SPORTS by Loser Angeles

Loser Angeles is a visual artist from Los Angeles, CA. Using a variety of mediums, Loser Angeles spontaneously features common subjects and characters throughout his work - which explores and emphasizes what he describes as “the oddness of the ordinary.” Blurring the lines between abstract expressionism and figurative painting that gives a nod to The Chicago Imagists and Junge Wilde schools.

His new series, Sports, is no exception from his traditional exploration into society’s strange parts, however, it marks a slight departure. Rather than exaggerating the ghastly parts suppressed in the everyman’s id and ego, he shifts focus to our collective celebration of physical idealism; more specifically, the psychology behind our elevation and adoration of certain individuals. This series includes selections from a body of work made over the last two years in Los Angeles. The figures he paints have traded their briefcases, suits, neckties, and dress shoes for baseballs, uniforms, rollerblades and other equipment. 

Despite the radical change of his subjects’ apparel and accessories, there is evidence in each piece that Loser still remains in a state of Meta Awareness while painting. His ability to make work while simultaneously identifying that he is situationally aware, gives him the unique ability to objectively criticize social circumstances, then illustrate his critiques - projecting them onto each canvas through the lens of his own subjective distortion. 

Sports is not a series that gets caught up in the esoteric minutia often incorporated by artists today designed to patronize the viewer. He chooses not to make the viewer self-conscious by keeping them in their place and causing discomfort by using shock value and projecting trauma. Rather, he piques their self-awareness by drawing them in to the work. He pulls them out of their stadium seat to rush the field and to play ball with him. This encourages us to reexamine how we identify with success and victory, how groups cannibalize individualism, and how passions are approved by financial success and corporate influence. 

Loser Angeles’ Sports reminds us that in many ways artists and athletes are the same. Sports team fans and political parties are identical. Creative genius and physical prowess are exaggerated congruently. In a world of individuals and specialists, Loser Angeles reminds us that our similarities are what make us most special. 

This show is dedicated to Kerry Fahey; a uniquely sweet soul, the last of the Dharma Bums, and the man who serendipitously entered our lives at Shit Art Club. Gone but not forgotten. HAIL KERRY!

Sports opens Saturday, March 27th 2021 and is available by appointment. Schedule a viewing here.

Can’t make it to the show? Take the virtual tour below:

SHIT ART CLUB ~ SPORTS by LOSER ANGELES.

PORTALS by Jake Joseph

PORTALS by Jake Joseph

Sometimes we find ourselves in desperate situations and resort to that theory where you throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. This year, we started off desperately ready for change - and threw everything at the wall. However, it feels like everything stuck. So now, not only are we left in the same position of confusion and indecision, we made a giant mess that is staring at us all in the face in just about every area of life in the USA. 

With the traditional spooky season approaching in a year that has been - well - a permanent spooky season, we are mostly petrified about what uncertainties are on their way. However, it isn't all one great unknown and Shit Art Club is excited about one thing that we know is coming. 

This Saturday, on Halloween, we are opening our dear friend Jake Joseph’s first ever solo exhibition, PORTALS. The show features works in his signature graphic bold style and dark themes that will undoubtedly strike you with fear at first glance. Each piece is a vignette that illustrates and tells a story about the balance of darkness and life that lives on both sides of the coin - reality and imagination. 

PORTALS  was created this year during time spent painting in Joseph’s home studio, studio in Downtown Los Angeles, and during a month long residency at 1700 Naud. Throughout the fairly regular start to the new year, the quarantine, then through periods of social unrest and political animosity, Jake Joseph has been internalizing all of this very real dose of life that feels imaginary and translating his thoughts and feelings about all of this into this series. 

Come see the BEASTMAN’S solo show this upcoming month at Shit Art Club. 

See the digital walkthrough of portals below:

PORTALS

by Jake Joseph

at Shit Art Club

October 31, 2020 - November 28, 2020. 

PARADIS WELLDUS at 1700 NAUD

Everything today is viral. We’ve literally got a virus keeping us inside, news is spreading all over the internet and people are spreading around ideas - good and bad - super quickly. Viruses are crazy things. Once they find a host, they come alive - then they spread like wildfire. 

