March, 2024

Last month I was out and about in Los Angeles getting into the frenzy of Frieze art fair week. Fairs, gallery openings, artist talks, and open studios - the city opens itself and is somewhat un-characteristically friendly for the art world. As the case with most fairs, the work was equally inspiring and dismaying. However one of the peak experiences was heading down to a sleepy creepy warehouse section just north of downtown to experience Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy. 

A magical experience of an art amusement park lost in time, hiding for 35 years in 4 shipping containers, eventually found in Texas. Originally created in Hamburg, Germany by artist and curator Andre Heller, 30 artists were invited to create everything from a Jean-Michel Basquiat ferris wheel accompanied by a Miles Davis composition, to wind banners by Monika GilSing, to a Keith Haring carousel, a David Hockney fractured immersive forest, to a monumental Sonia Delaunay arched entrance. When suddenly after being in the space the lights, music, and kinetic activation started it was the most moving and magical feeling as an adult to find wonder and awe in something so pure and lacking any trace of cynicism. Believing that at times, art can and should bring joy to the audience, ultimately serving to create better humans, humans that might think twice when entering into continental wars, war scars that in Europe were still felt in the 80’s feels just as pressing today. 

I hope there’s plans to travel Luna Luna, for now there is a vagueness about how far into Spring it will be up. It will live on in my life as I couldn’t leave the warehouse without one of several original poster prints, found in those shipping containers, with every artists visual representation of their Luna Luna contribution. The smell, the feel, the perfection of the print all while knowing it sat for three and half decades waiting to be found it some potent artist magic. 

my head and vividly seeing their ups and downs as she paces through the multi-facets of the art eco system was surreal to say the least. While most doors remained thoroughly shut and locked she managed to find artists, galleries, and collectors that thoughtfully opened up to her.

A self proclaimed dorky outsider, her poker face is one to admire as she handles rejection, humiliation, and social evaluation that rivals high school pecking orders to illustrate the calculations players in this world are constantly making, all while driving towards her sincere inquires as to how one can understand and foster a relationship to contemporary art as an outsider. 

Organized into four main sections grounded in a deeper relationship,(two different galleries,  one artist, and a museum) she adds to each with many outside excursions as she drills down into her larger questions of aesthetics and value. Some parts (cough, cough…people) left me despondent in their petty gatekeeping confirming all the yucky feels, however she paces the book so eloquently and is constant in her descriptions that are hilarious and biting, that just as you are swirling the drain someone she encounters gives a quote that uplifts and cuts to the heart of why artists and their better champions are doing what they do.