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Main | Artists | Images | Curatorial Statement
YellowCurated by Lia Trinka-Browner
May 29 - June 28, 2008
featuring Christopher Michlig, Tamara Sussman, & Anna Watson
Heralded as a decadent high culture magazine for the masses, The Yellow Book, printed in London between the years of 1894-1897, served as a beginning model in the interest of a new form of collaboration,which encouraged innovative methods in the realm of the quarterly magazine or journal. Yellow in name and cloth, the color was borrowed according to its association to French Literature of the time. The color yellow is tied to happiness, but also barnacled by a number of unflattering linkages between decadence, disease, scandal, and cowardice, an expression in French –- "rire jaune" ("yellow laughter") which could be translated into English as "mirthless laughter" –summarizes this economy.
Over a hundred years later, the landscape of California displays it’s
own associations with decadence. Within this landscape lies both a
natural golden-ness typified by laid-back posturing, as well as a type
of "rire-jaune" façade not unknown by the cameras of Hollywood.
Arising out of this is a casually skeptical, role-playing mentality
that gives way to both hard partying and innovative daydreaming.
Decadence subtly crashes against minimalism, somewhere between the
ocean and the desert, creating a rare and vital aesthetic.
Along with a publication, appearing in a "reader" format, the
exhibition will showcase three emerging California-based artists:
Christopher Michlig, Tamara Sussman and Anna Watson. The reader will
include many young emerging writers and illustrators, taking the model
of The Yellow Book, yet rendering it fit for the cultural climate of
today, borrowing from a color that has been lumped with a wide range
of associations; the yellow pages, racially demeaning slang, fast-food
restaurant color profiling and Donavan’s catch lyric "They call me
mellow yellow"…all material for investigation.
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REVIEW OF THE SHOW
CATHERINE TAFT’S ROUND-UP OF THE BEST SHOWS IN LA on Saatchi Online