Those who say that Los Angeles has no history would do well to drive east. There, the signs of the past ten or twenty years, at least, are unmistakable. Ever newer developments, stamped with KB Homes' trademark homogeneity, impose a geometry on the landscape that feels immediately familiar, as though one had gone back in time to pass the same part twice. In a sense, one hears, these areas are having something of a second life. Investors of the sort who've been doing well lately are accelerating the conversion, heretofore a dream of certain free-market ideologues, of foreclosed homes to cut-rate rentals for those displaced from the urban centers.

It would be interesting to try to map these areas on Karen Lofgren's series of four Self-Actualizers, all 2013, on display at the artist's first gallery show at Royale Projects in Palm Desert. They're there, somewhere between “Sources of wealth: Earth + sun” and “Wealth extraction” on Philosophy, between “Profit” and “Issues” on Climate, and in Species' and Vision's “Shelter,” of course. Each term takes its place in these works' relentless adaptation, translation, and corruption of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, an influential but outmoded theory of the evolution of human motivations from necessities to self-actualization.

The interest in what you could call craft aesthetics—the body of each piece is made up of panels of leather (and, in Climate, snake skin) stitched together, words branded on—is thus matched by a critical engagement with a pop psychological model in which the viewer inevitably becomes entangled. This recalls the work of Mike Kelley, certainly, but also other Los Angeles artists who emerged in the past twentyish years, including Jim Shaw and Marnie Weber, whose work investigated the relationships between art practices and belief structures.

Karen Lofgren, Climate, 2013; Courtesy the artist and Royale Projects.

What's especially interesting in “Blood Sister” is the way in which this trajectory is set in dialogue with another West Coast movement, Light and Space. Like Robert Irwin's famous discs, Lofgren's Hanging Brackets, 2013, cast a complex but orderly array of reflections and shadows on the space around them. Yet where Irwin's work aims to dissolve into an experience of pure perception, effacing the object in favor of a heightened awareness of the environment, Lofgren seems to draw on the inherent chanciness of this approach, which results in many visitors to Irwin's installations seeing nothing at all. With the brackets, the object re-emerges as mediator of a series of possibilities, depending on the conditions of its installation, taking on the aspect of a fetish, an impression strengthened by the proximity of the leather-and-chain Self-Actualizers.

The element of the occult inflecting the aesthetic asceticism of Light and Space is perhaps most prominent in the two sculptures that share the name The Gathering, 2013. A bronze goat head, subtitled Goat Song, and a cast aluminum chicken, subtitled the sacrifice is never plucked, are placed at North and South to the Hanging Brackets' East and West, surrounding a rough diamond of light in the center of the space, reflected from the mirrored beams.

The scene raises the specter of sacrifice, but in fact nothing of the sort seems to have taken place. On the contrary, one kind of process, the slaughter and sale of animals, has been arrested and subjected to another, one that presupposes a concept of authorship and an at least partial investment in futurity. The song hidden behind the goat's tongue could be the key that unlocks the complex dialogue between these pieces, encompassing form, materials, and facture (Hanging Bracket #1: Corrupted has been made by Lofgren herself; Hanging Bracket #4: Perfected has been fabricated), as well as those that circulate within the show as a whole. In its absence, I understand “Blood Sister” to refer to the way Lofgren mixes the blood of two distinct LA art movements, exposing a wealth of evocative possibilities on the borderlines between language and sculpture.

—Jared Baxter

[Image on top: Karen Lofgren, Hanging Bracket, Light/Dark Fragment, Perfected, 2013; Courtesy the artist and Royale Projects.]

John Coplans’ essay, “Pasadena’s Collapse and the Simon Takeover: Diary of Disaster” written for Artforum in 1975, unravels the mirages and problems that the Pasadena Art Museum faced before being essentially purchased by ketchup mogul Norton Simon. Architects Lad + Kelsey's plan rode over the balance of architecture and beneficial exhibition space for their own design vision. The new building and location opened in late 1969 with a chaotic flurry of anticipation from the staff and artists, a renovation that eventually cost the museum its soul.

During this period Coplans worked as the senior curator (1967-1969), seeking to expand the museum’s contemporary collection. One of the works purchased in those years was Dan Flavin’s “monument” on the survival of Mrs. Reppin, 1966. This particular piece required a corner installation; however, due to the Lad + Kelsey design of round curved wall edges, the work was unable to be installed in accord with the artist's vision until Frank Gehry renovated the galleries in 1999. However, “monument” on the survival of Mrs. Reppin, has rarely been shown properly.

I decided to focus on one work alone, in an attempt to strip history from the equation of looking at art. Simply just in for the pleasure of admiring without consequence in any form (no tweets, instagram, facebook, or any other social media ripoff in mind). It seems like I failed at my attempt, but also succeeded. For this reason, it’s best to look at Flavin as the landscape after a storm, or the first phases of early morning—constantly altering light and the horizon. Sometimes, just in it for pure pleasure.

Known for his fluorescent light arrays, Flavin most often dedicated his luminous landscapes to people he knew or artists who inspired him. Even though some of Flavin’s titles tongue at satire, they are more striking as vanishing moments and stories, electric icons and monuments.

For “monument” on the survival Mrs. Reppin, Flavin was compelled by the WWII history of dealer Rudolf Zwirner's mother-in-law who had been interned by the Allies for not divorcing her German husband. A mysterious work, subtly lit in contrasts to the artist’s usual bright, atmospheric color. We know almost nothing of Mrs. Reppin but her legend, and only with this cornered monument of fluorescent white and red.

If you’re into the whole nostalgia ridden singularity, the second gallery of the Beyond Brancusi exhibition of which this piece is part, plays out a beautiful color theory of blues and grays, almost alluding to a cinematic theater stage or a Guy de Cointet play backdrop. The works in the second gallery were gifts to the museum by the artists under the curatorial workings of John Coplans—works were acquired in the same year as the Flavin.

—Arely Villegas

[Image on top: Dan Flavin, American, 1933-1996, "monument" on the survival of Mrs. Reppin, 1966, Warm red and white fluorescent light, Norton Simon Museum, Museum Purchase, Fellows Acquisition Fund; © 2012 Stephen Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; courtesy of David Zwirner, New York.]