Street talk: Awol Erizku fills a conceptual gallery with work inspired by LA turf
![a car filled with flowers](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/azwWzFQZcxsnJA4LMkfiVC-415-80.jpg)
If there’s one thing LA has plenty of, it’s detox clinics. But you won’t find conventional therapies at The Duchamp Detox Clinic, where the cleansing is more esoterically observed.
The brainchild of 27-year-old artist Awol Erizku, The Duchamp Detox Clinic is a roving ‘conceptual gallery’ – a transient space showcasing the work of artists who aren’t already represented and whose interests are in ready mades that repurpose objects with new ideas. The Clinic’s first brick-and-mortar exhibit opened last week at the Everest Trading Corporation – a backpack and luggage warehouse in downtown LA’s Arts District – in partnership with Night Gallery.
Ethiopian-born Erizku, who grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Yale’s MFA programme in 2014, relocated his studio to LA a year ago. In 2015, he premiered his film Serendipity at MoMA, New York. At the end of last year, his 2013 photographs of sex workers in Addis Ababa, where the artist was born, showed at Flag Foundation.
Those previous public presentations seem to have little to do, either in medium or charge, with what you get at The Duchamp Detox Clinic, which is inaugurated with an Erizku solo show entitled 'Bad II The Bone'. Yet they share a common aesthetic of popping colours combined with assertively formal compositions. 'Bad II The Bone' is a conceptual journey crystallising the 360-degree experience of travelling through the sprawling neighbourhoods of the City of Angels.
Though the work on display includes both sculptures and paintings, this approach is manifested in a Porsche 914, salvaged from the desert and transformed into a giant planter, titled Ask the dust – an allusion to the contradictions of car fanaticism and clean living in the city. Simultaneously, large paintings with vigorous lashes of house and spray paint on plywood backboards, have a texture reminiscent of buffing, the process of painting over graffiti. In other pieces, too, the salient materials recall neighborhoods of the city: the plastic veneer used in pieces such as Skip, hop, trip, drop, flip, flop with the white tube sock, 2015, are a distinct reminder of the tents that line nearby Skid Row, while the numbers in Say It Here, While It's Safe, 2015, are in fact gang turf markings.
The markers and structures that delineate and divide up urban neighborhoods and built environments have always interested Erizku. Growing up in a housing complex in the Bronx, overlooking a basketball court where gangs would gather, the social and political implications of architecture became a natural fascination. While these works might reference such themes more obliquely, the titles – such as Black Americans Killed by Police in 2014 Outnumbered Those Who Died on 9/11, 2015 – highlight the artist’s political objectives in no uncertain terms.
The space opens with an inaugural Erizku solo show, ’Bad II The Bone’ – a conceptual, 360-degree experience of travelling through the sprawling neighbourhoods of the City of Angels
Featuring both sculptures and paintings, the works exhibited reference graffiti, gangland markings, materials that are synonymous with specific areas of the city and more
Growing up in a housing complex in the Bronx, overlooking a basketball court where gangs would gather, Erizku has long been fascinated by the markers and structures that delineate and divide up urban neighborhoods and built environments
The Clinic occupies the Everest Trading Corporation – a backpack and luggage warehouse in downtown LA’s Arts District – and is run in partnership with Night Gallery
INFORMATION
’Bad II The Bone’ is on view until 13 February. For more information, visit Night Gallery’s website
Photography: Jeff McClane. Courtesy of Night Gallery
ADDRESS
Duchamp Detox Clinic
655 S Santa Fe Ave
Los Angeles, California
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
Charlotte Jansen is a journalist and the author of two books on photography, Girl on Girl (2017) and Photography Now (2021). She is commissioning editor at Elephant magazine and has written on contemporary art and culture for The Guardian, the Financial Times, ELLE, the British Journal of Photography, Frieze and Artsy. Jansen is also presenter of Dior Talks podcast series, The Female Gaze.
-
Phaidon’s new Graphic Classics is a lavish greatest hits of graphic design
Graphic Classics is a compendium of seven centuries of visual culture, from the everyday and ephemeral to visionary works that reshaped our world
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Birley Chocolate hits the sweet ’n’ chic spot in London’s Chelsea
The new Birley Chocolate shop, a sibling to Birley Bakery, is a confection of colour as delicious as its finely crafted goods
By Melina Keays Published
-
Feel at home at Auberge, Château La Coste's new inn for culture lovers
Auberge La Coste sits at the heart of the art-filled estate, minutes away from the joyful town of Aix-en-Provence
By Harriet Thorpe Published
-
Alexander May, founder of LA studio Sized, on the joys of creative polymathy
Creative director Alexander May tells us of the multidisciplinary approach that drives his LA studio Sized and its offspring, a 5,000 sq ft event space and an exhibition series
By Hannah Silver Published
-
50 of America’s top creatives, photographed by Inez & Vinoodh
Photographed exclusively for Wallpaper* by Inez & Vinoodh, we present a portfolio of 50 creatives driving the current discourse on American culture and its dynamic evolution
By Dan Howarth Published
-
Los Angeles art exhibitions: the best shows to see in August
Read our pick of the best Los Angeles art exhibitions to see this month, from Gordon Parks at Pace Gallery to Intuit Dome's new public art collection
By Carole Dixon Last updated
-
Nona Faustine confronts the past in New York
Artist Nona Faustine reframes New York's colonial past in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
By Hannah Silver Published
-
How the west won: Ivan McClellan is amplifying the intrepid beauty of Black cowboy culture
In his new book, 'Eight Seconds: Black Cowboy Culture', Ivan McClellan draws us into the world of Black rodeo. Wallpaper* meets the photographer ahead of his Juneteenth Rodeo
By Tracy Kawalik Published
-
Zanele Muholi celebrates South Africa’s Black LGBTI communities in LA and London
Zanele Muholi's portraits and sculptures are currently on show at Southern Guild Los Angeles and the Tate Modern, London
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Casa Bosques’ queer-themed book curation comes to New York’s East Village
In Pride Month 2024, Casa Bosques’ pop-up bookstore in The Standard hotel, East Village, offers a stylish haven for literary mavens
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Alicja Kwade and Agnes Martin in Los Angeles: time, temporality and perception
Artists Alicja Kwade and Agnes Martin are in dialogue at Pace Gallery, Los Angeles
By Emily McDermott Published