The Geffen Contemporary @ MOCA

I visited The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (The Museum of Contemporary Art) in Little Tokyo Historic District, Los Angeles with my friend from Sci-Arc and we had a wonderful visual tour on Laura Owens, Zoe Leonard and Barbara Kruger.

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA is one of the three locations of MOCA, originally a police car warehouse and was then renovated by Frank Gehry. It does not seem like an imaginary sculpture aligned with Gehry’s style and I was close to mis-recognize it as Frank Wright’s work.

    

At first, it was a temporary substitution of the substantial permanent exhibits from MOCA the grand venue when it was under construction for 1984 Olympics. The name of The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA was cute, “Temporary Contemporary”, a rhyme that made it easy to remember.

It was located at the bounder of a warehouse district (known as Art District now) where many artists worked at that time, I assumed that the frequent visits and insipring discussions of the talents made it an irreplaceble spot for them to hang out. Thus, it became a permanent museum. The building itself is white from inside to outside and the sunshine of afternoon exerts a beautiful shadow of crowds on the entrance wall. That’s a time-limited permanent exhibit.

The current interior exhibits are Laura Owens’ and Zoe Leonard’s works and there’s a wall paint of Barbara Kruger outside. Laura Owens are famous for large paints as below.

In this piece of work, drops of paint add dimension to the newspaper, as a representation of pop art. It made me think of child’s graffiti on the comic books and that’s cute.

This picture is the main body of a still life oil painting of Owens. The original piece is large, too. Large areas of brown color and the smooth texture makes me feel peaceful. I have this intuitive desire for family life alongside the kitchen table every time I view it.

 

This is the photography work of Zoe Leonard “Preserved Head of a Bearded Woman” (1991). This woman is eccentric. I think she must have received a lot of prejudice and discrimination back then. However, all five photos show the confidence from the bottom of her eyes. I bet Leonard had this admiration of the preserved model.

I love the building itself and the wall from Barbara Kruger most, among all the art pieces. The literal is straight to viewers’ heart. Law, bought and sold, free, salute, pray, die and laugh … All these words are thought-provoking, let alone the continuous question marks. I feel I ‘m a deeper person after reading these sentences in heart!

-Sutong