka, and live band benefits the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Community Arts Partnership, an amazing effort that provides free arts education programs to more than 7,500 underserved youths throughout Los Angeles County every year. Preview tickets are $85 in advance and $100 at the door, and can be reserved at www.lamodernism.com.

Weekend show hours are: Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $15; good for return all weekend. The show is moving this year to a great new venue, the Barker Hangar at Santa Monica Air Center, 3021 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica 90405. For further information, including a list of exhibitors, please visit www.lamodernism.com.

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With legion watching the city for its annual Oscar rites, through Peter Noever’s steadfast support of Kimberli Meyer’s sustained ambitious vision, we encounter the MAK Center for Art and Architecture ‘s realization of ‘How Many Billboards? Art In Stead.’

Nine years ago, when Noever, CEO and Artistic Director of MAK Vienna, Austria, was honored by SCI-ARC for his decades of work in art and architecture, Neil Denari, then Director of SCI-ARC, said:

“His main goal and challenge has been to bring the worlds of art and architecture together in a way that doesn’t trivialize either one — art as a sort of speculation on culture and architecture as sort of a service to culture.”

Fittingly, this significant urban exhibition debuts new works by leading contemporary artists, some newly establishing themselves and others actively reckoning with their legends and status as first generation American Conceptual artists; Michael Asher, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Renée Green, Kori Newkirk, Allen Ruppersberg, James Welling and Yvonne Rainer. The billboards themselves generously donated for this historic and ideally annual project through the passionate and expert guidance of Rick Robinson, General Manager of MacDonald Media, among other myriad supporters.

The exhibition’s large scale ensured unusual collaboration, between city, corporate and private, academic, as well as non-profit, interests. The diverse team of independent curators Liza Henry, Dr. Nizan Shaked, and Dr. Gloria Sutton, along with public art consultant (and Los Angeles Urban Ranger) Sara Daleiden, working with charmingly erudite MAK Center Director and co-curator Kimberli Meyer, expertly procured new works that critically reflect the billboard as a medium which simultaneously interprets its role in the cityscape by reflecting ourselves in these environments back to ourselves to, well, reflect upon…existential funhouses, playing and urging deep inquiry, investigating the essential idea(s) of art, meaning and life, tactically engaging space, inserting an other point of view upon our contested backgrounds, above banks and churches, near strip malls, by freeways, against hillsides, next to McDonald’s…though the more obvious agendas dictating the visual space above threaten to consume us, brief intermissions appear in the skies this spring.

Perhaps more refined by necessity of practice than more purist culture jamming, though at times utilizing similar tactics towards more ambiguous ends, the conceptual artists occupying these billboards stage circumspect interventions, hopefully coaxing viewers into deliberation, of the individual gestures made by their images. Artist lauren woods’ offers, in Arabic script, a couplet by prolific medieval Urdu poet Vali Dakhni, floating above, in the Fairfax District, a Bank of America’s trademark signage of red and blue, the black and white billboard translated reads:

As long as the earth and the sky last,
Smile like a flower in the garden of the world.

Does it even matter how many recognize, mistake or read this language? Even though ‘news’ daily investigates the geopolitics of a Pakistan fraught with heightened U.S. led dangers, woods’ playfully delineates a space that may prompt the viewer to ‘observe her assumptions and possibly evaluate her prejudices.’

LOCATION: Fairfax Ave, south of Melrose Ave, west side of the street, facing north.
METRO: Melrose Ave. Metro Bus 10. Fairfax Ave. Metro Bus 217, 218, 780a

Meanwhile overlooking MacArthur Park on Wilshire Boulevard, Kori Newkirk unsettles with his self-portrait suggesting urban anxiety is not entirely misplaced when race coupled with gender loom large and ambiguously over the comings and goings of those more ‘legitimate’ than the persona depicted with closed eyes and mouth stuffed with what appears to be a freshly made snowball.

Artwork by Kori Newkirk. Commissioned by the MAK Center for How Many Billboards? Art In Stead, 2010. Photograph by Gerard Smulevich

LOCATION: Wilshire Blvd, west of Hoover St, on the south side of the street, facing west
METRO: Wilshire Blvd. Metro Bus 20, 720 Hoover St. Metro Bus 26

Kerry Tribe engages her formal ‘ongoing investigation into memory, subjectivity, and doubt’ by choosing to depict the black and white image of a stormy sky, mocking the illusory sunshine L.A. hawks to the world, perhaps also referencing the local penchant for Armageddon evoked by disasters like 2012.

