An exhibition whose best works could easily be mistaken for a manhole coverand a trio of No Parking signs doesn't sound like it's worth a visit. But "Downtown," the inaugural exhibition of Side Street Projects' new location on the ground floor of the San Fernando Building at 4th and Main is full of surprises.
Organized by Karen Atkinson, executive director of the nonprofit artist-run organization, and guest curator Joy Silverman, this spunky show documents more than 50 performances and temporary installations that have taken place in downtown Los Angeles over the past 30 years. Like its surroundings, "Downtown" is more than a little rough around the edges.
Its photographs, videos, posters, murals and proplike objects have been installed in a stately old building that, to put it politely, has seen better times. Although similar buildings are often transformed into pristine galleries whose white walls glisten with the money spent to renovate them, this unfinished space looks like a construction site.
Works have been hung on unpainted sections of Sheetrock, whose metal studs protrude from the top. Exposed pipes gurgle. Electrical cords run across the tarnished floor, snaking their way around a big puddle to reach an unplugged fan. (Since it hasn't rained in a while, the source of spilled liquid is mysterious, and hardly reassuring.)
The unglamorous setting, however, suits the catch-as-catch-can spirit of the show. Documenting one-time-only performances (that often had very small audiences), the exhibit also records the fugitive histories of pieces various artists left in the street (to see what would happen, up close and in person, when art and life collided). As a whole, "Downtown" tells a story of do-it-yourself initiative, of events and activities that fly beneath the radar of an art-world obsessed with big-budget masterpieces and headline-grabbing extravaganzas.
Despite the grungy, unfinished state of the space, it's still a gallery. In this context, Marc Kreisel's homemade manhole cover has the presence of a cast-metal sculpture, one that resembles a coin dropped by a giant.
If this sly piece from 1985 were out in the street, capping a circular portal to the city's nether regions, you might walk by without noticing what's embossed on its surface: A logo-like design and text that reads "Sexual Relations between Students and Teachers." Neither endorsing nor condemning these relations, Kreisel's functional sculpture serves as an industrial-strength lid to a metaphoric can of worms, in which emotions and morals are tangled in a mess that many believe belongs in the sewer.
