FACES ’93 : Some Names to Be Reckoned With in the New Year : ART

Ahhh, a new year and so many unknowns: Will Jay, Dave and Johnny be genetically spliced to produce the Ultimate Talk Show Host? Will the Yuppie-in-Chief name Stevie Nicks to run the NEA? Who will Sinead pick as her tag team partner against Madonna and the Pope? Will the activist group AWOE (Actresses With One Eyebrow) demand that one of them be chosen to play Frida Kahlo? Oh well, frivolity aside, one thing is certain: You’ll be hearing these names and seeing these faces in the next 365.

John Outterbridge

In the 1960s Outterbridge was among the early practitioners of assemblage, which has been called the first home-grown California modern art. An aesthetic in which all manner of used and cast-off consumer goods are pulled together and given new life as poetic expression, assemblage is a kind of anti-art, concerned less with philosophical questions about the nature of art than with dedicated social activism. Next summer, 30 years after he arrived in L.A., the 59-year-old Outterbridge will be the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the California Afro-American Museum (Aug. 9-Nov. 29).