©CLARISSA TOSSIN
As its prime draws closer and closer, anticipation of the upcoming edition of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA continues to mount. With one exhibition already open—to rave reviews in the Los Angeles Times and the New Yorker—and more than 70 exhibitions to follow in mid-September, the Getty Foundation has added an extra layer of programming to the festivities, with 66 Los Angeles–area galleries signed on to present complementing exhibitions, artists projects, and installations across the city, from Hollywood and the controversial new gallery enclave Boyle Heights to Santa Monica and Culver City, traditionally considered the heart of the city’s gallery district.
The roster includes some marquee international galleries that have outposts in town, including Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, and Sprüth Magers, as well as some of L.A.’s own major outfits like Blum & Poe, Cherry and Martin, Kohn Gallery, L.A. Louver, and Regen Projects. Also included are some of the city’s more experimental and curatorially driven spaces like Honor Fraser, Ltd Los Angeles, Park View, Commonwealth and Council, and The Box LA.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GAGOSIAN
In a statement, Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, said, “Our ambition is to reveal on an unprecedented scale the diversity and complexity of Latin American and Latino art by looking at key historical moments, movements, and figures, as well as at the variety of contemporary practices that are so abundant today.”
The gallery programming appears to focus on art and artists that have never been shown on the West Coast, or in the United States, much like the initiative for PST: LA/LA at large. Highlights include Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão at Gagosian, where her multi-channel video Transbarroco will get its U.S. debut; a group show curated by Abraham Cruzvillegas and Gabriel Kuri at Regen Projects; the group show “Tell Me a Story: Contemporary Mexican Photography,” curated by Alejandro Cartagena, at Kopeikin Gallery; Ken Gonzalez-Day at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles; and, at The Box LA, “Dysfunctional Formulas of Love,” which will bring together work by Colombian artists who look at “historical colonialism and daily micro-fascism in their country.”
One exhibition that will tie particularly closely into PST: LA/LA is a solo show at Craig Krull Gallery for Gilbert “Magu” Luján, known for his exuberant and fanciful works, many in the shape of sculptural cars, that merged and mixed iconography of pre-Colombian, traditional Mexican craft, and quintessentially Chicano varieties. Magu, who was a member of the storied Chicano collective “Los Four,” the first Chicanos to ever have an exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will also be the focus of a Getty-funded solo exhibition at UC Irvine’s University Art Galleries, titled “Aztlán to Magulandia: The Journey of Chicano artist Gilbert ‘Magu’ Luján.”
©THE ESTATE OF GILBERT “MAGU” LUJÁN
Also of note are two projects that will bring together galleries based in Latin America to the city in the form of a shared exhibition space. ProyectosLA will bring together a mix of established galleries, including Mexico City’s OMR and São Paulo’s Galeria Nara Rosler, and emerging spaces, like Bogota’s Insituto de Visión and Sao Paulo’s Galeria Jaqueline Martins, to a converted warehouse downtown. The second project, Ruberta, will bring some of the most interesting outfits in Latin America, many of which often show in international art fairs, to Glendale. Among those included are Puerto Rico’s Galería Agustina Ferreyra and Guatemala City’s Proyectos Ultravioleta.
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is an exhibition initiative that the Getty launched in 2011 with a first edition, “Art in L.A. 1945–1980,” that looked at the city’s artistic production in the postwar era. For the New York Times, Roberta Smith wrote, “ ‘Pacific Standard Time’ has been touted as rewriting history. It seems equally plausible to say that it simply explodes it, revealing the immensity of art before the narrowing and ordering of the historicizing process.”
The forthcoming edition, PST: LA/LA—with the “LA” parts standing for any combination of Los Angeles, Latin America, and Latinx art—has been in the works for years, with over $16 million in grants going for research, implementation, and education and community interaction purposes. About the first exhibition already opened, “Home–So Different, So Appealing,” Los Angeles Times reporter Carolina Miranda wrote, “If ‘Home’ is a harbinger of what to expect for the rest of the series, it has set the bar high.”
The full list of galleries participating in PST: LA/LA follows below.
- 1301PE
- AArC | The AltaMed Art Collection
- Bermudez Projects
- bG Gallery
- Blum & Poe
- CB1 Gallery
- Cherry and Martin
- Christopher Grimes Gallery
- Cirrus Gallery
- Coagula Curatorial
- Commonwealth and Council
- Couturier Gallery
- Craig Krull Gallery
- Denenberg Fine Arts
- DXIX Projects
- FM Fine Art Gallery
- Freedman Fitzpatrick
- Gagosian
- Galerie Morille
- Gallery 38
- Gallery Luisotti Gavlak, Los Angeles
- Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles
- Honor Fraser
- Ibid Gallery
- Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Inc.
- Jai & Jai
- Jason Vass
- Klowden Mann
- Kohn Gallery
- Kopeikin Gallery
- LA Louver
- Latin American Masters
- Lois Lambert Gallery
- Los Angeles Modern Auctions
- Louis Stern Fine Arts
- Ltd Los Angeles
- Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
- M+B
- Maccarone
- MIM Gallery
- Mixografia
- Monte Vista Projects
- New Image Art
- Park View
- Peter Fetterman Gallery
- Proxy Gallery
- proyectosLA
- Quint Gallery
- Regen Projects
- Residency Art Gallery
- Richard Telles
- Robert Berman Gallery
- Roberts & Tilton
- ROSEGALLERY
- Royale Projects: Contemporary Art
- Ruberta
- saltfineart
- Schomburg Gallery
- Skidmore Contemporary Art
- Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles
- Steve Turner
- TAJ•ART Studio Gallery
- The Box LA
- The Loft at Liz’s
- Timothy Yarger Fine Art
- Tobey C. Moss Gallery
- VENUS LA
- Wilding Cran Gallery