Category: Visual Art

Satanic Manic: Lethal Amounts Honors Anton LaVey on Halloween with ‘Disobey’ Gallery

Brent Smith November 9, 2017

I was a Catholic boy/ Redeemed through pain, not through joy. Now I’m a Catholic man/ I put my tongue to the rail whenever I can. Jim Carroll, “Catholic Boy” Still feeling those post-Halloween blues. There’s nothing worse in adulthood than the end of the most mischievous night of the year, followed by the prospective onslaught of family holidays for the next two months. Particularly when you’ve had a good Samhain, the kind that has you making love to ghosts, and stirs your dead-belly energy to remind you the world isn’t some grey financial dead zone ‘til the grave. Writer Paula Guran once wrote, “The farther we’ve gotten from the magic and mystery of our past, the more we’ve come to need Halloween.” related content: Halloween At The Roxy w/ The Evil Ones: Roky Ericksen & Death Valley Girls My Halloween in this foul year of Our Lord, 2017 (fouler than last, but who could’ve seen that) was spent in the speakeasy dungeon of Madam Siam below Hollywood Boulevard—more catacomb labyrinth than cocktail bar—with no cell service, and plenty of great beasts. It was a night honoring hip Satanist guru, Anton LaVey, and the 20th anniversary of his death

The New Grass Sniffers: GrassFed and The Art Of Edibles Celebrate 50th Anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band with Ganja

Janky Smooth Central Command September 27, 2017

At a pop-up gathering in Downtown Los Angeles, GrassFed and the Art of Edibles cosponsored an event celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The two boutique collectives displayed their cannabis finery from vape options and CBD oil elixirs to confectionery. The downtown space had the feeling of a large personal art studio and was filled like a convention with many offerings and samples. The upstairs stage on one side was approached by a narrow spiral staircase, while a second upstairs space served as more of a meeting area. The dimly lit atmosphere was vibrant with Beatles inspired art, including a huge chrome submarine that the loft owner built specifically for the production of “Love” by Cirque Du Soleil. A 3D rendition of the yellow submarine was projected across the vaulted ceilings met with The Beatles’ Catalog playing its theme. The attendees looked like a combination of Silicon Valley’s alternative geniuses (the John McAfees of the world) rubbing shoulders with venture capitalists, and sophisticated commercial artists and musicians. The purpose of this gathering was to have a unique cultural experience that combined the classical sounds of the Beatles with the finest cannabis products. related content: Weedeater

Summer Happenings at The Broad: The Perfect Excuse To Hit The Museum

Danny Baraz August 26, 2016

Last week, I got an email from a publicist named Jonathan who invited Janky Smooth to come cover the third installment of Non Object(ive), Summer Happenings event at The Broad Museum in Downtown Los Angeles. I became pretty excited. Not because of the lineup of DJ’s and performers that were scheduled to perform such as Vampire Weekend’s, Rostam or Sparkle Division but because I have yet to experience The Broad Museum since it opened in September 2015. Yes, begin your culture shaming now. It’s not as if you need media credentials to view The Broad’s permanent collection of postwar and contemporary art but you do need to make reservations that are backed up by 2 months and also, pay extra to view the Cindy Sherman exhibit, attend the Summer Happenings show and have access to all areas of the museum. So covering some music I only had a mild interest in wasn’t a big price to pay to walk all areas of The Broad. Last month, Summer Happenings featured a reading by Richard Hell and a dark wave DJ set by Sky Ferreira so I was more than a bit interested to see the scene that was developing amongst the

