April 14 through June 16, 2018
Extended through July 14, 2018
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 14, 7-10PM
Hosted by Brad and George Takei
For nearly a decade, former public radio personality John S. Rabe has been documenting the gritty and sublime of Los Angeles. This new show, Come and Get It!, samples works from throughout Rabe’s photographic career, and – literally – shows us a new side of the artist.
Rabe inaugurated Bermudez Projects’ Downtown Los Angeles space in 2011 with The Vast Wasteland Project. In that exhibit, once-proud television sets found themselves on the streets, brutally replaced by new technology; in Acid Free in 2013, Rabe’s large-scale psychedelic images celebrated the muscularity of street bikers and the space shuttle, among myriad other subjects. In 2014’s i Am a Camera, the artist presaged the mobile photography craze. In the biennial group show Spaceland III | Aftermath, his images made post-Apocalyptic Los Angeles seem sexy.
Now, in John S. Rabe’s Come and Get It!, Rabe offers us a cornucopia of delicious images from throughout his career, plus a new selection paying tribute to Carlos Almaraz, Grant Wood, and even Caravaggio.
The exhibit includes the first artwork Rabe ever sold, a 4 x 4 inch image of an abandoned television from the exhibit, The Vast Wasteland Project. An early adopter, Rabe shot the entire show using the then-radical Hipstamatic app, saying it gave the photos of the abandoned sets the feeling of nostalgia he himself felt seeing them thrown to the curb. That premier image includes a sly self-portrait of the artist reflected in the TV screen.
“I find it a thoroughly thought-provoking work,” says 89.3-KPCC’s Larry Mantle, the first person ever to buy a Rabe work, and it has hung in his home’s entry hall ever since, “John S. Rabe is only technically an L.A. transplant,” Mantle says. “He doesn’t live on the Eastside or Westside. He resides in deep Los Angeles, as an enthusiast who sees the richness in day-to-day sights we often overlook. John’s photographic art captures our City through his original point of view.”
Bermudez Projects owner Julian Bermudez curated this exhibit, which he calls an “introspection,” with an eye toward photos that were significant in Rabe’s development as an artist.
“John has refined his eye over the years he’s been taking photographs. His approach to photography is fearless, bold, and brave in that his choice of subject matter oftentimes is of that which others tend to overlook. His images incite us to see the world with greater awareness and curiosity. And, this exhibit is an opportunity to pay witness to the corner-turning moments in this artist’s career.”
One of Rabe’s most successful works, Golden Chopper from 2013, is now a 8-foot by 8-foot vinyl wall image, hovering over the show like an LAPD chopper looking for your neighbor, its iPhone light receptor sun dogs now as big as basketballs. Documentarians Pamela Wilson and Stephen Seemayer (The Young Turks and Tales of the American), who acquired the print five years ago, say,
“Golden Chopper epitomizes our hometown: It’s beautiful and sunny, but with a hint of danger.”
New works in the show include an appreciation of late American painter Carlos Almaraz. In Echo Park Peddleboat and Echo Park War, Rabe pays tribute to the vibrancy of Almaraz’s Echo Park series; and Echo Park After Carlos, depicting the lovely arch of the Echo Park bridge, is a direct nod to Almaraz’s 1984 painting, The Bridge in Deep Magenta.
Rabe doesn’t pretend to approach Almaraz’s artistry, but he does restore the grittiness the park retains even after its recent restoration. “Big surprise,” Rabe says.
“Almaraz was more romantic than I am. He showed Echo Park as a magical wonderland. I love the park, but I still see the bird shit and the tagging. To me, life is more sustainable if you acknowledge the facts of life.”
The exhibit’s title work, Come and Get It!, was inspired by KPCC arts correspondent Marc Haefele’s comment about Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit, on display at the Getty Center a few months ago. This work by the
“Billy the Kid of great Italian painters,” Haefele wrote, is “a seductive youthful marvel, the fruit dripping-ripe … the basket boy just as alluring. ‘Come and get it,’ he says.”
Had Caravaggio lived to Rabe’s age, 52, he might have posed as Rabe does in this self-portrait set in a rococo thrift-store frame: nude, unshaved, a little mottled and a little less firm of flesh. All of the fruit on display here is way past its use-by date, but – at closing time at the bar – at least it’s available. Bermudez says
“I respect John’s honesty and bravery in putting it all out there. But as he told me, he couldn’t ask others to bare themselves, figuratively and literally, if he’s not willing to do it himself.”
In The New American Gothic, Brad and George Takei pose in an update of Grant Wood’s 1930 masterpiece that quickly came to symbolize the American steadfast spirit. Today, 10 years after the couple married during California’s Summer of Love, Rabe says “Brad and George are really just an American couple.” (Sales of this autographed, limited-edition print will benefit the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo.)
Rabe’s artwork is an expected way for new Angelenos to learn about their new home, to see a sample of the essence of Los Angeles focused into a few images. But it’s also a way to longtime residents to refresh their love of the city, to re-appreciate its grimy allure.
John S. Rabe (b. 1966) earned his BA from Michigan State University in 1988 (he fondly enjoys pointing out how he was rightly rejected by Harvard). Work by the artist is held in private and public collections both nationally and abroad. The artist has been featured in several group shows including “TARFEST” (2012), Los Angeles; SPACELAND: Los Angeles | Vast, Light, Modern (2012); SPACELAND II | Escape from Spaceland (2014), and SPACELAND III | Aftermath (2016). Rabe lives and works in Los Angeles.
