(Los Angeles, USA)
An event that will transform Los Angeles and Southern California for five months, and our understanding of modern and contemporary art forever. We admit it: it’s bold. Yet, there’s no better way to describe “Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA”, which starts this month across various venues in Southern California, from Santa Barbara to San Diego, Santa Monica to Palm Springs. Featuring over 60 exhibitions, the initiative hopes to raise complex and provocative issues about the relations between Latin American art and Latino heritage and culture in the US – the double “LA” of the title refers, incidentally, to the close-knit ties between Los Angeles and Latin America.
The majority of the shows of the program have an emphasis on modern and contemporary art, although there are also crucial exhibitions about the ancient world and the pre-modern era. With topics such as luxury objects in the pre-Columbian Americas, alternative spaces in Mexico City, and boundary-crossing practices of Latino artists, exhibitions range from monographic studies of individual artists to broad surveys that cut across numerous countries.
Brazilian art and culture too are present in various exhibitions, sometimes as part of a broader Latin American ensemble (such as in “Condemned to be modern”, “A Universal History of Infamy”, “Radical Women: Latin American Art”, and “Video Art in Latin America”), sometimes as the sole focus of interest, like in “Building Material: Process and Form in Brazilian Art”, “Axé Bahia: The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis”, “Xerografia: Copyart in Brazil, 1970–1990” and “Lineage through Landscape: Tracing Egun in Brazil by Fran Siege”. In all cases, PIPA Prize nominees abound. Just to name a few, Renata Lucas, Berna Reale, Maria Laet, Beto Shwafaty, Rodrigo Cass, Erika Verzutti, Lenora de Barros, Caetano Dias, Rommulo Conceição, Ayrson Heráclito, Carla Zaccagnini and Sergio Allevato are some of the artists whose works will be on view in the featured “PST: LA/LA” shows. Allevato, by the way, recently had his canvas “California Flora” featured in a Los Angeles Times piece on one the shows that integrate the project, “How to Read El Pato Pascual: Disney’s Latin America and Latin America’s Disney”, on view at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in West Hollywood and at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State L.A. since September 9th.
PIPA Prize nominee in both 2010 and 2012, Sergio Allevato is one of the many Brazilian artists to have his works exhibited in a “PST: LA/LA” show. “California Flora”, for example, is one of the highlights of the exhibition “How to Read El Pato Pascual: Disney’s Latin America and Latin America’s Disney”, about Donald Duck’s presence in Latin America
A Getty enterprise, “Pacific Standard Time” is considered unparalleled in its magnitude, its curatorial scope and its viewpoint. Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art (LACMA), which will be hosting five of the initiative’s exhibitions, said: “This is the first time that so many institutions have joined forces to consider Latin American and Latino Art together, and from the singularly illuminating perspective of Los Angeles and Southern California.” Watch a video explaining the project below:
“Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA”
On view from September 2017 through January 2018
Various venues