Meet James Gilbert | Sculptor & Installation Artist – SHOUTOUT LA

Los Angeles Convention Center
1201 South Figueroa Center Street West Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90015

PYO Gallery, Los Angeles, Seoul, Beijing – Booth 621/720

Art of War and Peace mp3

Listen/View Episode on KCRW

Los Angeles’ art scene continues to burst with high profile museum and gallery exhibitions. But today, I want to share with you a few intriguing and delightful discoveries I made somewhat off the beaten path.

At Manhattan Beach Art Center, which is only a half hour drive from LA, there is an exhibition with a name that stops you in your tracks: Sledgehammer. Bullet. Bomb. With what’s happening right now in the world, this exhibition by LA-based artist, James Gilbert, makes a particularly strong statement about “human aggression” [leading to] the loss of art, architecture, and historical sites.”

Gilbert creates sculptural artworks that manifest tension between elaborate, precarious wooden structures and what looks like a multitude of sandbags. Some of the structures seem ready to collapse under the weight of the bags. Others lean against each other in a game of push and pull.

Two specially commissioned artworks communicate a sense of destruction and protection. With a sledgehammer, the artist broke through the walls, left the debris on the floor, and then packed the hole with dozens of stuffed canvas bags. For me, all of the above evoke memories of attempts to protect major cultural sites around the world not only in the past, but in current military and political upheavals as well.

              
photographs by Edward Goldman