Inside Art Platform — Los Angeles 2012
Author:Sarah Virginia WhiteArt Platform — Los Angeles is back in a big way in its second year with 65,000 square feet of exhibition space highlighting the incredible diversity of the area’s thriving artistic culture. While it draws galleries, dealers, museums and collectors from art hubs around the world, the focus of the modern and contemporary art fair is to grow the local appetite for LA-based art.
Agniet Snoep “Still Life Serie–Prawn Photo 11,8×17,6” 2011, courtesy of Amstel Gallery.
“LA is experiencing a remarkable moment in its artistic history,” says director Adam Gross, formerly on the development team at MOCA, who orchestrated the fair’s inception in 2011 with Paul Morris, founding director of the Armory Show. “It’s objectively and quantifiably one of the most productive art centers in the world.”
Sherin Guirguis “Untitled (wadi II)” 2012 Mixed media on hand-cut paper 48 x 48 in, courtesy of Gallery Wendi Norris and Sherin Guirguis.
Galleries from London, Tokyo, Paris and Berlin, to name a few, are bringing materials specifically to resonate with the LA collectors. Keep an eye out for Tokyo’s Whitestone Gallery, which will premiere a selection of Gutai (a Japanese movement symbolizing embodiment) paintings that have remained unseen in artist studios for nearly 50 years. Other highlights include the LA-based contemporary art from Paris’ Praz–Delavallade gallery, the Santa Monica Museum of Art’s collection of Environmental and Conceptual Art, and live installations such as Rachel Lee Hovnanian’s “Café,” a mixed-media performance piece in which a small-town Texas café is not all it seems.
Rachel Lee Hovnanian’s “Café” installation creates the illusion of a neighborhood café in Nagadoches, Texas—complete with lab-created coffee simulations and a friendly @CafeWaitress.
The art fair takes over Santa Monica’s enormous Barker Hangar in addition to an adjacent outdoor tent, both with soaring 40-foot ceilings. It’s a big step up from the L.A. Mart Design Center basement, where the event was held in 2011, and the new, expansive digs seems an appropriate reflection of the city’s emerging reputation as an artistic hub.
By night, art enthusiasts can celebrate opening night with dancing and at the official after party, held at The Colony at 7 p.m., 1743 N. Cahuen Blvd. Tickets start at $40 and get you into the private opening night preview on September 27 (all proceeds benefit LACMA Muse).
Art Platform — Los Angeles
September 28 – 30, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
3021 Airport Ave., Santa Monica, www.artplatform-losangeles.com
