Celebrating FOCA@40, FOCA Curator’s Lab
FOCA@40, Conversation with Curators, MOCA LA
2015
The Fellows of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (FOCA), a non-profit organization founded in 1976, sponsors California artists, curators, and exhibitions. For their 40th anniversary I curated a video program that featured artists who have received FOCA fellowships or participated in their exhibitions.
Eleanor Antin’s Swan Lake, a segment from her Archives of Modern Art, is a hilarious and lascivious back stage encounter between Eleanora Antinova and a male counterpart.Rachel Lachowicz’s Red Not Blue re-stages Yves Klein’s Anthropemetries (1960) but Lachowicz, uses a male model to make body prints in her signature red lipstick.Jennifer West’s Rainbow Party on 70 mm film and A 70 mm Film Wearing Thick Heavy Black Liquid Eyeliner that Gets Smeary are examples of her hand-made digitized films that physically manipulate analogue celluloid film. Bruce Yonemoto’s Pan-Panorama features the kiss from Alfred Hitchcockʼs film, “Vertigo” but the scenes panoramically circling the lovers are replaced with tracking shots from classic films from all over the world. Martin Kersels’ Pink Constellation, inspired by Fred Astaire’s Royal Wedding, uses a cinematic device called a gimble–– to shoot a surreal video of man (Kersels) looking for an elusive girl (Melinda Ring) as they dancing all around her teen-age bedroom. Kim Abeles’ three short videos, commissioned by LA Freewaves for Long Live LA, a series of 30 videos viewed in waiting rooms and on websites of community health clinics.
For FOCA@ 40 Curators in Conversation I presented two Fellow award exhibitions: Kim Abeles Encyclopedia Persona: a Fifteen Year Survey and Topographies (on this website) Following Connie Butler’s presentation of her Fellows show, we engaged in a lively conversation about the cultural landscape of LA and how it has changed in the past 40 years with Helen Molesworth and Franklin Sirmans.