Art Walk Preview for February 2009

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — It's February, and if you [heart] Downtown, you love Art Walk. This month's edition comes on Thursday, February 12. The Los Angeles Times offered up a lengthy story and a photo essay including some face time for Ricky the Pirate.

Down and out denizen you say? Not at all. On Art Walk night Ricky's a performance artist who speaks of the masked figure venturing the urban abyss on a plank of Main Street solitude.

Morono Kiang introduces Russian born and educated Varvara Shavrova, now based in Beijing. Her series explores the Russian Chinese border through two short video loops shot between Russia and China, and eight large paintings responding to stills from the video. The gray has been noted as gloomy, yet it comes from a personal experience that finds beauty in those shades. Many of the works have shown in exhibitions in London and Russia. (218 W. 3rd)

Collage Dance Theatre performs a site-specific work at 7+Fig as part of their residency, dubbed A Material World. Choreographed by Heidi Duckler, the rehearsals find movement influenced by the sights and sounds of the street, or as seen in the evening an eerie silence. A performance is scheduled for 6:30pm on Art Walk night, and the final performance is set for February 18th. The 200 yards of fabric? It may represent fashion consumerism or be a representation of movement of the city. Or, it may just be a neat color that looks cool on dancers.

LACDA: The three artists now showing at the Los Angeles Center Digital Arts add yet more range to digital works. Photography and conceptual artist Jean Ferro offers an alter ego piece, her ducks-in-a-row series. Martin Gantman's "Welcome to Davos" is set to challenge "the red ink of economic performance conflicting with human benefit", while Michael Salerno slips in lines of drawing with photography to make a personal testament that expression goes beyond shape and color. (107 W. 5th)

We say farewell to Coldspring Fine Art, the short lived gallery that brought Downtown Teddies and Yosemite. Best of luck to Mary Sanburn.

Company of Angels: offers a mini-comedy walk in one location. I like the idea of "L.O.L!!" with Rawle Lewis, Karen Anzoategui, Lalo Quezada, Cisco!, Paul Martinez, Dianne Kawasaki, Laz Viciendo and Bobbie Oliver. It begins at 9pm on Art Walk night at the Alexandria Hotel, 501 S. Spring, 3rd floor._

CONTINUING — BGFA: Sandra Yagi, Jessica Curtaz and Doug Cox continue in the gallery, and Richard Ankrom's "Water and Power" makes up the Project Windows (102 W. 5th). PHARMAKA: The “New Mythologies” of women in art, as seen by Marina Fortsmann Day, Cheryl Ekstrom, Suzanna Schulten, Margaret Lazzari, Michelle Weinstein, and Suzan Woodruff (101 W. 5th). MONA: "Glowing Stones," "Luminescene," and 'Traveling Light" (136 W. 4th).