PREVIEWS: ART IN THE RAW
A series of exhibitions where seven Los Angeles artists were invited to create new on-site work that explored the physical properties of the museum space during its transformation from an egg-processing warehouse into a venue for contemporary art. See below.
DAVID BUNN: SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
July 21–August 7, 1988, and December 11, 1988–January 7, 1989
Using the building exactly as he found it, Bunn installed a circle of viewing devices in the geographic center of the museum space. From this vantage point, he sighted and recorded details that gave clues to the building's various aesthetic, geographic, and historical associations and served to "frame" the viewer's attention.
MAY SUN (WITH PETER BROSIUS AND TOM RECCHION)—L.A./RIVER/CHINA/TOWN
October 27–November 17, 1988
Artist May Sun collaborated with director Peter Brosius and composer Tom Recchion to create an installation that focused on untold stories in the history of Los Angeles's Chinatown. Within an environment consisting of four large white tents, this installation evoked the living quarters of Chinese railroad workers who settled along the embankment of the Los Angeles River in the 1870s. Each tent told a story juxtaposing visual elements with sound, text, smell, and lighting.
MINEKO GRIMMER AND CARL STONE: LA CIRQUE DE GLACE ET CAILLOU AND JANG TOH
October 6–October 23, 1988
Sculptor Mineko Grimmer and composer Carl Stone collaborated in this installation performance piece integrating the elements of chance, movement, sound, and other environmental factors in an interactive tableau of bamboo, metal, string, stones, and frozen ice. Stone's electro-acoustical musical composition incorporated sounds created by Grimmer's sculptures with other prerecorded and incidental sounds. Performances took place on October 14 and 15, 1988.
BRYAN PEZZONE: MUSIC WITH A VIEW
September 30–October 2, 1988
Music with a View was a series of five concerts surveying keyboard music from Bach to Stevie Wonder. Covering a broad domain of styles and performance practices ranging from classical works to jazz-inspired improvisations to pop and electronic music, the concerts also featured Pezzone's original compositions.
DANIEL J. MARTINEZ WITH COMPOSER VINZULA KARA: BIG FISH EAT LITTLE FISH
September 4–September 25, 1988
Incorporating the full 8,300-square-foot warehouse space, Martinez arranged a grid of one thousand cast-plaster figures surrounded by symbols of authority and oppression. Big Fish Eat Little Fish became a gigantic "aquarium," where subjects lost their personal liberty under constant surveillance, oppressive conditions, and repressive restrictions.
MEG CRANSTON: MOUNTAIN OF EGGSHELLS, CROWN OF MERINGUE
August 11–August 26, 1988
Cranston's twenty-five-foot mountain of eggshells topped with meringue evoked the Museum's former function as an egg-processing plant and commented on the conceit of monumentality and the fragility of power. The piece effected grandeur by its scale, while its construction made it clearly vulnerable.
MICHAEL BREWSTER: LOW DOWN
July 21–November 17, 1988
This computer-programmed acoustic sculpture investigated how different frequencies of sound waves affect the physical perception of a gallery or museum space. As visitors moved throughout the gallery, the sound field of Low Down changed in pitch, volume, and resonance, creating a work that was simultaneously site-specific and "echo-specific."


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