© IFF Archive

Paper models of spherical and hyperbolic space at the Institute For Figuring

A new space has opened its doors in Chinatown, and this time it's not your usual funky alternative art gallery. The Institute For Figuring is a center for hands-on discovery of cool scientific and mathematical concepts, with a strong artistic bent.

Australian twin sisters Margaret Wertheim, a noted science writer, and Christine Wertheim, a poet and faculty member at Cal Arts' MFA Writing Program, founded the IFF seven years ago with the goal of creating fun, participatory projects that would engage new audiences in scientific and mathematical ideas. Instead of presenting things in a clinical manner, their projects tease out the aesthetic and poetic dimensions of physics, geometry, biology and other lines of inquiry. The IFF has operated on a pop-up basis since its creation, and this brick-and-mortar space is a new venture.

The IFF's most successful venture to date has been the Hyperbolic Coral Reef project, which was inspired by mathematician Daina Taimina's groundbreaking method of modeling hyperbolic geometry through the simple act of crocheting. The project, which has produced stunningly beautiful displays of coral reef-like objects, has gone viral, involving 5,000 crochet contributors and getting exhibited at museums around the world. The sisters use the reef, and the method of crocheting it, to teach geometry and environmental science to local communities where the reef has been shown. Be sure to check out Margaret's 2009 TED talk, which explains the project in fascinating detail.

I interviewed Margaret Wertheim by phone earlier this week to get a preview.

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View 25 Alternative L.A. Art Spaces to Check Out Now in a larger map

In addition to bringing you Carol Cheh's extensive piece on "25 Alternative L.A. Art Spaces to Check Out Now," we've also created this Google Map, where you can check out which of these spaces are close to you.

Photo by Ooga Booga store in Chinatown, L.A.

A play on a joke about California being full of fruits and nuts, Laura Owens' works made of '60s California newspapers are at Actual Size through May 12

Also check out our Google Map of L.A.'s alternative art spaces

Some of the most progressive art made in L.A. today can't be seen in museums or blue chip galleries. Instead, it's in the city's many alternative art spaces -- venues run by artists and other (typically young) people with a vision. These spaces tend to operate on a shoestring budget, in funky locales, or even out of people's homes and studios. Often you can find out about them only by word of mouth or social media.

Ten years ago, you could count the number of alternative art spaces in L.A. on your hands. Today there are more than anyone can keep track of, and they've become a significant factor in L.A.'s status as a new art capital.

We had to do some stringent paring to get this list down to 25. With a couple exceptions, the more commercial galleries were left out, no matter how cool their programming. Older and more established nonprofit venues, such as Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and 18th Street Art Center, also were excluded.

What's left is a list of cool spaces you might not be able to find on your own. Don't delay in checking these places out -- the nature of experimental art venues is that they may not be around tomorrow.

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Andy Robert

Car Martin and Linda Wei's puppets perform folk tales of transformation while Dzian! rocks out with surf and garage rock as heard in 1960s Asia.

Concord, in Cypress Park, is not your typical performance venue.

Lining the hallway as you enter the space are wooden shelves covered in colanders, plates, pots, peanut butter, dried beans, hot sauce and the like, sorted and labeled: "Joshua," "Collective," "Marco," etc. Long fluorescent bulbs hang from the rafters, haphazardly rigged with wire, chain and hooks. "New bills $41 each" shouts the whiteboard on the fridge. "Whomever has used the sink - CLEAN IT ☺"

Established last July by a group of CalArts grad students, Concord was inspired by the discipline-blurring mayhem at Echo Park's Machine Project. In addition to hosting weekly free performances, screenings and interactive events, this 3,000-square-foot warehouse provides sleeping and work space for four to six artists in residence at a time.

"One night it's a literary circus and the next it's two academics talking about film," prose-poetry writer and artist-in-residence Marco Di Domenico says. Fellow resident Andy Robert makes small mixed-media sculptures where "giraffes become meteors" and elephants take on the patterns of zebras and the structural integrity of Swiss cheese.

Canadian architect and designer Car Martin moved in last fall and organized last Saturday's jubilant concert called "It's playback time!" featuring "shape-shifting puppets" and "Asian garage-pop revivalists" Dzian!.

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Courtesy Cardwell Jimmerson

Ben Sakoguchi's "Untitled" painting from 1968

The lineup is excitingly diverse this week: a reprise of Christian Marclay's now-famous 24-hour film, some lush landscape, a little-known L.A. painter, art like a vintage horror movie and (hopefully) not-boring performance.

5. Landscapes for inmates
Kelly Poe's photographs of rural landscapes are almost too pretty -- deep blue desert skies and forest floors so lush they seem like fantasies. They are fantasies, in a way, since Poe made these images after seeking out seven environmental and animal-rights activists who had been labeled domestic terrorists and imprisoned. She corresponded with the activists, asking them about the most comforting outdoor places they remembered; then she tracked down those places and tried to make her photographs of them as mesmerizing as they were in the activists' descriptions. At LAX Art, you can view the images and read the sometimes arduous correspondence between the artist and inmates with too much passion and time on their hands. 2640 S. La Cienega Blvd., L.A.; through April 14. (310) 559-0166, laxart.org.

