2022 L.A. Art Show Looks to the Future with NFTs and the Environment
Between the impact that COVID-19 has had on travel and gatherings, the continued rise of NFT-backed art and the looming threat of climate change, the future of art and culture is worth considering. How can artists engage with environmental issues? How will audiences interact with art? These are all questions that permeate this year's L.A. Art Show, which opened on Wednesday, Jan. 19 and runs through Sunday, Jan. 23 at Los Angeles Convention Center. With a show floor packed with mini-exhibitions that cross disciplines, L.A. Art Show participants are looking towards the future, whether that's in the production and distribution of art or the role of artists have in building a better world.
"We're under threat of the rising sea," says artist Taiji Terasaki of Hawaii, where he's lived for 16 years. "So it's really an important statement that we're trying to make because it's happening."
Terasaki uses a mix of processes in speaking about environmental issues. He has a "mist media player," where a cloud of mist acts as a screen for projections. Some of his pieces are photos of those projections, with the mist adding an ethereal effect to the final image. In other pieces, he prints photos on sheets of metal that are then cut up and woven together. The photos include images of protected, yet environmentally-fragile, places both in Hawaii and Palmyra Atoll. At the L.A. Art Show, where the Honolulu-based artist is exhibiting with Kelly Sueda Fine Arts, Terasaki's work was unified by a theme: our oceans and coasts need protection.
The future of our planet in light of the impact of climate change and environmental degradation was one of the themes running through the 2022 edition of L.A. Art Show. The festival's DIVERSEartLA programming, curated by Marisa Caichiolo, spotlighted collaborations between arts and science and/or environmental institutions that spoke to these pressing issues. MUMBAT Museum of Fine Arts of Tandil and Museum of Nature and Science Antonio Serrano of Entre Rios Argentina joined forces in presenting "The Earth's Fruits," an installation from Argentinian artist Guillermo Anselmo Vezzosi, with music by Maria Emilia Peralta. Here, Vezzosi transforms waste into trees that gently sway as the sounds of nature permeate Peralta's ambient score.
A cooler future for Angelenos was at the center of "Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood:Skid Row Cooling Resources." The installation, curated by Tom Grode, documents efforts to provide cooling stations and necessities like cold water to Skid Row locals during the summer of 2021. The neighborhood is what's known as an "urban heat island," meaning that its lack of shade combined with heat-absorbing surfaces causes temperatures to rise. With signs and fans that people could decorate, the cooling station project became an example of art activism.
"The Other Waterfall," presented by MUSA, Museum of the Arts of the University of Guadalajara and MCA Museum of Environmental Science, is artist Claudia Rodriguez's reflection on the pollution of the Santiago River in Mexico. A massive, white net hangs at the center of the installation. It was the result of a collaboration between Rodriguez, social psychologist Ana Joaquina Ramirez, artist Rosina Santana and many activists called "Redes," where the 2153 square foot net made of recycled plastic was displayed in protest of government inaction that led to the contamination of the river. The net, made by over 400 people using a crotchet-style technique, represented the foam in the contaminated Santiago River.
Elsewhere inside L.A. Art Show, artists and galleries look at the future of art. For over 120 years, family-run Judson Studios has been designing and making stained glass in Los Angeles. Their work can be seen at Forest Lawn in Glendale, Los Angeles' Central Library and the Natural History Museum as well as a number of Southern California churches and homes. Today, they employ both traditional and modern techniques in making glass art.
In recent years, the local studio has collaborated with artists like James Jean, Shay Bredimus and El Mac on projects that use stained and/or fused glass processes. "Pagoda Umbrella," displayed at L.A. Art Show, brings together James Jean's colorful, illustrative style with Judson Studio's glass work and is part of a larger installation called "Pagoda."
Melrose Avenue gallery Vellum L.A. focuses specifically on art that is backed by NFTs and, at L.A. Art Show, visitors could see how these digital pieces appear in-person on high-quality LED display screens. "A lot of people prefer to see the work online because this culture has been cultivated entirely in what they call the Metaverse. People have been creating galleries online that you can walk through and experience the artwork," says curator Sinziana Velicescu. "At the same time, there's art work that's meant be experienced in person because it has a higher impact, in my opinion."
Vellum is displaying works from the gallery's group show, "Elsewhere Is a Negative Mirror." The exhibit is loosely inspired by Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities and focuses on imagined architecture. Amongst the artists in the show are Kristen Roos, who makes art using 1990s Macintosh programs and Vince Fraser, who fuses a background in interior design and architecture with 3D animation. Overall, Vellum shows a broad swath of what NFT-backed art can be.
"It's taken me a year to do enough personal research and soul-searching to see how I felt about it as a medium," says Merry Karnowsky of NFTs. The influential gallerist was at L.A. Art Show with her first NFT-backed show, a collection of over 1000 works from Johnny "KMNDZ" Rodriguez with 260 unique traits that were hand drawn using digital tools. Karnowsky points out that Rodriguez has a background in graphic and digital design, although it's his paintings that she's been showing for the past decade. Over the years, she says, he has been making robot characters that carry memories and culture into the future. "Ten years later, NFTs come along and he's incorporating that same concept of these robot characters as transporters of memory and cultural significance," she says. Similarly, she says, NFTS allow artists to build "generational legacy" as there's a record of the work changing hands. "I think that's the most interesting thing to me about the medium. It's carrying these artistic artifacts well into the future."
The downside to NFTs is that, like cryptocurrency, they can be detrimental to the environment due to amount of energy potentially used in the transaction process. Arts Help, an international non-profit, was at L.A. Art Show to lead artists into the NFT world in a sustainable way. "We're providing some resources for artists who are looking to get into this space, starting off with an education module called Conscious Crypto Creator," says chief strategy officer Mo Ghoneim.
"With blockchains, specifically using the POW method — the Proof of Work method— actually uses a lot of energy consumption, which is obviously very harmful to the environment," adds chief operating officer Adiam Gafoo. "With so many people entering the blockchain industry, I want to make sure that they're making conscious decisions and understanding that there are alternative methods to using POW."
In addition to educating artists on environmentally-friendlier approaches to NFT-backed art, Arts Help also offers opportunities for grants through their Conscious Crypto Creator program. At L.A. Art Show, Arts Help displayed "Icebergs," a responsive, digital art piece from Montreal-based studio Iregular that considers how daily human decisions affect polar ice caps. An NFT of this piece is verified by the Conscious Crypto Creator program.
