Gallery Focus
Photos Courtesy of country club projects
T
he Buck House, a 1934 private residence by homegrown legend of Modernist architecture RM Schindler, is an exemplar of his language for crisp white lines, glass-walled courtyards, breezy open plains, and sleek systems of built-in cabinetry. It presents a unique space for the artists showing at Country Club Project LA’s loosely-defined “residencies.” Robbie Conal, the iconic painter, illustrator, and poster artist whose impressive exhibition “The Missing Link” capped a banner year with an art-star-studded opening, is appreciative of the Country Club Projects’ director and his vision. “Country Club is quite eclectic, and Christian Strike and John Knuth do -- thank the art gods for the next generation -- take wacky chances... like showing a sopping wet, big pink octopus strangling CEOs of mortgage banks at a Congressional hearing -- which I finished 3.5 minutes before the opening party.” The previous show, “Bright White Underground” by Justin Lowe and Jonah Freelander, was some risky business arousing mild panic and a thrill of forbidden adventure rarely found in galleries. Its cacophony of jumbled histories and sorted architecture prompted the writer Angel Chen to call it, “A must-see show whose alternately over-the-top roar of sensation and spectacle also reveals quiet purrs of coded pictorial language. Its cohesive narrative ties in conceptually, materially, and experientially, as themes of drug-induced American subculture and sociological experimentation devastate the Buck House, acting as a metaphor for our times.” Kori Newkirk’s installation last summer played with both sides of the site-specificity equation. A monumental floor piece occupied a full room, but still functioned as a social gatheringpoint. He further executed some unexpected architectural interventions, such as a series of magnetic sculptures with dotted glass windows, evoking the befuddling idea of a drive-by at a posh Schindler house on the Miracle Mile. Story by Shana Nys Dambrot.
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