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The main virtual hall

Most conventions are pants-mandatory kinds of affairs -- even those of the adult nature. For the world's first virtual porn convention, however, I'm not wearing any (relax -- I'm in my PJs).

This past weekend, XBiz and Red Light Center hosted the Adult Entertainment Virtual Convention, porn's first online-exclusive gathering in a 3-D web environment called "Utherverse." If that all sounds a bit strange and complicated -- you don't even know the half of it.

Trying to explain the very nature of this whole thing requires more nerd references than I'm capable of conveying to a broad audience -- but here goes. Imagine if World of Warcraft wasn't all about wizards and war but instead sex and stimulation, and was designed by Neil Stephenson and William Gibson's bastard love child. Did I lose you? What if each porn website you visited was a little 3-D world and all of the people looking at it were in it with you, rubbing pixilated elbows (or crotches). That's pretty much it. Only the Utherverse isn't all porn, per se. Or maybe it is. We'll get to that.

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YouTube

People started reciting poetry in the middle of Barney's Beanery last night

It's not every day that a random old guy announces to a group of strangers that he likes tight pussy.

Actually, that happens all the time in Los Angeles. But this was different, because it wasn't an offer, but a performance. The man, actor Richard Large, was reciting poetry from the late Charles Bukowski: "What counts now is one more tight pussy before the light tilts out," goes the line from the famous Bukowski poem, "Crazy as I ever was."

Bukowski, who died in 1994, published thousands of poems and other creative works throughout his life. He is beloved by many for his focus on sex, alcohol and grimy Los Angeles life.

Legend is that Bukowski used to hang around Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood, getting wasted and writing his poetry on napkins. In keeping with that tradition, Barney's Beanery hosted a secret Charles Bukowski flash mob Thursday night.

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Trees for rent

A free tree for the holidays... wha-what!?!? And it's art? One of those bad boys would normally set you back at least $50, for a small one. And then they die (well, really they're already dying the moment they're cut down for your yuletide pleasure -- it's kind of sick when you think about it that way...). And they make a mess and you have to haul it out of your house in time for the city-sanctioned pick-up. The exhibition "Ever Green" at Monte Vista Projects in Highland Park attempts to solve this problem for you, served up as some bangin' art.

"Ever Green," going on now through December 18, is a collaborative exhibition with works from The Portable Forest, Bianca D'Amico, Nicole Antebi, and Amy Blount Lay. While The Portable Forest's contribution, Portable Forest Tree Library, is the attention-grabber in this show (did I mention a free tree for the holidays? oh, I did...), works by D'Amico, Antebi and Blount Lay complement and boost up The Portable Forest's tree rental service as a full program of art chock-full of environmental goodness.

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Nanette Gonzales

Breakfast for dinner

Also check out our slideshow by Nanette Gonzales on The Pancakes and Booze Art Show
Some gallery owners organizing a show might draw inspiration from their college degrees in art history. But when Tom Kirlin curated his first art show, he was inspired by college memories of drunken pancake breakfasts.

Three years ago, Kirlin, a 33-year-old Arizona native, was working in Hollywood as a cameraman when he rented a warehouse downtown and threw an art, alcohol and pancake party for an artist friend.

"It was something that I always did in college," Kirlin says. "You'd go out and drink all night long, and then the only place that's open for 24 hours is IHOP."

The Pancakes & Booze art show, billed as the largest underground art show in Los Angeles, takes place locally about once every three months now. The latest installment, a "Best of" show representing over 100 Pancakes & Booze artists, happened this past weekend.

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Carol Cheh

Hanging out at Samara Golden's beachside villa

The buzz on Night Gallery -- a unique art space in Lincoln Heights that is only open between 10pm and 2am, Tuesday through Thursday -- is growing steadily. A few months ago, co-proprietors Davida Nemeroff and Mieke Marple made the decision to turn the gallery into a full-on commercial venture, and since then, there's been a noticeable increase in their visibility. In addition to the posh soirée they threw at Bar Marmont last month, the gallery will also be participating in the NADA Art Fair at next month's Art Basel Miami Beach, as well as the Frieze Frame section of the 2012 Frieze Art Fair in New York.

Last Tuesday night was the opening reception for Samara Golden's latest project, a large-scale installation titled Rape of the Mirror. I spent much of my evening there and it was by far the biggest, most diverse, and most high-profile crowd I've seen yet at the tiny gallery. Among the couple hundred people who piled in were MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch; LAND founder and director Shamim Momin; artists Karl Haendel, Piero Golia, Stanya Kahn, Laura Owens and Evan Holloway; and collectors Joyce Ostin and Richard Massey.

But don't expect Night Gallery to turn into the next Gagosian or even Blum & Poe. Marple and Nemeroff are not likely to be showing bland, bloated work by established or over-hyped artists any time soon. Rather, their genius lies in their ability to select and nurture artists who are doing memorably unusual work that you can't imagine seeing anywhere else -- and then, finding a place for those artists in the commercial market.

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