Exterior view of SLOW CULTURE via SLOWCULTURE.com.
When someone is applying to art school, they usually decide to focus on a specific medium. It’s one way to hone in on the bigger picture of what their art is about; to major in every medium because the student can’t pick one is problematic. The same issue plagues the broad, all-encompassing vagueness that is the exhibition PDFW: Performance. Drawing. Film. Writing. by the collective DFW at SLOW CULTURE in Chinatown.
Dubbed as a “new phase for the secret international art club that is DFW,” the show is a collection of works focusing on performance, drawing, film and writing that’s as vague as a tweet that reads: “lol wtf tbh tfw yolo idk.” The show includes pieces by DFW members Ara Peterson, Rose Luardo, Isaac Lin, Ivete Lucas, Patrick Bresnan, Jessica Ciocci, Jacob Ciocci, Lily Quan, Dan Murphy, Ben Jones, Ken Kagami, Emilia Brintnall, Jesse Geller and Andrew Jefferey Wright. It’s unpleasant to get lost in a sea of boundary-less randomness that’s chock full of clashing styles and a general sense of ambivalence, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re down for whatever.
Installation view of Rose Luardo’s “The New Dream” and “Undeathable Plants” (both 2016)
The 14 artists in this show occupy the entirety of the ground-level gallery, which boasts floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto Chung King Road. The entirety of this space is occupied, making the show feel more like a warehouse of art than a gallery exhibition. Andrew Jeffrey Wright contributes more than 20 pieces, a varying array of political cartoon-style drawings, and paintings that are either of hands or just random patterns. Ara Peterson’s work is either slinky-looking graphite swishes drawn on paper, or trippy wood and acrylic paintings that somehow appear three-dimensional.
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Ben Jones makes mixed-media ladders, cones, and hats that look like cones. Jacob Ciocci’s “adult coloring book for relaxation” series takes the mish-mash of patterns seen throughout the show and makes them into something that could be constructive. Rather than stressing about all the patterns in this show, now you can draw them yourself in an adult coloring book. There’s so much work like this that it’s hard to focus on any one thing in particular.
Installation view of Emilia Brintnall & Rose Luardo’s “Hag Hut” (2016), paper mache, mixed media.
Despite the vagueness of this exhibition premise, I found myself drawn to the Gray Gardens-esque corner installation Hag Hut (2016) by Emilia Britnall and Rose Luardo. Here, we see a video of the two of them transferring different types of eggs into each other’s mouths; there’s also a chair, which is aptly titled the Hag Hut: Love Seat — and a buttplug-looking thing on it would be oh-so-easy for you to sit on and accidentally pleasure yourself because seriously, isn’t art is just about pleasure?
Scattered below the chair, we see a newspaper clipping of Leonardo DiCaprio holding his Oscar trophy, a pack of gum, some Maxi pads, advertisements . . . an array of stuff, perhaps, that matches some of the other arrangements of household things found within this room. Besides the butt plug-looking object, there’s also a paper mache-pipe-looking thing with beads on it, which seem to be anal beads. Lots of other items can be found in Hag Hut, like a prescription bottle of just MEDICINE and some busted-looking birth control. The question to ask is: Do you want to visit this makeshift abode and, if so, how long will you stay? There is a lot to see and sit on, so best to take your time unless you want to just wander through the explosively patterned art that covers the walls.
Despite the more cohesive hut sprawling all over one corner of this exhibition, most of the work in this show felt disjointed and random, applying usual low-fi hipster aesthetics or just pop culture reference-overloads. The take-away: Don’t expect much from a show that’s “down for whatever.”
PDFW runs through April 3 at SLOW CULTURE (943 N. Hill Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012).
Installation view of “PDFW” via SlowCulture.com
Installation view of Jessica Ciocci’s “The Interceptors” (2015)
