The Hammer Bash won’t win the award for best event name and though I had been to several events and exhibits at there, that’s one I had never been to. All that changed Friday when, browsing the Hammer site, I saw the picture of Llyn Foulkes and his intriguing contraption which made me make the trip from the Valley to the West Side.

Arriving early I was privy to a growing line of people waiting to go in the Billy Wilder theatre where Restoring the Los Angeles Avant Garde was screening which, though it sounded tempting, I nonetheless decided to forego to take in the show in the courtyard instead.

Photo of Kaari Upson’s grotto by Joshua White

With about an hour to kill I went upstairs to view the exhibit, Nine Lives: Visionary Artist from LA, the end of which today’s Bash was marking. Sacrilegiously drifting out of sequence from painting to painting, to whatever caught my eye and I arrived at the room given over to Victoria Reynolds’ paintings of raw meat; and my eyes were caught alright.

Ultra realistic paintings of animal flesh, streaked with red veins, and set off in ornamental frames, fainted hearted vegetarians beware (actually even non-vegetarians may be put off their meat-eating ways for a few days after an encounter with these paintings). (If when finished watching Supersize Me you were seized by a strong urge to go out for McDonalds, then you just might not be totally grossed out by Virginia’s paintings.)

Flight of the Reindeer by Victoria Reynolds. Photo by Joshua White

Leading off this ‘temple of meat’ was a cavernous display based on the infamous Playboy Grotto complete with running waterfall. Here projected in nooks and crannies were videos by Kaari Upson documenting her relationship with a life sized blowup doll, Larry who represents a stranger who’s artifacts she’d found in an abandoned house. Her videos featuring both her and the doll nude makes one have serious concerns about Kaari’s sanity, but then recalling that the show is of LA artists – you think; psychosis is actually a requirement.

Realizing it would soon be time for the show and I went downstairs to stake out a good spot and there I saw Lyn’s red and ochre contraption of car horns, organ pipes, drums, and  xylophone made me think: ‘Steampunk’ leading me to half expect jets of steam to issue fort from the horn – to my disappointment it didn’t. With no preconceived idea of the type of music to expect, when Llyn belted out his throaty jazz I knew that that was not it. (It was unclear whether he was composing all the lyrics on the spot (for sure some of them) – as the maneuvering needed to fit some of them into the meter was leading me to believe.)

After speaking to a few of the crowd gathered there I realized that many were Llyn Foulkes groupies one of whom pointed out something to me that I hadn’t noticed – which was that Llyn was one of the nine artists featured in the Nine Lives show which I had just been to earlier. I recalled the pieces which were far from conjuring up anything even close to what Lyn’s limbs in simultaneous movement to elicit sounds from his machine, was currently producing.

To the right Norton Wisdom painted on a huge upright lightbox which brought out the slightest variance in the stroke applied via hand, fingers, brush and squeegee. Fleeting, the images birthed of the lyrics being sung, existed only for a few moments before consequent words influenced yet another visual to take its place.

When I realized I had to head out to get my bus I made my way to the back of the courtyard coming face to face with the Vulcan himself turned art philanthropist, Leonard Nimoy. I didn’t get a picture at the time and when a few moments later I decided to go back and get one he was gone. Proving the adage; you snooze, you lose.

I collected my bag and headed to the bus stop where in just a record five minutes my bus had arrived and I was heading out of UCLA-ville aka Westword on my journey home.

via Sunil Rampersad, 8 June 2009 6:11pm | 2 |