ART REVIEW: RODNEY GRAHAM: A Little Though / SIGN LANGUAGE - MOCA The Geffen Contemporary

On Sunday we pointed ourselves downtown towards two new shows at MOCA, The Geffen Contemporary. "Rodney Graham: A Little Thought", and "SIGN LANGUAGE" are both running from July 25 to November 29, 2004.

Rodney Graham: A Little Thought

The first thing that one sees in the exhibition is a series of inverse portraits of trees, and an explaination of the methods of photography, in which a camera obscura is used to photograph the tree over it's lifetime. In an article in this week's LA Weekly, Rodney Graham is quoted as saying, "I'm a sucker for loops — Froot, tape, Javascript, film, whatever; as long as it’s set to “Repeat All,” I could stay there forever." This obsession with small moments in time, music, and imagemaking in scale with the cycles of the living world are all appearant themes in these works. There are several narrative video-loops and projections, overall this wasnt the best thing I've seen at MOCA.

SIGN LANGUAGE

This exhibition is culled from the museums permanent collection, and includes work that, "appropriate the format, material, and conventions of signage and advertising in order to communicate their respective messages, yet countermand the real-world intentions of such things," according to MOCA. Amanda was especially concerned with the arrangment of the work herein, where several pieces by an artist were alternated with a random set of other works. Overall, again, this was not highly moving or unique.