| Word went out on the internet ten days before the show opened—an invitation to artists to pack up some art and head down to High Energy Constructs in LA’s Chinatown arts district. This was no ordinary invitation, but an online chain letter. Each person who got the email was to forward it to ten others, who would in turn forward it to ten…and so on. Other than the mild suggestion that forwarding the email would “further the cause of human evolution,” this one did not employ the superstitious threats and promises that are so much a part of the chain letter oeuvre. However the allure of its free-wheeling call for entries was in evidence on installation day when there were already 170 names in the entry book by mid-afternoon. |  |
(Not) Curated by Doug Harvey and Christian Cummings – Kim Bockus
Word went out on the internet ten days before the show opened—an invitation to artists to pack up some art and head down to High Energy Constructs in LA’s Chinatown arts district. This was no ordinary invitation, but an online chain letter. Each person who got the email was to forward it to ten others, who would in turn forward it to ten…and so on. Other than the mild suggestion that forwarding the email would “further the cause of human evolution,” this one did not employ the superstitious threats and promises that are so much a part of the chain letter oeuvre. However the allure of its free-wheeling call for entries was in evidence on installation day when there were already 170 names in the entry book by mid-afternoon. The final count of participants was 220, and in credit to the sometimes underestimated egalitarian side of the L.A. art scene it included an organic mix of established and up-and-coming artists, such as Marnie Weber, Jim Shaw, Mark Dutcher, Dani Tull, Phyllis Green and Raffi Kalendarian.
Chain Letter was put in motion by Doug Harvey, writer/curator/musician, who was toying with the idea of a rummage sale to pare down his own stuff. But he lacked a garage in which to host a garage sale, so teamed up with friend Christian Cummings who had just been offered a ten-day slot in HEC’s schedule. Between them the idea evolved into its present form—a chain letter snowballing through cyberspace, gathering exponential momentum, and ending with gallery owner Michael Smoler opening his doors to one of the summer’s most original exhibitions. Smoler is no stranger to hybridized artforms, every three weeks his gallery turns itself into a club/performance space and rocks the street with happenings that can only be described as, well…, as high energy constructs. Like the night Lee Lynch channeled Buddy Holly or the evanescent appearances of resident band Fireworks with its blend of music, performance and storytelling. The show’s co-curator Christian Cummings, who plays in Fireworks and several other bands, has his own work in the show—a sculptural “doodle” of Weird Al Yankovic which reflects his interest in “using art as an excuse to move away from meaning.”
Chain Letter drop-off day is a performance in itself as a stream of artists straggle down Hill Street cradling strange objects in their arms. Inside, a rail-thin tattooed Sean Dockray lies awkwardly in a narrow space against the wall while accomplice Fiona Whitton draws his outline in chalk. They run Telic Gallery across the street, so it seems a sign that that the exhibition’s community-building aspirations are working. A few paces away Emilie Halpern kneels on the floor, assembling a delicate installation of white carnations. New arrivals step cautiously through the chaos, searching for a spot to stake their claim. Parameters for Chain Letter were that everything must be displayed on the floor, nothing on the walls or ceiling. In a nod to the spatial implications of the show’s “six degrees of separation” dynamic, the e-vite suggested that artists install their work near those of the people they had invited. Harvey comments that a time-lapse video would have been the perfect way to capture the event as he surveys the room and occasionally tweaks the placement of objects. His almost invisible curatorial hand sustains the random push and pull of the collectively installed space.
The show’s conglomeration of sculpture, installation, photography, video, knick-knacks, sound and food-based art teems along both sides of a narrow black-taped walkway and bears witness to the organizers’ tagline—“we turned the art world pyramid scheme upside down to see what would fall out.” What falls out is a tissue sample of the Los Angeles art scene. The eye moves from Jim Skuldt’s oxidizing banana peel to Marie Johnston’s reading table with lamp and breathing book titled Pyramid trips, secret leisure diarrheas and one far-future, to a motley piece of fabric that looks like it could have been dropped off by one of the downtown homeless guys who occasionally pass by. It’s actually Jim Shaw’s piece, Flayed Skin of a Meat Tornado, hung opposite Marnie Weber’s clownish white-sheeted figure with dunce hat that calls up conflicting associations of the Klan and Casper the Friendly Ghost. The exhibition opens a dialog about physical and spiritual community, the search for a warm embrace in a cool, stratified and fortified city. Here two artists and a gallery owner have busted down the walls by relinquishing control over their exhibition and space. While control is inherently exclusive (this is acceptable, this is not), surrender is inclusive—the water that flows simply and easily along the path of least resistance, the central metaphor of the Tao. Only good luck can come of it.
