"BLACK BOX" - Curated by Peter Frank
Peter Frank is a Los Angeles based art critic and writes for Angeleno Magazine, Artweek and LA Weekly among others.
Mr. Frank curated the inaugural exhibition, "Black Box" at ANOTHER YEAR IN LA and his curator's statement is below.
“Black Box” is a response not to an idea or a movement, but to a space – a very specific exhibition space that over the course of a year I had witnessed changing not only its contents but its properties. During the last four months of the twelve in which David Stone displayed his “One Year In L.A.” concepts, the smallish space he designated as the container for these concepts turned from a fairly straightforward clean white capsule to an increasingly dramatic clean black capsule. By the end of Stone’s run, his intimate exhibition room had become a showcase for films, bright images made brighter, and objects spotlit like gems. When Stone invited me to organize the first show of the space’s second year – “Another Year in L.A., “ this time featuring the work of his confreres – I responded to the condition of the space itself, as it has carried over from 2004. Accordingly, the show is called ”Black Box,” for that is what the space is at the moment. And accordingly, I have chosen several works that are going to look unusually striking in a black box, paintings, photomedia and sculpture whose eye-popping qualities will be enhanced when surrounded by the absence of color (which is what black is) rather than the presence of all colors (which is what white is).
Edward Beckett’s animated abstraction inspired by music, the sequence of cool geometric paintings by Manuela Friedmann, an enlarged version of one of Diane Holland’s photocopy manipulations, an all-over “fractal” composition Daniel Kaufman has painted with melted Crayolas, and a free-standing resin sculpture in which DeWain Valentine has suspended color comprise “Black Box.” The elegant and the exuberant co-exist and co-operate in a visual field that frames them optimally.
- Peter Frank
another year in LA is located at 2121 N. San Fernando Road, #13, Los Angeles, CA 90065
Gallery phone: 323-223-4000