oneshotexhibition.org blog

While much of the US economy is trying to survive from the downfall of the real estate market, there is one project that is still going and building with less fanfare but has most of the tourist gawking about is the City Center on the Vegas Strip. It is a City Center (aren’t all hotel casinos a city within itself) along Las Vegas Blvd, near E. Harmon Ave. intersection, with its own zip code that cost 11 billion dollars, consisting designs by world re-known architects: Daniel Libeskind, Ceasar Pelli, Helmut Jahn, Rafael Viñoly, Norman Foster and David Rockwell, having it bill as a world-class city development focusing on art and architecture with an emphasis on sustainable design, being develop by MGM Mirage Company at the cost of 11 billion dollars. It shows what kind of diversity in architecture can bring to Las Vegas at a price.

It was an opportunity to hang out with some friends in last month’s March Madness in New York, New York Hotel and Casino to check out the center. During the day, I could overhear crowds of revelers and tourist commenting the look of the center. A couple with a heavy southern accent commented that they didn’t know what to think about the look of the complex, especially at the Daniel Libeskind design, “it didn’t look pretty, but I think it’s ugly.” In some of the theoretical world of architecture, it is a compliment and reveling in it. It’s weird. Las Vegas, in a whole, is a town that is perceived of being of not knowing what to think.  With all the kitsch, urban sprawl, traffic, lack of water resource and the fact it is in the middle of the dessert. It seems that people like myself escape to an area made out of nothing for something other than the truth and the reality of a sustainable city.

Back to City Center, late in the evening at 4:00 in the morning, I got the chance to really check the center up close while walking to the Sahara Hotel to get to the hotel room. While there were less people on the strip, I found there were no security at the gate and had the possibility of walking inside the complex with no problem. It seems that there resources are running thin, construction is moving in a snail pace and MGM Mirage are trying to get more financial backing to finish the project, the possibility of selling off some of their casino resorts to avoid bankruptcy.

What the problem is with this lifestyle center is the cost and livability in comparison to the rest of the City of Las Vegas; a unit of one can cost up to 23 million dollars. More people are losing their homes in break neck speed. The role of well known architects has been co-opted in designing over the top designs that become a selling point for the exclusive and not for all classes. While mainstream Las Vegas has become a bastion of the absurbity, we could always come to the originator of gaudiness and kitsch is Liberace.

View of City Center w/ Daniel Lebeskind designed building in the foreground (tilting walls).

A closer look @ City Center

The front entrance to City Center

The Dessert night brings comfort, where no secure place has no purpose nor reason that pierces  the conscious mind.

Exposed beyond the surface of doubt.

                                       The true originator of Las Vegas: Liberace

Song of the Blog: Holiday in the Sun by the Sex Pistols in the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here are the Sex Pistols

Architecture has evolve through history which theories and ideologies moves in a moment of time through technology, history, power, religion and shelter that serves a binding force for different eras of humanity. Some of the best works of Architecture uses metaphors, to convey the feeling and the idea in the art of architecture, which as compelling as the work itself. At times it can be convey relatively and takes a life of its own.

Metaphors like the Bird’s Nest (Bejing National Stadium) by Herzog & de Meuron has a connotative meaning to the Stadium as looking more like bird’s nest. Whether it is negative or positive, it is subjective unless the meaning is lost and disjointed.

One of the most successful in creating metaphors that are representative to the work is taking objects or subject manner found that are elementally recognizable and reinterpreted into a animated object, whether it is art, architecture, sculpture, and film.

Case in point, project that are intrinsically creative and shows the quality of its craft but the words are hard to describe the concept or idea to the viewing public. Frank Gehry designed IAC/InterActiveCorp Headquarters building in New York derives from a image of sails. It is apparent in its translation that it looks like the sails of the sailboat on the surface form of the building, soaring against the New York skyline.

                        IAC/InterActiveCorp Headquarters by Frank Gehry of Gehry Partners LLP

 Song of the Blog: Sea Legs by The Shins on the CD Wincing The Night Away

The photos of this building is located at the South-West corner of Howard Street and 6th Street. It is probably the most idiosyncratic piece of art on a abandon Victorian building by the shear presence of physical and cerebral graffiti- typical graffiti lettering, furniture & other appliances hanging atop & through the window, and vaudevillian advertisement.

             Graffiti on the corner of Howard and 6th Street.

Vaudevillian advertisement mural.

Furnitures and appliances poking out from window openings over the sidewalk.

Song of the Blog: The Wonton Song by Led Zeppelin on the Album Physical Graffiti

This work is located at the corner of Wilshire Blvd. and Fairfax Ave, right next to Johnnies Restaurant.

Close up

Song of the Blog: Juice (Know the Ledge) by Eric & Rakim on the album Gold

Hearst Castle by Julia Morgan in San Simeon, CA

View of the main castle.

macroscopic view of one of the marble sculptures of Hearst Castle’s collections.

One of the Halls leading up to the upper floors at the main building.

View of the indoor pool

Song of the Blog: Searching For My Good Eye Close by Soundgarden on the Album Badmotorfinger

There is a new public art installation at various sites around Los Angeles by well established women artist Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman whose works come to question about women roles in society and the cultural environment that separates or integrates them from the white/corporate/male service. The public art exhibition is called “Woman of the City“. Conceived and curated by Emi Fontana.

