It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with The Quiet Life, the little Los Angeles designy clothiers. They are known for their shirts and hats and have expanded into some winter wears too. They’ve been around for nearly fifteen years and still are carrying on an imagery driven brand, one that is about celebrating great images and the making of an image. Their new collection has new entries into this canon in addition to some heavier items that we haven’t seen before. (Then again, it has been a while since we’ve visited their online store.)
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Highland Park’s Night Gallery is just too cool. They consistently are putting on good shows, they have an unrivaled exclusivity, and a late night allure that is more performance than business gimmick. It’s a sexy place that sounds like an art fairy tale come to life. We have yet to go but we got a note from artist Alika Cooper over the weekend about her recently opened Night Gallery show with Anna Mayer. The show and the space certainly live up to their names.
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During the last year, I had the unique opportunity to witness a body of art work born by the hands and mind of the artist Sandeep Mukherjee. You could say I was his assistant but it was like no other job I ever held—-more like a middle-age mentorship. Sandeep approaches his art much like his life outside the studio—with grace, dignity, inquiry, care, seriousness and definitely humor. Fortunately, I have never found myself working for an artist who continues doling out the same doses of processual, sado-masochism onto his or her assistants like they did unto themselves when they had to make the work on their own. No, Sandeep would rather take formal elements of color, composition and material and ground them up in his version of a wave particle mortar and pestle that causes no one any harm or danger. Sandeep’s process is a controlled yet complex experiment with multiple matters and mixtures subsumed, exposed and allowed to develop naturally. What is revealed over and over on the surfaces of his paintings is utterly unique, visual elixirs of wild richness, density and spatial ecstasy.
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Ben Lee Ritchie Handler is a cool librarian. Such a claim sounds impossible but Ben Lee really may be the world’s hippest bookman. He’s a gangly guy who is always suited in casually formal wear with a head of cleanly messy hair. He has a punk rock air to him and has the charm of a giggly muppet. He does a lot in Los Angeles, including DJing at Mandrake and stand-up comedy at art shows. He’s very smart and can speak to various movements of contemporary art. After all, his cool librarian credibility comes from his work with Gagosian Gallery; he is their embedded Los Angeles Librarian and Archivist.
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Sheesh: it’s been such crisp weather this week, no? It’s really been quite Autumnal! While man of us are grabbing coats and bundling up while we can, we’re in a weird mix of Summer hangover activities and Autumnal greeting celebrations. Like what? Well, like tons of stuff you’ll find in THE RECAP!!
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