HB3: Laser Snake

Downtown Los Angeles

Chiho Harazaki: Buddha, 2019, fluorescent gaffer tape on corrugated panel, 9 x 20 feet (with Level Ground)

Opening

Saturday, April 17, 2021, 8-10pm

Location

414 E. 12th Street
Downtown Los Angeles

Not ones to let a little thing like a global pandemic get in the way of an art show, the curators of High Beams kick off their third drive-through art exhibition on Saturday, April 17, in the parking lot and adjacent alleyway east of the Bendix Building.

Playfully titled Laser Snake, the COVID-safe exhibition proves to be the most exuberant and mystical yet, with live performances from art clowns, wheat threshing, painters erasing musicians from view, and at least three pyramids, each with a different meaning and aesthetic. The title was inspired by the first High Beams show, when a queue of 150 cars formed a “laser snake” as it meandered through a rooftop parking lot. You can watch the video here.

“While we are supposedly seeing a light at the end of the tunnel of this pandemic, we are also hearing about infection rates exploding in some European countries,” said Carl Baratta, one of the High Beams founders and an artist/curator with TSALA. “We see this confusion and existential dread expressed artistically in Laser Snake by artists who are looking for some sort of deliverance — in many cases either by creating chaos or manifesting mysticism.”

The pyramidic works include Serena JV Elston’s upside-down wood sculpture, which represents the erasure of debt and male patriarchy; Max Presneill’s assemblage, WEB, a surrealist-inspired reflection on the dangers of life and the joy of making art, made from motorcycle exhaust pipes and plastic joints; and Sean Noyce’s candle-lit installation that conjures the artist’s ancestors through a mystical portal, situated down a dark alleyway.

Other mystical works include Chiho Harazaki’s Buddha, a drawing made from fluorescent gaffer tape on corrugated panel, which expresses the desire for gun control and condolences to those grieving for the victims of gun violence and racism; and CONSPIRITUALITY, a group installation with artists Rob Brown, Ricardo Harris-Fuentes and Jorge Mujica that explores themes of spirituality, conspiracy theories, magic and illusion.

Live performances include painting on a freestanding 4’ x 8’ clear plastic window positioned in front of musicians Hagop Najarian and Steven Soto. During the two-hour show, artists Surge Witrön and Tom Dunn respond to the music by painting the backside of the plastic window, obscuring the view of the musicians and the artists. Meanwhile, Hannah Hughes and Jamie Hamilton thresh barley grain by hand throughout the evening to separate the grain from the chaff, and offer individual pearls for bitcoin purchase.

The show is studded by the work of Scott Froschauer, whose street signs turn our culture of alienation on its head by exposing and counteracting the compulsions used to avoid uncomfortable thoughts and feelings.

“We see this confusion and existential dread expressed artistically in Laser Snake by artists who are looking for some sort of deliverance — in many cases either by creating chaos or manifesting mysticism.”

— Carl Baratta organizer