The Bay to L.A.: Cahill Wessel Opening Launches Carlos Queso Gallery

Brent Smith October 8, 2015

The first time I saw Cahill Wessel IRL he was already zipping past me, skating down Alvarado, through the neglected tent city 101 underpass, probably picking up more beer for the show. The Faded Glory exhibit was an inaugural night for the Carlos Queso Gallery, starting things off right with psychedelic renderings. The new art space is a true studio, like the shoeboxes we’re accustomed to living in, no more than maybe a few hundred square feet, making for intimate mingling that’s often lost to the cold spaces of larger galleries. There were sincere welcomes and good conversation as janky hipsters and shaggy gutterheads grabbed wine and beer from the cooler. Sharing the bill was artist Chris Rexroad, who not only holds a stake in the new gallery, but whose frisky collisions of 40 oz. Olde English, gold chains, and nature weaved in nicely with Wessel’s kitschy cartoon visions of tropical horror. Cahill Wessel showed back up carrying his skateboard in a loose, ratty t-shirt, skinny jeans, and a worn ‘Hawaii’ tourist trucker hat. Sipping beer and chain-smoking, he was all smiles, friendly and approachable, stoked on meeting new people. He and friends were crashing Airbnb-style. They raged at Los

Dismaland Would Kill in California: Murky Reflections in the Last Days of Summer

Brent Smith September 1, 2015

Whether we’re working retail or stumbling out of bed to make it to class (or both), it’s obvious that summer’s over. Some of us are bummed out, longing for those poolside tunes (and drinks), and pensively reminiscing about our summer hook-ups as we drive down the boulevard blasting either the cover of “Boys Of Summer” by The Ataris or Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” out the windows. While others of us may still be swearing and spitting at this goddamn fucking heat (and if you’re like me, you’re ravenously ushering in an early autumn with midnight magic spells in black-hooded cloaks, early morning rain dances in the nude, and animal sacrifices using the neighbor’s pets—you know the one, always barks at dawn in between trash pickups). Whichever side of the spectrum we’re on, we can all get a kick out of the ‘commercial’ for Banksy’s Dismaland in Somerset, England; along with a last (and rather gothic) taste of summer in this foul year of our lord—Two-Thousand & Fifteen. In the spirit of Dismaland’s dystopic commentary on our modern, and nightmarishly globalized mega-culture of oil spills, the refugee crisis, domestic abuse, abusive banking institutions, ramped up police states, or the psychopathic

Tod Seelie’s “Outland Empire” opens at Superchief Gallery in LA

Danny Baraz March 11, 2015

Tod Seelie– A New York based conceptual photographer opens a gallery show in L.A. with L.A. as his subject. One might think that you would see images of glamour, celebrities and sparkling oceans and gentrified neighborhoods. Too many have come in to this city with their lens to act as some sort of proxy paparazzi and half heartedly walked amongst the more obvious landmarks and landscapes to capture a cliche. I knew, even before viewing his work at the Superchief Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles that that would not be the case with Tod Seelie. Tod Seelie’s show, “Outland Empire” captures Los Angeles and it’s outlying territories in a sort of post apocalyptic glamour. The glamor of tweekers and flamethrowers and the glamour of beer and sweat soaked teenagers in the midst of an angry slam pit. Non obvious landscapes and non obvious people as subjects seems to be what catches Seelie’s eye. Eaddy from Ho99o9 mentioned that they would be playing a show at the Tod Seelie opening the other week and I drew a blank on the connection between the name Tod Seelie and his works. Once I started doing some digging I came across his Bright Nights book and

The LA Art/Book Fair with Thurston Moore and Ho99o9

Danny Baraz February 4, 2015

Los Angeles- our Art, Literature, Music, Culture and Tacos Can No Longer Be Easily Dismissed L.A. is in the midst of a renaissance. While most might call it gentrification, those people are not in the trenches that are being filled with artists, students, activists, authors and poets. While Manhattan and even Brooklyn are becoming more inaccessible to artists without extensive investment portfolios, the geography of Los Angeles allows those with small bank accounts and big ideas to fan out east and still be within the city and county limits of L.A. While the former glory, grit, angst, junkies, music scenes and yes, stank of Hollywood and The Sunset Strip have been replaced with chain night clubs, over priced eateries, spruced up sceneries and former botox beauty queens, Echo and Highland Park, East L.A., Boyle Heights and even the former toilet bowl known as Downtown Los Angeles are overflowing with housing, lockout rehearsal studios and concrete, commercial structures that house painters and nihilistic youth. Idealism abounds and there is even more real estate further east that can support small budgets and big dreams, at least until the day that LA is swallowed by the Pacific Ocean. Los Angeles has always gotten a bad

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