Take a Look Inside This Socially Distanced L.A. Art Exhibition

It’s hard to feel like you’re firing on all cylinders when quarantine is still dragging on, and the last word in culture has suddenly become a weekend of bingeing Too Hot to Handle on Netflix (which, as we’ve discussed before, isn’t worth your time; try the queer season of Are You The One? instead.)

If reality TV isn’t your bag at all, or if you just need something ever-so-slightly more cerebral to occupy yourself with, you’re in luck: over 70 artists, including Karen Finley, Anthony James, Channing Hansen, Inès Longevial,Joe Pugliese, Sarah Sitkin, Tallulah Willis and more, have convened to contribute art that will be collected in video montages and projected through the windows of the now-closed Taschen gallery space on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles.

“I asked a friend who had access to a former gallery location If I could host a video art style show from the windows of the space,” the Los Angeles-based artist Torie Zalben, told Vogue: “He agreed and I then sought out my curatorial committee and show producer. The team organically assembled and a roster of artists came on board very quickly. The show grew from nothing to a full-blown, video-screen window art fair in a matter of a week.”

Zalben opened the exhibition, titled Going Home: A Picture Show, on Friday. It will run through Wednesday, May. 20, on view from 6 p.m. to midnight, and will also be live-streamed to area hospitals for patients and healthcare workers. The exhibition is blocks away from Cedars Sinai Hospital, which could help provide some much-needed solace or distraction for those workers and the loved ones of patients. In addition, Zalben will offer a limited run of prints from the show; 100% of proceeds will benefit the volunteer-supported art programming organization The Art of Elysium

“The pandemic has brought us a language—of words that emote while being remote. Words that grieve with us. Loss, quarantine, testing, social distancing, anti-bodies. The words bleed into the page—disappear—or dissolve, showing the instability of the language, feelings and uncertainty. These works and exhibit are examples of the artist as historical recorder—since ancient times, artists respond to historical events with a deepening, clarity or
abstraction,” artist Karen Finley told Vogue, adding, “The artist represents the duality of the crisis and inspiration in humanity—to document and offer a deepening for perspective. Hopefully, we begin, little by little to create, initiate creative endeavors for it is creative problem solving that will get us through this together. Life is more important than art—but life is meaningless without art.”

Take a sneak peek at Joe Pugliese’s photos of a masked-up Zalben interacting with the exhibition below, and if you’re in the L.A. area, drive, bike or walk to take in the exhibition for yourself (but don’t forget to social distance—and wear your mask!)

Joe Pugliese
Joe Pugliese
Joe Pugliese