Joshua Vides' Concept Cars
 |
| Installation view, "Flat Out: The Art of Joshua Vides" at the Petersen Automotive Museum |
Trompe l'oeil is never great art, but it is often interesting art. File under "interesting" an installation by Joshua Vides at the Petersen Automotive Museum that is, in a sense, the very opposite of trompe l'oeil. Vides paints real 3D objects to make them look like 2D illustrations. For his year-long Petersen show he uses black and white acrylic to make cars from the museum collection look like concept drawings.
Vides got his start as a graffiti tagger and has since worked in the populist street art mode, selling merch online and accepting commissions from trendy lifestyle brands. Much of Vides' art is both shamelessly derivative and rather clever. Roy Lichtenstein's mirrors are one point of departure. Here Vides dispenses with the Ben Day dots but paints actual mirrors in a B&W comic book style.
"Flat Out: The Art of Joshua Vides" is at the Petersen through July 5, 2027.
 |
| Installation view |
 |
| An homage to Judy Chicago |
Comments
Are the hoods featured in the mirrors paintings of hoods, or the actual hoods hanging on the adjacent wall?
> Petersen show
I've always wondered why most temporary shows in a museum, even more so when a lot of time and effort have been put into them, last only around a typical 3 months. The 1/4 of a year as the traditional span for such exhibits probably has been affected by legal agreements for loans based on decades of habit
In turn, artworks that look like Met-Opera-House chandeliers have been hanging in a gallery of the Resnick for way too long. Although since LACMA apparently owns them, that sort of offsets an overly drawn-out display schedule. But not really when other works also owned by the museum haven't seen the light of day since 2020.