Gagosian, Beverly Hills
Through August 5th
I want to hold Piero Golia to his word, if not for any other reason than he says dazzling things. I had the pleasure of sitting with him on a panel once. The crowd was in a bad mood. We had a number of very bitter folks present, complaining about the artmarket, about artists that have the money for monumental studios, about the funding that bad artists get for unimpressive public projects, about the cool kid clubs that exist in every art community.
Golia's response to these complaints was blunt, solid, and memorable. Basically, to paraphrase, he said for these people to stop complaining -- great artists make great art, he said, whether they have one square foot and three dollars or 20,000 square foot and a million. It is not the conditions stacked against these artists that made them mediocre, they were mediocre by essence.
I loved the answer, and it was one of many things I heard from Golia that afternoon. Another gem was in relation to the people complaining about public art. “There's a difference,” Golia said,” between public art and art in public.” He was exactly right. Every obscure billboard you see with an artist's work on it, every lame sculpture propped up in a park -- this is art in public and not public art. The art is made for somewhere else (galleries, museums), and its current location doesn't matter and neither does the public.
The final Golia thought from that day I remember was to the question: “Why do you live in Los Angeles?.” His response, simply, “Because it is close to Las Vegas and Los Alamos.” Now, for me, that response is the right mix of zany and smart to make me perk up and notice this small in stature but long in ideas Italian.
Others have noticed as well. Golia has taken on a sort of darling status. He is talked about at parties, he is slowly turned in a legend in private, I am confident that he could take on the status of myth at some point. Here is a man that, having nothing to do with Hollywood or the glamour machine, placed a light on the top of the Standard Hotel. In one of the vainest towns in the world, there's a light on top of one of the most beloved hotels not telling us when Britney or Lindsey or Brad are in town, but instead, when Golia is present. Here is a man who proposed, along with Halliburton, a border fence proposal to the U.S. Government trying to solve the problem of illegal crossings with an interlocking fence of Richard Serra sculptures complete with doors opening at random times.
Epic ideas require epic payoffs, and Golia has us all tuned to expect greatness from him. It is a necessary condition after his compressed bus piece, his attempts to get funding to build an actual barrier between Los Angeles and Orange County, after his service as, apparently from all accounts, a great teacher at the unconventional Mountain School. We expect quite a bit from Golia.
Now if you've read my criticism before, you probably know what's coming. When I start off praising, there is usually a catch, and about that, you are quite right. With all that I've said about Golia, all my expectations for him and all my faith in his abilities, I absolutely must call out and describe my disappointment with his Gagosian Beverly Hills show, a presentation that is smart, perhaps even slightly above average, but in the end the type of safe, innocuous, and forgettable work that we usually get from artists not named Golia.
The exhibition can be divided in two. First, there are rows of pedestals, arranged in a rigorous grid, with multiple concrete casts of cake pans (all different) sitting on top of them. Second, there are a number of black poured paintings, locking in the remains of an incident where a cab crashed into Golia's house, destroying many of his belongings and some of his art.
Both of these works are smart. The concrete cakes are fascinating from several angles. The pedestals are high enough and the concrete white enough to allude to busts of ancient cultures, the brooding visages of great men that lined the halls of Rome. At the same time, the diversity of the cake pans and their pre-fabricated forms recall the arrangements of Donald Judd. The cake pans, we learn, are gifts to Golia from his friends. They have all of the good features of Judd – changing vistas, interesting configurations, solid practical existences – but they also have what Judd lacks – personal history, memory, biographical details. It is a solid piece, smart straightforward conceptualism that has something to say about life and about art history.
The second piece attempts a similar thing, except this time not quite so elegantly. Recalling more than anything Mike Kelley's Memory Ware project, Golia's constellation paintings rebuild and retool as art the unexpected and completely odd event of the cab crash. Like Kelley dragged the Detroit River looking for mementos tossed into the depths both strange and ordinary to use in resin paintings, Golia too embeds the detritus of history, his personal history, into a two dimensional platform. As paintings, they are unremarkable, sort of bad Alberto Burris or Tom Friedmans that don't wink at you. As a concept, they are not quite as strong as the concrete cakes. They less sure of themselves, a bit forced.
Throughout viewing Golia's exhibition, I kept thinking of all the reasons that I was disappointed, of the fine line between expectations and the financial and physical ability (according to conditions) of an artist to live up to their dreams. I thought perhaps it was a Gagosian problem. Golia had the smallest gallery in the house and was limited in what he could do. Perhaps it was a money problem. Perhaps it was a Golia problem, perhaps the myth outgrows the man at the moment. It is difficult to know.
What I do know, however, is that I agree with Golia that great artists make great art whether they have one square foot and three dollars or 20,000 square foot and a million. I also think that in terms of the Gagosian show that Golia can probably do better, as smart as aspects of the work may be. Ultimately, this presentation is an artist still struggling for a voice. I love Golia's public voice, I love his quips, his whit, and his excitement. Here's to a long future that is still, at this point, in the future.