Shit Art Club is infectious. There are aesthetic challenges, discussions about death and smiles all around all the time. We are living in the now and have a lot to good to share, but just need help spreading it. We found a lovely body of new friends at Pabst Blue Ribbon and 1700 Naud and they decided to host our dirty little crew of contagions for the month of September in a new project space they made during the pandemic called Blue Ribbon Studios. Monster Children and PBR reworked their event space into an artist residency and exhibition space and invited us in to make a beautiful mess. 

Photo by Morgan Rindengan

The three of us at SAC were locked away grinding on art and music during the pandemic when we got a call up and invited in. We were thinking about how we started by creating our own universe and how it was time to leave our world and share the power of art, love, creativity and our certain romanticized reckless process that we seem manage to be able to balance on a razor’s edge. Our nasty little virus found a host with these cats in Chinatown and we came in guns blazing. 

We knew that we had to shoot for the moon - so we aimed for Plant Welldus - because no one can fuck with us. We planned to build a rocket and set the controls for our new utopia. SAC enlisted the help of Lucy Eyears, Jake Joseph (BEASTMAN) and Demi Boelsterli - not cause we trust them, but because they trust us. We moved in on the first of September and continued our lockdown measures in a change of pace and scenery. 

Fueled by free beer, alcoholic coffee and unconditional encouragement from each other, we were making art around the clock and engineered a spacecraft unlike any other. 

The resulting show was aptly titled PARADIS WELLDUS and is now all on display for your viewing pleasure at 1700 Naud via appointment, or online via 3D walkthroughs.

All Works are available in the PARADIS WELLDUS STORE

We’ll see you fools in space. 

Matterport 3D Showcase

PROOF OF LIFE ON EARTH by Sofia Heftersmith

PROOF OF LIFE ON EARTH

The odds for artists working in America today are most certainly odd. We have been living in a locked down vacuum for more than half of the calendar year now, and have spent time with nothing more than our cohabitants and our cell phones. Our medium to socialize is now through screens. Conversations have been compressed into comments, opinions are binary, and the news is getting old. 

The hostility of this social climate is stale and despite the fact that earth may feel soulless and dead - it is not. Sofia Heftersmith is an artist, human and earthling that is very much alive. In her short time on this space rock she calls home, she has been creating a body of artwork that is evidence that she is breathing, dreaming, thinking and stepping through different levels of consciousness. 

She is alive. She will die. But she will not disappear. Like all artists, she will be leaving behind a legacy with her artwork. In each painting, evidence of life will be fossilized, they will be artifacts and for eternity they will be Proof of Life on Earth. 

No matter what is happening, the pale blue dot we call earth is a mother and home to life. Come visit Shit Art Club this month from September 19th - October 17th to see, believe, and feel it. 

See the exhibition below:

SHIT ART CLUB - SOFIA HEFTERSMITH.

BUST by Nick Green

“There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.”

— Walter Cronkite

Freedom is a luxury vehicle that comes with a hefty price tag. Although we are instructed to believe all Americans can ride “free will” bare back, this is not the case. Today, there are some people who have turned their lenses toward the restrictions some Americans face and bring them into focus. Nick Green is one of these people.

BUST  is a photo essay by Nick Green made over a period of three years while working on assignment in Oahu, Hawaii. During his downtime on the island, he kept his camera in hand but turned his back on the white sand beaches he was hired to photograph and chose to face the darker side of paradise. 

A stone’s throw away from the Oahu’s idyllic coastline is an environment seldomly documented and rarely shared. This unmarketable side of Hawaiian real estate is home to the same severe poverty, economic oppression, and lifestyle that people think they are flying away from when they book their travel from the mainland or elsewhere. 

Green photographed a series of abandoned vehicles that litter the sides of roads, driveways, lots, or anywhere else on the island that these machines chose to no longer serve their operators. His photographs document the final resting place of each driver’s journey, and transform each abandoned vehicle into a tombstone that marks the grave of their freedom to navigate society. Some of these cars bear an epitaph as bleak as it is hopeful -  mostly along the lines of “Please Tow” or “Not Abandoned,” however, many maintain their anonymity. Although these nondescript monuments lack a marker, their message is clear: Paradise isn’t just an escape, it is also a prison. 

130 East 4th Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90013.

Nick Green’s BUST is now on view through the month of August at Shit Art Club. You can schedule private appointment to view the exhibition in person (Compliant to federal, state, and city COVID-19 Guidelines) or view it anytime online at www.shitartclub.com. Please visit our website or email us at contact@shitartclub.com for more information on Nick Green’s work.