Artwork by Kerry Tribe. Commissioned by the MAK Center for How Many Billboards? Art In Stead, 2010. Photograph by Gerard Smulevich

LOCATION: La Brea Ave, north of Venice Blvd, on the east side of the street, facing north.
METRO: La Brea Blvd. Metro Bus 212, 312. Venice Blvd. Metro Bus 33, 333

Critique sanctioned through institutional channels presents itself as problematic for John Knight. He surrendered the space upon his billboard to MECA, the Middle East Children’s Alliance, who placed an ad publicizing improved access to drinkable water in Gaza schools, kindergartens and nurseries. Since 1969, Knight has concentrated on the relationship between architecture, design and art. Working in situ, the specific gesture he conspires to produce aims at reading the ever-widening gap between politics and art, and threatens to expose the lack of will to create change at fundamental levels.

LOCATION: Sunset Blvd, west of Havenhurst Dr, on the south side of the street, facing west.
METRO: Sunset Blvd. Metro Bus 2, 302

Across the street from the CNN building, east of Sunset at Cahuenga, Martha Rosler, in collaboration with her son and graphic novelist Josh Neufeld (‘A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge’), warns of the perpetually newsworthy disparity between state government spending for education (all-time low) and its perverse desire to incarcerate citizens (all-time high).

LOCATION: Sunset Blvd, west of Cahuenga Blvd, on the north side of the street, facing east
METRO: Sunset Blvd. Metro Bus 2, 302

In this city designed for the automobile, Brandon Lattu’s quietly humorous choice to advertise, larger than life, a previously owned 1994 Cadillac Fleetwood, tests ‘whether or not the boards successfully instigate and participate in public dialogue’ while intentionally ‘underutilizing’ the space provided.

LOCATION: Fairfax Ave, south of Pico Blvd, on the west side of the street, facing northwest.
METRO: Pico Blvd. Metro Bus R7 Fairfax Ave. Metro Bus 217, 780

“Community As Art” is post-minimalist Kira Lynn Harris’ unusually buoyant proclamation, as inverted white-on-black image of Simon Rodia’s ‘The Watts Towers’, transplanting, transposing, acknowledging art driven engaged community building ala Edgar Arcenaux’s Watts House Project (WHP), further inviting well-meaning interloping in South Central in a re-inspired attempt at revitalization.

Untitled (The Towers) – Artwork by Kira Lynn Harris. Commissioned by the MAK Center for How Many Billboards? Art In Stead, 2010. Photograph by Gerard Smulevich

LOCATION: La Cienega Blvd, north of the 10 Freeway (Cadillac Ave), on the west side of the street, facing south.
METRO: La Cienega Blvd. Metro Bus 105, 705.C Venice Blvd. Metro Bus 33, 333

Looming animatedly on Sunset, above the West Hollywood Presbyterian Church and in front of Sam Ash Music, is Jennifer Bornstein’s copperplate etching, described by the artist as “an antiquated, labor-intensive technology of image-reproduction”, of a 16 mm Eiki (the name literally meaning ‘projectors’ in Japanese), a relic in our digital age, this frame reveals, in Gothic font, “The End” of exactly what we may have come to want, here…

The End – Artwork by Jennifer Bornstein. Commissioned by the MAK Center for How Many Billboards? Art In Stead, 2010. Photograph by Gerard Smulevich

LOCATION: Sunset Blvd, west of Martel Ave, on the south side of the street, facing east.
METRO: Sunset Blvd. Metro Bus 2, 302

Seminal Argentinian avant-gardist and longtime L.A. local David Lamelas plays punk rocker, albeit an aging one, posing mid-performance, a tattooed bicep extended as he glances away from the mic, exhorting us to “THINK OF GOOD.” For once, should we all do as we’re told? The punk, Lamelas, hoping that, once introduced, this desired cognitive dissonance might prove fatal, working structurally within typologies of representation, the conceptual filmmaker testing boundaries of what he terms ‘character appropriation.’

