• U·to·pi·a: any visionary system of political or social perfection.

• ni·hil·ism: total and absolute destructiveness, esp. toward the world at large and including oneself [...].

Gotcha. Considering we were to be in the company of active members of a Utopian Nihilist movement, I figured it best to come armed with sufficient vocabulary. In celebration of the release of poet Milo Martin’s book, “Poems for the Utopian Nihilist”, an eclectic group of writers representing a vast expanse of the literary world took to the floor of Skylight Books, bringing equal parts light and darkness to all in attendance.

Martin opened up the evening with “Velocity” - the first poem in his collection - showcasing talent in molding strange beauty from figurative gutter debris, and therefore laying a suitable foundation for the readings to follow. Unfortunately, Chris Tannahill was unable to show, so at his suggestion Martin read his “Zero Gravity Fire, or the Slaughterhouse Waltz”, referred to as “the finest death poem of the 21st century”. Short story writer Mary Otis read a story from the opening pages of “Yes Yes Cherries” entitled “Unstruck”, a childhood interpretation of the adult world in which regret is referred to as “the useless emotion”, and where “‘fix me’ always led to marriage”.

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Gordon Chandler, The “Game” Show
The Lois Lambert Gallery of Functional Art
Bergamot Station, Santa Monica
September 13 - November 9

Many of the galleries at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica are going through a mid-year change of exhibitions. One notable new show opening this Saturday at the Lois Lambert Gallery at the station is The “Game” Show by Gordon Chandler, named for Chandler’s oversized game boards made of society’s cast-off goods. The gallery hosts functional art, perfect for Chandler’s work, which is function in form as well as message.

Chandler has been challenging the value of objects and materials via sculpture for over three decades. By exaggerating size and abandoning orthodox materials for, say, scrap metal and auto parts, his works become critical of the use-value paradigm. Chandler achieves a similar effect when he makes a giant crossword puzzle out of steel, elevating the mundane not only by increasing its size, but also by considering it as an art subject.

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This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in L.A. Photographs
The Huntington Library
Ends September 15

The Huntington Library’s photography exhibit, This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in L.A. Photographs, ends this week, timed perfectly with the close of another L.A. summer. In the show’s last week, you can go to the secluded botanical paradise of the many gardens at the Huntington before getting all thoughtful about the depiction of your complicated hometown in film over the last hundred and forty odd years.

Since 1860, both the physical landscape of the region, as well as the physical nature and awareness of the people living there, has been captured in celluloid. This photography attends to the complexities of the South Land, a place that any Los Angelino must feel bittersweet about. One must learn quickly in LA the difference between appearances and reality, an aphorism that the show’s photography points to. True, L.A. is the nation’s capital for fame, success, leisure, and glamour, but is also home to racial tensions, merciless traffic, and unfulfilled dreams. The photographs in the show represent the physicality of this binary that makes Los Angeles so alluring, yet somehow treacherous.

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Ed Ruscha: A Selection of Prints
The Greenfield Sacks Gallery
Bergmot Station, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica

Hey cool post-modern art kids, you have just one week left to enjoy the Pop Art prints of Ed Ruscha at the Greenfield Sacks Gallery in Santa Monica’s haven for contemporary art, Bergamot Station. Ruscha’s textual “word paintings” are credited for the birth of the Pop Art movement, along with Warhol’s silk screened multiples and Lichtenstein’s comic reproductions.

Ruscha’s stark prints gain much of their notorious and sardonic satire from their simplicity. His works span multiple mediums, from photography and painting to print making as in the show, frequently featuring single words, phrases, or repetitions. This plurality of mediums and influences, however, ironically echoes the banality of LA life and the onslaught of text created by mass media, instead of the city’s rumored energy and potential. If his works seem at all dull or familiar, that is sort of the point.

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Circle In The Square
The Brand Library Art Galleries
1601 West Mountain St, Glendale

August 2 - September 5, 2008
Opening Reception August 2, 5 - 8pm

This show brought to you by circles and squares. Actually, the theme of this group exhibit at the Brand Library Art Galleries in Glendale is Circle In The Square. Believe it or not, not more than one artist has works that speak to this spatial subject matter; the group show includes works by Yesung Kim, Barbara Kolo, Susan Sironi, Luke Van Hook, and Cheryl Walker, with a special dance performance by Liz Curtis and Martha Carrascosa.

