Art for LAXART’S sake in Greystone
It’s rare in Hollywood for an event to outshine its celebrity attendees, but that’s exactly what happened at the LAXArt benefit gala in late September at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, where the art started in the driveway with a hulking Hummer sporting a cast bronze f lat tire ( Ry Rocklen’s “Untitled Hummer Flat”) and spilled out onto the hillside patio where Lisa Williamson’s towering, totem- pole- like wooden sculpture “Eleven Holes” was framed against the cityscape below.
Every room, corner and cubbyhole in the mansion was filled with some kind of artwork or performance art.
In the ladies room just off the entry foyer, three towel- clad women in front of vanity mirrors took turns running brushes and f latirons jacked into Fender Twin Reverb Amps through their hair, resulting in a curious, almost baleful, mix of static and feedback that was Molly Surno’s installation and performance.
For “We of Me,” at the end of one hall, blindfolded attendees were escorted one by one into a darkened room where a dancer in 19th century formal attire would whirl and twirl them in Liz Glynn’s “Waltz No. 9 ( Blindness).” Tucked into an alcove off the opposite hallway was Tim Youd, who was clickety- clacking away at an antique typewriter with great gusto as part of his performance piece “Retyping Upton Sinclair’s Oil! on an Underwood # 5.”
In the arrival court, artist Mattia Biagi challenged deep- rooted superstitions with a four- part interactive installation that had attendees spilling salt from a garbage bag, walking beneath three glitter- covered stepladders, stepping on gilded cracks in a patch of cobblestone and finally picking up a tack hammer and smashing a mirrored panel in a large rectangular box. The work was titled “There is nothing to fear Than Fear itself,” and the artist told us the goal was to “empower people and free them from superstition.”
The artworks that weren’t performances or interventions included large pieces like Galia Linn’s abstract glazed stoneware “Vessels” in the motor court and Adam Mars’ subversive/ creepy/ cool business cards scattered in stacks throughout the mansion ( that contained phrases such as “We’ve all seen you naked” and “I loved you then I Googled you”).
There were plenty of notables among the 400 attendees at the event, which raised $ 250,000, organizers said. We spotted actors Zoe Saldana, Busy Philipps, Molly Shannon, Danny Huston and Jack Huston ( who is about to star in a remake of “Ben- Hur”) and fashion folk Irene Neuwirth, Amber Sakai and Scott Sternberg. ( We ran into the latter in the pantry, where Matt Merkel Hess’ “Untitled ( Me)” — dozens of loaves of bread baked into pans made from a mold of his face — was being sliced up and served with butter and jam).
Perhaps the most intriguing of the goings- on was Joel Kyack’s “The Dirty Poke Ain’t No Joke,” described in the checklist of works as “performance, continuous,” which was essentially the artist dispensing honest- to- goodness tattoos in the billiards room, a pool cue’s distance away from the bowling alley where a murder scene in “There Will Be Blood” was filmed. No joke indeed, by about halfway through the three- hour gala, three partygoers had new tattoos.
A future conversation starter to be sure, but people needn’t have had their body inked to have the first biannual LAXArt benefit gala leave an indelible impression.