Think of Good (From the series Rock Star 1974 / 2008) – Artwork by David Lamelas. Commissioned by the MAK Center for How Many Billboards? Art In Stead, 2010. Photograph by Patricia Parinejad

LOCATION: Pico Blvd, west of Fairfax Ave, on the south side of the street, facing east.
METRO: Pico Blvd. Metro Bus R7

American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer references a quote by the staunchly anti-Nazi and famously reclusive Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich. Out-of-context, “I LOOK GOOD, I KNOW/ I CAN’T HEAR/ I CAN’T SEE/ BUT I LOOK GOOD” posits a more superficial beauty than that of Art drives the dream factories that draw the unsuspecting and naïve newcomers in only to spit them out bereft of sight and sound.

LOCATION: Pico Blvd, west of Fairfax Ave, on the south side of the street, facing west
METRO: Pico Blvd. Metro Bus R7

ASTONISH (by) Kenneth Anger, the iconic queer avant-garde filmmaker imploring or reminding us to do what he and those similarly oriented were able to, or stating we are past such tactics, as celebrity, evidenced by the coveted scribble of an autograph, becomes the emotional currency with which we trade our sense of meaning and reality.

Artwork by Kenneth Anger. Commissioned by the MAK Center for How Many Billboards? Art In Stead, 2010. Photograph by Gerard Smulevich

LOCATION: Beverly Dr, north of Pico Blvd, on the west side of the street, facing southeast.
METRO: Beverly Dr. Metro Bus 14. Pico Blvd. Metro Bus R7

Currently on Washington Boulevard, facing east on the north side of the street, west of Curson Avenue, ‘tactical media practitioner’ and internationally exhibiting artist Daniel Joseph Martinez unceasingly attempts to confront and discuss controversial ideas of truth and justice with his disorienting collage. Bending one’s head so the ear touches the left shoulder, a military aircraft carrier appears, on calm waters. However, the deeper story, alluded to with enigmatic text placed perpendicularly to the image, must be sought out.

Looking Good – Artwork by Yvonne Rainer. Commissioned by the MAK Center for How Many Billboards? Art In Stead, 2010. Photograph by Gerard Smulevich

In Martinez’s billboard collage, a military aircraft carrier turned sideways is in danger of pouring the fleet of Chinook helicopters on its bow into the ocean. Considered the workhorses of the U.S. Army, here the aircrafts are painted red, symbolizing that they have been repurposed for environmentalist activities. This military/environmentalist amalgam is corroborated by the rainbow design painted on the ship’s side, which recalls Greenpeace’s schooner the Rainbow Warrior. Fernando Pereira, the ship’s photographer, tragically died when Greenpeace’s original Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk at Auckland’s Marsden Wharf in 1985 by agents of the French government. Despite the fact that the agents pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter and willful damage, they were released in less than two years. With this referent in mind, the collage is inconclusive. Conflating the military with militant, it debates morality, authority, and justice. The image is offset by a text that reads:

“The disappointment of a fanatical searcher of the truth, who saw through trickery of an authoritarian world filled with illusions.” The various images, in their relation to the words, provoke a matrix of possible meanings. ”Truth,” this work demonstrates, may mean a different thing for Greenpeace, the French government, or for New Zealand justice, where the French agents were tried. With “disappointment” signaling that justice is nothing but blind, it also brings to mind the recent arrests and criminalization of peaceful protestors in Copenhagen during the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. (Nizan Shaked)

LOCATION: Washington Blvd, west of Curson Ave, on the north side of the street, facing east.
METRO: Washington Blvd. Metro Bus 035, 335

Allen Sekula superimposes, “The rich destroy the planet” in Spanish over his previously exhibited image (Documenta 12) of a welder, as he crouches at a construction site, for respite? Aren’t we all engaging, collectively, in the conspiracies of globalization? Sekula’s indisputable impact upon the critical and uniquely Californian photographic practice of the ‘80s and ‘90s is felt strongly here as clarion call of his insistent interrogation of exploitation.

