“The L.A. Aesthetic”

“Eden’s Edge,” the current exhibition within UCLA’s Hammer Art Museum, gathers fifteen distinctively creative individuals under the umbrella of “L.A. artists.” Well, ok. So there’s a slew of people in this city hawking their craft. What makes this bunch worthy of such a prestigious show? The Hammer hails this group as sort-of Regionalists, albeit this group is more David Hockney than Thomas Hart Benton. We’ll call them So-Cal Regionalists, each applying their Angelean influence and/or perspective to the work they create. The result is a portrait of Los Angeles as diverse and contradictory as our beloved city itself.

We enter into the collection among the massive paintings of Lari Pittman, whose Pop-inspired works are part Lichtenstein, part Miriam Schapiro and part Stan Lee. His colorful, energetic pieces have the buzz and bustle often associated with LA.

Mark Bradford, who contributes his equally large, mixed media works also seems to be influenced by the excess among our city. He combines fragments of miscellaneous paper, duct tape, etc, to echo peeling layers of billboards, overwhelming signals of consumerism. Works that are not emblazoned with bold text (ie: “James Brown is Dead”) are like aerial views of the city.
Rebecca Morales takes a much different approach. Her watercolor-on-calf-vellum works are painstakingly detailed botanical studies. Morales emphasizes the geographic elements of our landscape. The results are insanely lifelike, so much so that you’ll be peering at them as intensely as slide under a microscope.

Ginny Bishton’s collages, too, have a scientific feel. She creates amoeba-like mosaics from fragments of photographs (whose former subjects were plant life). Her intricate works are glittering and impressive.

The collection is rounded out by the fantastical works of Jim Shaw, trippy landscapes of Sharon Ellis, and hauntingly sexualized watercolors of Monica Majoli, among others. No doubt people will leave the exhibition talking about the work of one other artist, Jason Rhoades, whose installation Twelve Wheel Wagon Wheel Chandelier cannot be ignored. Rhoades merges his farm-raised roots with gritty, big-city-living, by hanging neon euphemisms for girl-parts from a dozen wooden wagon wheels. The work is unabashed and unapologetic.

-Ashley Tibbits