This fall, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art reminds its audience -- and perhaps itself -- of its roots (it was founded in 1979 with considerable participation from the city’s artists) with "The Artist’s Museum: Los Angeles Artists 1980-2010" at the Geffen Contemporary, Sept. 19, 2010-Jan. 24, 2011, and at MOCA Grand Avenue, Oct. 31, 2010-Jan. 31, 2011. More than 250 works by 140 artists are included in the show, which draws from local collectors as well as MOCA’s collection, and includes new commissions by artists.

 

Two galleries are being devoted to artists on MOCA’s original advisory council, who include Lita Albuquerque, Peter Alexander, Karen Carson, Vija Celmins, Guy Dill, Fred Eversley, Sam Francis, Robert Heinecken, Robert Irwin, Gary Lloyd, Peter Lodato, Joe Ray, Roland Reiss, Alexis Smith, DeWain Valentine and Tom Wudl. MOCA is of course one of the rare museums with artists on its board; current artist trustees are John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, Catherine Opie and Ed Ruscha.

 

Among the highlights of the show are Doug Aitken’s eight-channel vid from 1998, Electric Earth, exhibited at MOCA for the first time, and Thomas Houseago’s Sprawling Octopus Man (2009), a new acquisition. Jim Isermann is designing a special entrance for the show at the Grand Avenue building, and Pae White is doing the exhibition graphics.

 

EVA HESSE ON STAGE

Highways, Santa Monica’s pioneering performance space founded 21 years ago by Linda Burnham and Tim Miller, is launching its fall season with a play devoted to the late Minimalist sculptor Eva Hesse (who died of a brain tumor at age 34 in 1970). "Meditations: Eva Hesse," written by Marcie Begleiter and directed by David Watkins, has a brief run, with performances on Sept. 24 & 25, 2010. The play is set on the final day of Hesse’s life, with telling episodes from her life presented as flashbacks. "Meditations: Eva Hesse, Permissions," featuring artworks inspired by Hesse, opens at Highways Gallery on Sept. 25, 2010; "Eva Hesse Spectres 1960" opens at the Hammer Museum on Sept. 24, 2010.

 

BOB FLANAGAN RETURNS

Invisible-Exports on Orchard Street in Manhattan is bringing back the legendary pain-inspired performance artist Bob Flanagan, who died of cystic fibrosis at age 43 in 1996. "Mine," Sept. 10-Oct. 17, 2010, presents works by Flanagan, Jana Leo and Hannah Wilke that were all "produced under a storm of duress." Wilke died of lymphoma in 1993, after documenting her disease in Intra-Venus, while Leo, a performance artist, has made works organized around a rape she suffered while being held captive in her own apartment in 2001. "Rather than staging transgression as a form of extravagant melodrama," the gallery says, "these works reveal real unwilled experience -- intimate and personal, unscripted and undesired."

 

"HOT ART" FAIR BRANCHES OUT TO MEXICO CITY

After five years in Basel, the Hot Art Fair is going to Mexico City, Apr. 5-10, 2011, where it sets up at Campo Marte on Paseo de la Reforma, near the Museo Tamayo, the Museo de Arte Moderno and other institutions. The fair returns to Basel for the sixth year, June 15-19, 2010. For more info, contact office@hot-art-fair.com