LOCATION: Beverly Blvd, east of Western Ave, on the north side of the street, facing east.
METRO: Beverly Blvd. Metro Bus 14, 714 Western Ave. Metro Bus 207, 75

The partial profile of a white man, appearing to be distressed, the words “I love you too” printed in pink float away or towards him? Valentine’s Day just weeks ago, Eileen Cowin toys with us, dismissing too simplistic an interpretation of this hackneyed phrase we long to be told. Easy sentimentality quickly complicated by Cowin’s ‘interest in both intimacy and the disintegrating boundaries between public and private space’

LOCATION: Westwood Blvd, south of Olympic Blvd, on the east side of the street, facing north.
METRO: Santa Monica Blvd. Metro Bus 004, 704. Pico Blvd. Metro Bus R7

Allen Ruppersberg amusingly transforms the billboard’s functionality to his advantage by ‘unofficially’ advertising an upcoming and large exhibition project, titled Pacific Standard Time. Funded by a Getty Foundation Initiative, and ostensibly the largest collaborative project undertaken by museums in the region, the exhibit, beginning in 2011, will demonstrate the pivotal role of Southern California in national and international art movements since mid-twentieth century.

LOCATION: Venice Blvd, west of Midvale Ave, on the north side of the street, facing east.
METRO: Venice Blvd. Metro Bus 33, 333

Lynchings in the West: 1850-1935 (Duke University Press) by Ken Gonzalez-Day was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In it, Gonzalez-Day rigorously investigates photography’s relationship to discourse on race and the all too often fatal consequences of racism. Positioning his subjects, which happen to be two busts owned by the J. Paul Getty Museum, in profile, in a charged sort of face-off, admission of guilt, defiance, authority and the obdurate human spirit when confronted by oppression come into play.

LOCATION: Olympic Blvd, west of Gramercy Pl, on the west side of the street, facing east.
METRO: Olympic Blvd. Metro Bus 28, 728

Working site-specifically or in situ, lifelong Angeleno and Conceptual Art pioneer Michael Asher reproduced a 1959 print ad designed by Doyle Dane Bernbach. (Aside: DDB Worldwide Communications Group, Inc, now a part of Omnicon Group Inc., is an advertising company with the highest revenue in the world, at US$12.69 billion, according to Advertising Age’s agency rankings in April 2008.) Their “Think Small” Volkswagen ads were voted the number one campaign of all time in AdAge’s 1999 “The Century of Advertising.” The present catchphrase “Go Local” presents similar ironies, perhaps lost on us but not the cautioning Asher.

LOCATION: Sunset Blvd, east of Micheltorena St, on the north side of the street, facing east.
METRO: Sunset Blvd. Metro Bus 2, 302, 704

In 2006, artist, filmmaker, and writer Renée Green, commissioned by the state of California and Department of Transportion (DOT), created a major public work that can be found at the Morphosis’ designed Caltrans Headquarters downtown. In code: survey, a site-specific media installation that can also be accessed online, Green re-routes “transportation” through selected sets of coordinates, revealing the re-mapping of urban geography and its compromised politics, as social transformation informs how capital and culture communicate with city dwellers. Her billboard is simultaneously calm and disturbing, with the yellow and red text of “Strangers Begin Again’ and ‘Native Strangers Hosting’ perplexing the curious driver, what movie is this for/from, the image of a grey seascape between the two bands of text a still from a film, part of a recent project of Green’s, entitled Endless Dreams and Water Between (2009).

LOCATION: La Brea Ave, north of Lexington, on the west side of the street, facing south.
METRO: La Brea Blvd. Metro Bus 212, 312 Santa Monica Blvd. Metro Bus 4, 704

Excerpting the phrase “IF I SAY SO” from a 1961 telegram sent by Rauschenberg as his contribution to an exhibition of portraits of gallerist Iris Clert, Susan Silton embeds the text within thin bands of brightly colored vertical stripes, evoking a stealthier sexier jet-set authority, much harder to disobey when made so desirable.

LOCATION: La Cienega Blvd, north of Rodeo Rd, on the west side of the street, facing south.
METRO: La Cienega Blvd. Metro Bus 105, 705. Jefferson Blvd. Metro Bus 38

Pushing the possibilities of perception, formalist photographer James Welling’s abstract grid-like rendition recalls pathways that could take the more literal forms of streets, freeways, telephone or electric lines, avenues to communing with the self or other(s), a West Coast jazz, free and re-emergent.