The amusing part of the artist’s work is the installation itself doesn’t scream or imposes a great degree of size, scope and act, therefore it gives the viewer or audience to be keenly aware and investigate of their surroundings and be able to analyze for what it is worth. It definitely another way to see things amidst of overblown billboard advertising, grandiose and obstructive artwork. In some ways, it may give an ideal of “Woman in Architecture” to pause, think and create a voice about their profession in the urban environment in LA and to inject it with subtlety and conviction like “Woman of the City”.

The poster of Inflammatory Essays by artist Jenny Holzman

Inflammatory Essays plaster right next to Rock Demogod Lenny Kravitz (he’s soooo kool).

Barbara Kruger’s Plenty video installation on top of LACMA West (the old May Company Building) on the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire.

Song of the Blog: Kool Thing by Sonic Youth on the Album CD Goo

Some of the Lyrics of Kool Thing:

Yeah, tell’em about it,
hit’em where it hurts
Hey, Kool Thing, come here, sit down
There’s something I gotta ask you.
I just wanna know, what are you gonna do for me?
I mean, are you gonna liberate us girls
From male white corporate oppression?
Tell it like it is!
Huh?
Yeah!
Don’t be shy
Word up!
Fear of a female planet?
Fear of a female planet?
Fear, baby!
I just want to know that we can still be friends
Come on, come on, come on, come on let everybody know
Kool, kool thing
Kool, kool thing

In Reseda in the San Fernando Valley, north of metropolitan LA, there was a stir, which neighbors are up and arms on a graffiti mural on the wall of a liquor store. The mural was a homage to a fallen colleague who was a graffiti and tattoo artist. It was on the Daily News Friday edition.
The reason for the attention is the lack of dialogue on the significance of graffiti art or what people call it tagging. There is a difference:

-Graffiti is an art form that is raw from a source of creativity that is taken from a street-wise sensibility that has influence a wide variety of people from different part of the world. Graffiti has translated into different art forms to animation, painting, music, custom motors and tattoos. From Artist/animator Takashi Murakami, exhibiting at the Geffen Contemporary, to West Coast Customs.

-Tagging is a guerrilla warfare that is about territoriality, which is normally gang, related. It is a quick attach on one’s territory by marking their criminal names on walls, surfaces and objects. It has an alarming rate where they kill off each other, unless they get caught or find a way to escape this lifestyle. It has no affiliation with graffiti but can crossover with deadly circumstances.

The neighbors of Reseda has come down hard on the person who is responsible for the mural but has vow to resurrect another one and will do it the right way with having the proper permits, approval from the owner of the property and the neighborhood council for the area.

The hope is both parties can mediate into an arena that is consider open and acceptable to graffiti as a art form and the graffiti artist can reach a level of global acceptance without losing their integrity and to honor a friend. Ignorance is bliss (from Thomas Gray poem “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eaton College”).

Graffiti mural on honor of Anthony “Ohjae” Sena which is later painted over because of neighbors opposition and it done without permits and owner of the liquor store approval.

(both images taken from the Daily News)

Song of the Blog: It’s Great When We’re Together by Finley Quaye on the CD Album Maverick A Strike.

This picture taken at 1330 Fourth Street in Santa Monica. This is refined and artistic expression storage container that has been deconstructive and reconstructive to be use as a office cubicle which is probably use  an art gallery in a Art-Deco building.

Its expose rust of the steel shows its rawness of materiality and invention. Plus the interplay of the materials being applied.

Decontructed storage container with interesting results. 1330 Fourth Street.
View from the front of the gallery on 1330 Fourth Street.

Song of the Blog:  Destroyer by The Kinks on the Album Give the People What They Want.

Park Plaza Hotel (607 S Park View St, Los Angeles) hasn’t change when it was first built in 1925 but the use of the building has been evolving more than 30 years; from being a club called the Scream when Jane’s Addiction would play one night and the Cult would play the next night, to being a film/video shoot location. It always has a niche in Los Angeles folklore that more the citizens value its historical content around MacArthur Park. There are always stories about Park Plaza and the surrounding neighborhood by people who has lived in LA for more than 25 years.

Recently, it has been reported that some Korean businessmen bought the place and is converting it to a hi-end hotel. There hasn’t been much notice as far the renovations on the uppers floors for hotel guest to start occupying nor any kind of hotel operation exist right now.

In the meantime, here are some fotos taken nearly nine months ago by Scheer Images. Enjoy.

The vaulted ceiling in the grand lobby of Park Plaza Hotel by Scheer Images.

Upper lobby of Park Plaza
Organ in the hallway
The Ballroom

Song of the Blog: Ripple (Grateful Dead tune) by Jane’s Addition on the Album Deadicated: A tribute to the Grateful Dead.

Graffitti along Caesar Chavez Ave.

One of the more interesting works in East LA, an abstraction of language, lettering and art. Most of the detailed works has a tertiary bond that goes beyond the representation of it.

In the Liquor store parking off the corner of Alantic and Whittier Blvd.

Song of the Blog: Shwingalokate by De La Soul on the CD album De La Soul Is Dead