Trippy Highlights From LA’s Spring/Break Art Show
Image courtesy of Hyperallergic.
LOS ANGELES — There’s a perennial booth rule at Spring/Break Art Show: “No white walls.” This directive gave the warehouse space in Culver City the aura of a migraine without the headache. I was offered a tour during the fair’s opening, but I preferred to drift and collect my little papers as I went, letting myself be drawn in by affinity and raw interest. I have a librarian friend who uses a very simple litmus for art: She either feels something or she doesn’t. I find this useful for navigating enormous rooms full of both art and art people.
Started by Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly in 2009 in New York City as a tertiary alternative art fair, Spring/Break moved west some five years ago and is now in its fifth iteration in Los Angeles, running through this Sunday, March 3. This year’s theme of “INT/EXT” alludes to being inside but also outside, I guess? I don’t think art fairs need themes, as they tend to be incongruous smorgasbords of gallery offerings, but Spring/Break has a more elastic and less prohibitive cost-to-entry that welcomes curators, artist’s projects, and upstart galleries. And I like pondering on what out-of-towners think of California, as evidenced by the amount of car, desert, and palm tree iconography. Paintings, of course, reigned supreme, along with a few bespoke immersive installations, a handful of sculptures, and videos.
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Speaking of cigarettes, artist and curator Thomas Martinez Pilnik, tufted a few in his double-boothed project FLUSH, produced with fellow artists Janet Loren Hill, Marianna Peragallo, and Taylor Lee Nicholson. The soft yarn of Pilnik’s giant cigarettes propped up against the wall with Peragallo’s “Amor Perfeito (Pansy)” (2022) contrasts with Nicholson’s ceramic spray cleaning bottle labeled “The best thing about DIVORCE is no longer cleaning up after a grown man and the puddle of piss pooling at the foot of the toiler.” (Never again!!! Congrats to Nicholson!!!)
Image courtesy of Hyperallergic.