Longtime Future Shipwreck favorite Matt Furie and Michelle Devereux currently have a fantastic show on display at New Image Art. It’s called The Goblin Universe and it lives up to its name, laying claim to a slew of cosmic creatures, steaming slices of drool-worthy pizza, alien beasts and graph paper. Check out photos from the opening:

Newleyweds Rachel Pitler and Michael C. Hsiung

Clockwise from top: States of Matter, Natalie Portman in one of Rodarte’s Black Swan costumes, and Dave White at MOCA (photo by Chris Gardner).

I think about the La Brea Tar Pits a lot. It’s my favorite place in Los Angeles.

One of the things I like about the main tar pit is that it’s a neighbor to the LA County Museum of Art. Separating them is a permanent outdoor installation of huge concrete Donald Judd cubes. I like the way the cubes are enormously heavy, solid, orderly and immobile, but 20 feet away is a bubbling pit of tar that seems alive and chaotic and—if the movie Volcano is to be believed—possibly even going to kill us all some day and swallow those cubes whole.

Donald Judd: Untitled (for Leo Castelli), 1977

That block of land at Wilshire and Fairfax is also slugging itself around my brain while I’m inside MOCA at the Pacific Design Center at the Rodarte: States of Matter show. Because when you walk inside, the lower level is engaged in a similar kind of boxing match between the witchy, mentally ill Black Swan ballerina costumes that Kate and Laura Mulleavy created for Natalie Portman’s freakout, and several other black dresses that have been assembled from dyed cheesecloth and gauze, black feathers, metal lace and black vinyl embossed in a way that resembles a gnarled, lumpy, horror-creature dream. Hedora from Godzilla vs The Smog Monster appears to have been skinned alive after emerging from the oozing, bubbling Tar Pits and then turned into a shoulder cap for a dress. While you stare at it wondering how and why, you realize that if you took a very close-up photograph of all the elements going on at once, it would seem like a scorched, doom-landscape. Not a dress, but something that could swallow a giant Donald Judd cube. And that is fantastic.

Photo: Autumn de Wilde

Climb the stairs for more dresses and more Black Swan gear. Now the entire space on MOCA’s second floor is a strobe light show of flurorescent black and red competing for attention and, at times, simultaneously submerging the area in darkness. None of the clothes are black but the narrative is still a scary bedtime story.

At the top of the stairs is a group of white dresses suspended on wires that, in the black light, turn to into floating Haunted Mansion ghosts but, at, odd intervals, in brightest light, have the feel of a pearl-draped grandma who decided to add bedspread fringe to her sleeves just to remind you that she’s about to turn a hundred and she’s not done having it her way quite yet. Gnarled, nubbly wool pops up all over the place, and one of the dresses features a bodice that looks like a shearling breastplate. Everything here is white or near-white and, depending on when you look at it, in darkness or in light, it can feel both romantic and full of strange dread.

Photos: Ourcroissant

If you move over there are white incarnations of the black ballet costumes from below and, then, in the back corner, the film’s “Oops I just stabbed myself in the stomach because I’m crazy” costume, its hand-made open red wound popping out like a really gross flower, front and center.

The shock of that garment tempers the Dario Argento-ish smeared, streaked red dresses from a 2008 collection hovering nearby. They haven’t been splattered, though. They’ve been soaked and left to precision drip. Again, order co-existing with chaos. These are my favorite pieces in the show, because they remind me of a fake blood-stained white porcelain teapot by the Spanish artist Antonio Murado that a friend gave me, the perfect dresses to wear to a crime scene tea party or teen slasher prom night. They’re the last thing you witness. They’re the horror movie’s “Final Girl.” They’re everything beautiful and terrifying, all at once.

Antonio Murado: Salome Coffee Set

Dave White is the author of Exile in Guyville, film critic for Movies.com, a contributor to L.A.’s “Slake” and KCRW’s “UnFictional.” Find him on Facebook.

There’s so much rad art scattered throughout the world, it can all feel little overwhelming. Luckily, in the 21st Century, we have a plethora of mediums through which to disseminate all that radness: the Internet, magazines, coffee table book anthologies– and perhaps the most quaintly archaic of the bunch– art fairs! Fairs provide you with something that none of the above can: a visceral sense of the endlessness of culture. Direct contact with the people who get paid to have good taste. A labyrinth of beautiful objects that you can examine with an awe-inspired scrutiny that even the best computer monitor cannot allow.

New American Paintings and Future Shipwreck teamed up to take a look at the Art Los Angeles Contemporary fair this year, and ended up speaking with some of the raddest people around: Jessica Silverman of Silverman Gallery (home to Conrad Ruiz and Luke Butler); Wendy Yao of my favorite store on the east side of L.A. (Ooga Booga); Katharine Mulherin, whose gallery represents Winnie Truong, and many others! It felt like going to Disneyland, but with more turtlenecks.

What Tom Neely and his friends at Igloo Tornado started as a joke on a cocktail napkin years ago has blossomed into a mini-phenomenon. Henry & Glenn Forever is their hysterical mini-comic about the imagined tender love affair between intensely macho punk icons Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins, with digressions into their domestic duties, lovemaking practices, and friendship with the satanic couple next door, Daryl Hall and John Oates. The resulting patchwork of approaches in aesthetic and humor somehow manages to fuse gay jokes with gay’s jokes, striking a chord with punks, comic book geeks and homos alike– though Danzig himself is less than amused.

