John Bock uses movies like most directors use sets: as essential ingredients of larger undertakings. That’s something we don’t often see in Los Angeles, where movies rule and other art forms play second fiddle to the silver screen.
At Regen Projects, Bock’s fourth solo show in Los Angeles turns that hierarchy inside out. Titled “Drei Schwestern (Three Sisters),” the German artist’s four-gallery free-for-all consists of a suite of six architectural models, a series of 21 three-dimensional collages, a 40-minute movie and, in the pitch-black main gallery, a massive sculpture you can walk into.
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The real drama unfolds in your head. As you move back-and-forth between Bock’s fantastic sculpture and his movie, your memories of one work shape what you see — and experience — in the other.
It doesn’t matter if you watch the movie or see the sculpture first — or break up your visit to one with visits to the other. What matters is the interaction between the two. That give-and-take unfolds in the mind’s-eye, where fleeting perceptions and evolving recollections collide and collude.
It’s not always pleasant. But it’s 100% fascinating, particularly if you’re interested in the emotions that burble to the surface of consciousness when we awaken from dreams and nightmares.
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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins leaves a rehearsal of his play “Appropriate,” opening Oct. 4 at the Mark Taper Forum, to eat first with a reporter, then later with his agent and some unspecified Hollywood people, who presumably hope to lure him away from the field and city where he has experienced meteoric success in the last five years. Read more >>
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Soprano Abigail Fischer performs Oct. 7 in the opera “Songs from the Uproar” at REDCAT in Los Angeles.
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Moisés Kaufman’s muscular revival of “Bent,” which played at the Mark Taper Forum, opening on July 26, renders what many had written off as a parochial drama about the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany into a gripping tale of love, courage and identity. Read review >>
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Malaviki Sarukkai performing at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica on July 19, 2015. Sarukkai is the best-known exponent of South Indian classical dance.
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Bramwell Tovey conducts the L.A. Phil with pianist Garrick Ohlsson in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the Hollywood Bowl on July 14, 2015.
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Argentine dancer Herman Cornejo performs in the West Coast premiere of “Tango y Yo” as part of the Latin portion of BalletNow.
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Jake Shears plays Greta in Martin Sherman’s play “Bent” at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles through Aug. 23, 2015.
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Dancers rehearse a one-night-only performance choregraphed by Raiford Rogers, one of L.A.’s most-noted choreographers. This year the dance will be to a new original score by Czech composer Zbynek Mateju.
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Oscar-winning actor Ben Kingsley in Los Angeles on July 9, 2015.
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Mia Sinclair Jenness, left, Mabel Tyler and Gabby Gutierrez alternate playing the title role in the musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda” at the Ahmanson Theatre. The three are shown during a day at Santa Monica Pier on June 16, 2015.
(Christina House / For The Times) 12/28
American Contemporary Ballet Company members Zsolt Banki and Cleo Magill perform a dance routine originally done by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. This performance was presented as part of “Music + Dance: L.A.” on Friday, June 19, 2015.
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Miguel, a Grammy-winning guitarist, producer, singer and lyricist, is photographed in San Pedro on Wednesday, June 10, 2015. His new album “Wildheart,” explores L.A.’s “weird mix of hope and desperation.”
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Los Angeles-born artist Mark Bradford is photographed in front of “The Next Hot Line.” This piece is part of his show “Scorched Earth,” installed at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, June 11, 2015.
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Paige Faure, center, plays Ella in “
Cinderella,” which opened at the Ahmanson Theater on March 18.
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The Los Angeles Opera concluded its season with “The Marriage of Figaro,” with Roberto Tagliavini as Figaro and Pretty Yende as Susanna, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
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“Trinket,” a monumental installation by Newark-born, Chicago-based artist William Pope.L, features an American flag that is 16 feet tall and 45 feet long. The work is on display at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA through June 28.
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Conductor
Gustavo Dudamel’s contract with the Los Angeles Philharmonic has been extended to mid-2022.
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Alex Knox, from left, Carolyn Ratteray, Lynn Milgrim and Paige Lindsey White in “Pygmalion” in spring 2015 at the Pasadena Playhouse.
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On March 17, Google celebrated the addition of more than 5,000 images to its Google Street Art project with a launch party at the Container Yard in downtown Los Angeles.
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Los Angeles architect Jon Jerde, who was outspoken about his opinions on the
state of public space, died on
Feb. 9. The CityWalk at Universal Studios is among his famous designs.
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Diana Vishneva as Princess Aurora in
American Ballet Theatre‘s production of “
Sleeping Beauty” that premiered at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in March.
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Los Angeles Philharmonic assistant conductor
Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla leads the orchestra in her first L.A. Phil subscription concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall on March 1 in a program of Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky.
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Rachele Gilmore as Alice and Christopher Lemmings as Mouse with supernumeraries in “
Alice in Wonderland.” Susanna Malkki conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in this collaboration with the L.A. Opera at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
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Marcia Rodd, left, and Dick Cavett reprise their roles in “
Hellman v. McCarthy,” a play inspired by actual events on “The Dick Cavett Show,” at Theatre 40 in February. The production starred Cavett as himself and Rodd as literary celebrity Mary McCarthy.
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Irish playwright
Conor McPherson‘s latest play, “
The Night Alive,” ran at the Geffen Playhouse from Feb. 11 through March 15.
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Ric Salinas, left, Herbert Siguenza and Richard Montoya, of the three-man Latino theater group Culture Clash, brought their “Chavez Ravine: An L.A. Revival” to the Kirk Douglas Theatre to mark the group’s 30th anniversary. The play ran from Feb. 4 through March 1.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) Bock’s movie is a Greek tragedy gone wrong. Guilt, depravity and retribution form a whirlpool into which six actors are sucked. Their dialogue (in German, with English subtitles) is comically demented, its ham-fisted turns of phrase both crude and right on the money. What is often lost in translation returns with a vengeance, the blindness of anger and even darker compulsions interlocking in a story with loads of loose ends and a surplus of ambivalence.
Bock’s walk-in sculpture is even better. About the size of a small house, it transforms the movie’s sets into a dysfunctional labyrinth or DIY house of mirrors.
To step into it is to feel as if you have fallen through a cosmic wormhole. Space and time are both compressed and stretched. Mind-bending high jinks ensue. Knee-buckling conundrums follow hot on their heels.
With great efficiency, Bock calls Wagner to mind. Making room for operatic bombast in a world overrun with ADHD impatience, he makes you think twice about movies and sculptures and their place in life.
Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., (310) 276-5424, through Dec. 19. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.regenprojects.com
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