LOCATION: La Brea Ave, south of the 10 Freeway, on the east side of the street, facing north.
METRO: La Brea Ave. Metro Bus 212, 312. Adams Blvd. Metro Bus 37

Complex stories of migration and immigration become phantom meditations in Christina Fernandez’s urban and landscape photography. In Coldwell Couch, two images taken at the same site ten months apart, of an abandoned loveseat, a real estate sign, in East L.A., the failure evoked here poetically cuts across traditional attempts at indicting class, race and faintly, gender.

LOCATION:Olympic Blvd, west of Gramercy Pl, on the west side of the street, facing east.
METRO: Olympic Blvd. Metro Bus 28, 728

Please visit www.howmanybillboards.org for up to the minute information about the artworks, as they are subject to being moved to other billboard locations during the exhibition period. Drive, bike, walk, experience this alternative to the usual blatant advertising occupying our air space. And then, keep demand that we keep seeing art on more Los Angeles’ billboards. Please.

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Co-presented by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House and the Museum for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)

Thursday, April 8, 6:30pm

Renée Green, Endless Dreams and Water Between (2009)
Jennifer Bornstein, Phantom Limb (2009)
Allan Sekula, Lottery of the Sea (short version), (2006)

• Location: MOCA Grand Avenue, Ahmanson Auditorium, 250 S. Grand Avenue, Downtown Los Angeles, CA 90012
• Parking: www.moca.org/pdf/Parking_directions_GA.pdf
• Admission: Free
• Information: education@moca.org or (213) 621-1745

RELATED PANEL DISCUSSIONS and LECTURES

Wednesday, March 24, 7pm

How Many Billboards? Panel: Visual Rights to the City

Co-presented by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and California Lawyers for the Arts

In complement to the exhibition, this panel, comprised of outdoor media professionals and legal experts, will focus on the city’s recent debate surrounding LED billboards and illegal signage, and examine free speech rights as they relate to images on the streets. The panel will be facilitated by panel series curator
Anne Bray of Freewaves.

Participating Panelists:

Toby Miller, Professor of Media & Cultural Studies, UC-Riverside
Rick Robinson, General Manager, MacDonald Media
Christine Pelisek, Journalist, LA Weekly
John Tehranian, Attorney and Partner, One LLP

• Location: ALOUD at Central Library, Mark Taper Auditorium, 630 W 5th Street, Downtown Los Angeles, 90071
• Admission: Free, reservations recommended: www.aloudla.org or (213) 228-7025
• Parking: 524 S. Flower St. Garage, $1 until 8:45 p.m. with Los Angeles Public Library card validation

Tuesday, April 6, 7pm

How Many Billboards? Lecture: Renée Green

Co-presented by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House and the Master of Public Art Studies Program at the University of Southern California Roski School of Fine Arts in Los Angeles

• Location: MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood, 90069
• Admission: Free with the price of admission to the Schindler House or USC student ID
• Parking: Public structure at the northeast corner of Kings Road and Santa Monica Boulevard

Thursday, April 15, 7pm

How Many Billboards? Panel: The Visual Ecology of Advertising and Architecture

Co-presented by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles.

This panel, comprised of outdoor media, art, architecture, and planning experts, will focus on current architectural signage and surface strategies to review the city’s relationship between consumer ads and urban structures. The panel will be facilitated by panel series curator Anne Bray of Freewaves.

Participating Panelists:

Bill Roschen, Principal, Roschen van Cleve Architects
Mirjam Struppek, President, International Urban Screens Association
Alan Bell, Senior City Planner, City of Los Angeles
Dennis Hathaway, President, Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight

• Location: SCI-Arc W. M. Keck Lecture Hall, 960 East 3rd Street, Downtown Los Angeles, 90013
• Admission: Free
• Parking: The building entrance and parking lot are located at 350 Merrick Street, between 4th Street and Traction Avenue. Parking is free.

Info: www.howmanybillboards.org; www.sciarc.edu; www.goethe.de

For more information about How Many Billboards? calendar of events, visit: www.howmanybillboards.org/calendar.html

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