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Lisa Lapinski sculptures

The Fret And Its Variant

Lisa Lapinski’s installations utilize wood, wallpaper, and various found objects, in addition to other, more sturdy, materials. She approaches the traditional methods and boundaries of space and volume and shatters these practices while incorporating questions of language, association, and pattern. In essence, Lapinski’s imaginative sculptures incorporate staples of their genre such as wood and wire, cement and clay, as well as more conventional forms of photography, painting, and drawing. Her unique combination of contrasting materials helps her work resonate with with narrative meaning that often derives from psychological, historical, and philosophical meaning.

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As a character designer I have to draw all types of people and creatures, but all of us have a particular type of person we like to draw off the clock. Mine is curvy women. This week I’ve been drawing more than my usual amount of them.

There’s been so much debate over the size zero issue, but apart from the odd overboard celebrity, I’ve rarely seen women that size walking around here. What’s nice about LA is the variety of women here. The publicized women do tend to be of intimidatingly slim proportions, but we also have many Latino women who always have wonderful curves. I’ve heard such mixed reactions; some women say it’s hard to be curvy here due to Hollywood’s influence, but others embrace the fact that LA is such a diverse city.

I’ve been particularly influenced this week by Beth Ditto from punk band ‘The Gossip’, who is a plus sized girl, who often strips down to her underwear during shows. I liked her because she’s fierce - she doesn’t buy into the stereotype of ‘big girl = big jolly personality’. Ditto is sexy and unapologetic, she even appeared on the front of music magazine NME naked.

I think you just have to be happy with yourself. Size zero and obesity are obviously two sides of the scale, but as long as you’re healthy and comfortable with yourself, what does it matter.

Tradition as Innovation in African Art
Through November 2, 2008
Ahmanson Building, Plaza Level
LACMA

The “Tradition as Innovation in African Art” exhibit currently displayed at LACMA seems to be an exercise in re-appropriation. With “avant garde” being a reference to the numerous artists and works of the Modernist period influenced visually by African work, one would expect to have the show dedicated to snatching back its pieces in order to debase any Picasso figure with horizontally slit eyes. Instead, it reveals to the viewer how the objects featured—mostly West African works from the 19^th century and some from the 20^th, the most recent having been created by Kenyan artist, Magdalene Odano, in 1995—have practical as well as profound reasons for being created and used. As a result it pushes the boundaries of expectations we have in understanding how art can be utilized through its visual devices.

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Chinaman’s Chance
Zhi Lin, Arthur Ou, Amanda Ross Ho
March 6 - July 27, 2008
Media Preview: March 6, 10 - 11am
Opening Reception: March 13, 6 - 9pm

The Pacific Asia Museum is presenting a major multi-media exhibition that aims to examine the Chinese American experience, from the days of the construction of the Transcontinental railroad to present day.
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David Cotner, experimental musican behind Hertz-Lion, will be bringing a night of world class experimental jams at Beyond Baroque, which has been the center for literary arts in Venice since 1968.

The night will feature music by four musicians, two of whom are native to Los AngelesPhil Niblock is a New York based minimalist composer and multi media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia is known for his microtonal drone compositions.

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Events around Los Angeles for the upcoming weekend.

• Morrissey Tribute Show | Saturday, March 8 | $10 | Hully Gully - Map

Morrissey fans of the world unite, tribute band These Handsome Devils will be live on stage at Hully Gully singing their hearts out and paying their respects to The Mozfather.

• The Color Purple | Sunday, March 9 | 8 p.m.| $45 and up | Ahmanson Theatre - Map

Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Color Purple comes to Los Angeles in theater form at the Ahmanson Theatre. Although American Idol alum Fantasia Barrino will not be in the L.A show, the cast includes many other talented stage veterans.

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I had the privilege of hearing an excerpt from Robert W. Fox’s work on Sunday February 24th at the Reading Rhapsodomancy in Hollywood. The excerpt is part of a much larger memoir soon to hit the bookstores called: No Direction Home. The story is about (no spoiler alert) a young boy who loses his mother at the age of 16, is estranged from his father and for the next few decades looks for a family or a place to call home.

A memoir that has taken the author through certain parts of Europe and the U.S. that while listening to Mr. Fox read I was immediately pulled in by his uncanny grasp to point out the diverse nuances that exist within a culture. At the end of the reading I was able to nab the author for a few moments and ask a few questions…here are his answers.

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