Last Friday night saw the opening of “Henry & Glenn Gang Bang,” an art show full of new pieces inspired by the original comic from a variety of vantage points, including works by queer comic king (and creator of Wuvable Oaf) Ed Luce, rising art star Eric Yahnker, and Jar Jar Binks aficionado Levon Jihanian. Take a peek at pictures from the opening below, and go check out the show at La Luz De Jesus before it comes down this weekend!

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I love Twin Peaks. I also love art, pie, and Clifton’s Cafeteria. So you can imagine the immeasurable magnitude of my excitement when all of these things collided last weekend at “In The Trees,” an art exhibition celebrating the 20th anniversary of David Lynch’s masterpiece.

Nowhere else on earth could have been more appropriate to host such an event than downtown L.A.’s world-famous surreal woodland forest-themed cafeteria, Clifton’s. Supplementing the already-perfect surroundings, they gave us free pie! And donuts! A red-curtained Black Lodge filled with David Lynch art pieces! Grace Zabriskie decoupage! I’m hyperventilating, simply reminiscing about the glory of this event. Take a look at some pictures from the opening, below.

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Melancholy GIF masterpieces from Laura Brothers. Brothers is just one of the many stellar artists exhibiting technology-inspired work in Synchronicity’s new show, Man, Such As We Know Him, Is A Computer.

Synchronicity, run by Chris Gere and Future Shipwreck’s own Katie Vonderheide, is one of L.A.’s most reliably awesome art galleries. Sadly, they’ve been in limbo for a few months now thanks to jackass East Hollywood landlords raising rents– so this show will be taking place at Mastodon Mesa‘s space in the Pacific Design Center.

Spencer Longo has taken on the task of transforming the gallery’s interior with an all-encompassing cyberdelic installation. Come check it out tomorrow night, January 20th– and get sucked into the net! The show includes work from Rafael Rozendaal, Peter Burr, and Owleyes and a boatload of other rad people. Don’t miss it!

Here’s how it works: you pack as many artists as you can fit into a room, each of them wielding a projector. Then they each project whatever they want, wherever they want. It’s called BYOB, or Bring Your own Beamer. Beamer? You know how the Brits call trucks “lorries” and elevators “lifts”? Well the Germans call projectors “beamers.” Those silly Europeans, what will they think of next!

After the first BYOB in Berlin, the anarchistic romp was repeated in Athens, and again last week in New York City. The New York edition (see photos from the evening over at Rhizome) included Future Shipwreck faves Travess Smalley, Michelle Ceja and Artie Vierkant in a stellar line-up of 25 artists. But as tends to be the case, Los Angeles is about to outdo New York with a BYOB event this week featuring 29 artists! Eat it, big apple!

BYOB L.A. includes beams of light emanating from the minds and machines of rad people such as Eugene Kotlyarenko, Hazel Hill McCarthy III, and Parker Ito. Two net art masterminds, Guthrie Lonergan and Chris Coy (who also has a fun new project going on up at JstChillin), are responsible for assembling the evening’s west coast guest list, and they’ll be participating in the wild light show themselves. Don’t miss it this Friday, November 19th at the USC Gayle and Ed Roski MFA Gallery.

Apparently, the New York edition got so crazy, it caused a power outage. This could be a great opportunity to find yourself in a completely dark room full of foxy art nerds, don’t pass it up!

Unless you’re having a seizure right now, you’re looking at a GIF of a sculpture by Matt Furie. Furie’s first sculpture since art school was heralded by a barrage of flashing lights at Show Cave’s Corn on the Macabre III. The Halloween show also featured the talents of fellow Future Colors of America collaborators Aiyana Udesen and Albert Reyes, spooky new works by Leslie Winchester and Ariana Papademetropoulos, and a projector plugged into Furie’s Return of the Quack. Pictures below!

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Future Colors of America is a terrific artistic triad comprised of troublemaking superfriends Matt Furie (Boys Club and Return of the Quack), Aiyana Udesen (an ace at drawing Whorf, Britney Spears, and penguins), and Albert Reyes (whose haunted maze I helped bring to Mastodon Mesa last spring). It’s always a pleasure to see these three artists working together. Their distinct visual sensibilities and senses of humor weave effortlessly in their collaborations and crossovers. They take delight in both both intensifying and obscuring the symbols, fixations and refrains of each others’ canons.

Though the group has been collaborating for years, Future Colors of America made their eponymous debut when Matt and Aiyana brought Albert up to San Francisco last year for a show at GRSF. So Albert returned the favor by inviting them to show in his east L.A. neighborhood, El Sereno, on the eve of Halloween. Bouquet of Death, which also includes work from Monique “MAC” Contreras, Leslie Winchester and Aaron Martinez, marked the debut of the brand new DOA (Dose of Art) Gallery.

Like the rock stars they are, Future Colors of America opened another show in L.A. on the same night– Corn on the Macabre III at Show Cave. Pictures from that opening will be up shortly!

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Neck Face devised a hellish haunted house at OHWOW gallery last night to kick off his solo show, Into Darkness. Watch the madness unfold below, and then check out some classic gory imagery and dorky jokes from everyone’s favorite demonic rapscallion.

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