Rex Bruce

Rex Bruce and Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA) Organize Digital Art Expo

DigitalArt.LA

digital art expo international
in downtown los angeles

Rex Bruce and Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA) are organizing a multi-site international digital art expo in the Gallery Row area of Downtown Los Angeles. The event involves exhibits by area galleries, the use of empty storefronts as exhibit spaces for out of area institutions and galleries (the equivalent of a free booth at an art fair), video installations at the Regent Theatre, circuit bender street music, street projections, video screenings at theaters and galleries, a plethora of tables promoting art friendly magazines, newspapers, the creative commons and all electronic frontiers, etc. As well there will be an international exhibit of juried submissions hosted by LACDA to be judged by Howard Fox, curator of contemporary art, LACMA.

The event will take place August 14-17, opening with the Downtown Art Walk. We are in collaboration with the Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival, which is running on those exact dates and are providing support for the presentation at the Regent Theater (curated by Rex Bruce and Kelly Hargraves). As well, SIGGRAPH (a huge computer graphics and art convention) is at the L.A. Convention Center that week, we are hoping to line this up as an orbiting event. The last time SIGGRAPH was in L.A. we had a show "SYNAPSE" and a panel at the convention in collaboration with them.

Our event will bring enormous draw to the neighborhood, generate international promotion associated with important cultural institutions (raising the bar for Gallery Row), and generate traffic for our much beloved businesses, developers and restaurants. It will also be an art event of meritorious significance and great multicultural bounty satisfying all "brows" from low to high (at least in Rex's little head).

We are looking for available local spaces and galleries that wish to participate (even an add on digital "mini installation" in a window or performance/projection --you name it-- in front of the gallery outside of your scheduled event). We are also seeking out of area institutions and galleries that wish to be hosted by us. We are not hosting individual artists.


We already have a roster of some great names that will be participating confirmed, and unanimous support all around our community from those with whom I have discussed the concept.


Current roster of sponsors and participants:

• Los Angeles Center for Digital Art
• Howard Fox, Curator of Contemporary Art, LACMA
• UCR | California Museum of Photography
• Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Danzig / Poland
• Downtown Film Festival - Los Angeles
• Austin Museum of Digital Art
• Niche.LA Video Art
• Found Gallery L.A.
• Phantom Galleries L.A.
• Creative Commons
• Spring Arts Collective
• Pharmaka Gallery
• Rowan Gallery
• Dale Youngman Gallery
• El Nopal Press
• Bert Green Fine Art
• Crewest Gallery
• Sphinx Studio
• Gilmore Associates
• Regent Theatre
• Artillery Magazine
• Coagula Art Journal
• Citizen L.A.
• Absolute Arts
• Art Deadlines
• It's Liquid
• FLUX Business Communications


Your input, participation and brilliance is welcome and needed!

Thanks,

Rex Bruce
Director
Los Angeles Center For Digital Art
107 West Fifth Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
http://www.lacda.com
http://digitalart.la

Labels: art, art gallery, digital art, expo, LACDA, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Rex Bruce

My two best collectors threw an artists' party at their outrageous penthouse loft downtown last Sunday for Rex Bruce and Pete Jackson (we show him at Los Angeles Center For Digital Art). They are super people and we had an engaging crowd of collectors, gallery people, arts writers, quality artists, as well as music and film people. It was a great salon environment. There were 138 people counted at the door. Peter Frank, Artillery people, a famous photographer I can't remember, tons of PWMs (people with money), a councilwoman from West Hollywood, lots of artists and downtown gallery people. I'm a white tornado.

Pic is of me with Peter Frank (L.A. Weekly critic and chief curator at Riverside Art Museum and various PWMs. There were two huge balconies, you could see the Hollywood sign and all of the skyscrapers and famous buildings downtown.

Labels: art, Gallery, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Peter Frank, Rex Bruce

Today was an eventful day. My BF (that means boy friend on gay sites) is into cats, his cat had six (SIX) kittens, it took all day. He is serious, takes them to shows and wins ribbons and bows. It is so GAY it is hard to handle, I know. I have video I will post soon, suffice with this pic for now.

I also went to ©Radio Shack© and bought a radio scanner and an infrared wireless surveillance camera that is a great combination! You can listen to the police and aim the surveillance camera at the scanner radio and project it. I instantly made art out of it. by combining them with a projector. I am going to us them to collect sounds and images. We have a show coming up with Pete Jackson who does infrared ultra-ultra-ultra-wide (90") landscapes of la la land. I want to do the lo res version of course, so this camera is perfect. It gets audio too.

I am going to record night time bottom feeder action on the streets downtown. *Bottom Feeder" is a not P.C. term for a brain damaged drug addict that attracts artists and photographers. I heard these local guys call them "L.B." which I found out stands for "Low Budget." How perfect. They were talking about a person who was defecating on the sidewalk. Very low budget. It is a war out there, I feel like I live in Calcutta on crack. I think it is getting better.

I was with an art broker in the earlier days of downtown, she was all pearls and hair and very adorable. We were walking down Main near Fifth and suddenly a woman bent over and urinated out from behind while we were exactly two feet away. It didn't even phase the woman I was with, it was amazing. She said "I used to work down here, don't worry." I knew she had the score. Never a dull moment. This was ten paces from the spot where I met Ed Ruscha (NAME DROP) two years later.

I decided not to use these people in my work, but now that I want to be a "FILM MAKER" it is such potent material, I will have to figure out how to weave it in. Its like we have this concentration camp of drug, alcohol, mental-health and poverty victims in the middle of our city, it is some sort of holocaust. I have been picking my way over it for years. Hollywood is the same but it is all hiding in the bushes. It all smells. I won't make art out of the smells.

Labels: art, bottom feeder, kittens, radio shack