At Regen Projects, Abraham Cruzvillegas explores a person, a few places and many things

Jenna Kagel | November 7th, 2012, 1:09pm

Abraham Cruzvillegas is renowned for his use of found materials and his ability to repurpose, reassign, and redefine popular perception of those objects. In a newly christened exhibit, "Autodestrucción 1" up at the Regen Projects Gallery in West Hollywood, Cruzvillegas stays true to his forum of expression and consistent continuity.

Over the past two decades, Cruzvillegas has quickly ascended the art world food-chain. He was just named the recipient of the esteemed Yanghyun Prize and he will be quite busy for the following year with shows lined up in Paris, London and Mexico. As he rises in success in the ever-elite art society, esssentially it his fundamental understanding of objects and our relationship with them that has put Cruzvillegas on the map.

He has a theory on dealing with those relationships, which might explain his success; "all objects are alive when I use objects in my work. That's my approach. I think things have an opinion, and they either ask you things or they don't," he told KPCC last week

William Eggleston's dye transfer prints: not dye-ing out

Jenna Kagel | October 20th, 2012, 3:46pm

"William Eggleston almost seems to be knocked out by colors," Topey Schwarzenbach told KPCC last week at the opening of "New Dyes".

Scwarzenbach, an avid fan of Eggleston, referenced the artist's process of creating dye transfer prints, many of which are currently on display at the ROSEGALLERY located within Bergamot Station.

The deliberate overbearing white walls that frame each piece comprising the exhibition, starkly contrasts the vivid but understated color composition of the so-called "unseen transparencies" featured.

While the prints were made this year, the method used was "actually started in the 20s and 30s for advertising," Molly Toberer, the administrative director of the gallery explained. "William Eggleston was actually the first fine artist to use it in his fine art photographs," she added.

Getty's Messerschmidt exhibit dialogues with the past, present, and the Internet-obsessed

Jenna Kagel | October 5th, 2012, 3:00pm

Make your face cringe. Now, while you cringe, also grimace. Now, try and roll your eyes back into your head. Hard, right?

According to Antonia Boström, a senior curator of sculpture and decorative arts of the Getty Museum, this is partially the intent of the current exhibition "Messerschmidt and Modernity" - to give the audience a literal understanding of how difficult it is to make a facial expression like the ones displayed on the Messerschmidt busts.

The exhibit, according to the Getty, "explores the astonishingly modern series of so-called 'Character Heads' created by the German Baroque artist Franz Xaver Messerschmidt." The entire piece, curated by Boström herself, consists of three separate and disturbing rooms.

The first room centers around eight individual busts with varying facial expressions. They have names like, "The Vexed Man", "A Hypcrite and a Slanderer" and "The Ill Humored Man". The British curator explained that the titles of each bust were given ten years after the atrist's death and that "these names, which have nothing to do with Messerschmidt's intention, have stuck because they are all quite similar [looking]."