Tag Archives: Wendy Yao

OOGA BOOGA — CLOSING WEEKEND

In 2017, when Ooga Booga founder Wendy Yao was awarded the White Columns/Shoot the Lobster award—”presented annually to individuals who selflessly create a context for other artists’ ideas and seek to build communities around them”— Asher Penn wrote:

Ooga Booga has become a non-institutional hub within the Los Angeles area; a go-to place for its selection of books, multiples, fashion items, and accessories. Outside Los Angeles, Ooga Booga is an icon of independent entrepreneurship, participating in art and book fairs, opening temporary satellite stores, creating online resources for independent publishers, and organizing events in various venues. 

PARIS LA is one of countless publications that Yao has supported over the years, facilitating introductions to future collaborators and providing a platform for imagination to take flight.

Ooga Booga’s Chinatown store is closing this weekend—Sunday, September 1 is the last day. Stop by and visit one last time. (The web shop is scheduled to continue operations.)

OOGA BOOGA

943 North Broadway, downtown Los Angeles.

From top: Wendy Yao, KCET; Ooga Booga, Chinatown, exterior and interior (2); Excursus III: Ooga Booga at ICA in Philadelphia, 2012, photograph by Alex Klein; Ooga Booga II at 356 Mission; sign in Chinatown, Los Angeles. Images courtesy and © Wendy Yao and the photographers.

356 MISSION — THE LAST SHOW

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356 Mission, the non-profit artists’ space founded by Laura Owens and Wendy Yao, will close its doors next month. The last show is VICTOR ROSAS – ARTIFICIAL MASK, opening Friday night.

From the statement by Owens and Yao:

“After more than five years of public programming, 356 Mission’s final exhibitions are Alake Shilling’s MONSOON LAGOON, and an installation by Victor Rosas. Ooga Booga’s location at this address will close, but its original store in Chinatown will remain open.

356 Mission was an experiment in showing art and sharing space. We collaborated with over a thousand individuals and groups, hosted events and programs that were free and open to all, and worked to produce an alternative to the conventional gallery system in order to support and realize the visions of a wide range of artists. It was a labor of love, with finite resources, and never intended to last forever. We still believe that art can make a difference, that art spaces are vital to the cultural empowerment of all people, and that artists can be allies of vulnerable communities.

“Some took issue with our impact on the neighborhood – although we don’t agree with their perspective, we respected it, and attempted to bridge that divide while working toward proactive solutions to the best of our abilities. For both personal and practical reasons, we have decided that 356 Mission is no longer sustainable, but we will continue to support open access to arts programming and the health of existing local economies. We are deeply grateful to everyone who has supported us along the way, and look forward to continuing to engage the incredible communities of people who came through these doors.”*

 

VICTOR ROSAS – ARTIFICIAL MASK, opens Friday, April 20. Through May 13.

ALAKE SHILLING – MONSOON LAGOON, through April 29.

356 MISSION, 356 South Mission Road, Los Angeles.

356mission.com/filter/exhibition

356mission.com/alake-shilling-Interview

See: hyperallergic.com/356-mission-closing-reactions/

356mission.com/356-mission-will-end-its-5-year-run-in-may-2018/

Above: Artwork by Alake Shilling.

Below: The last opening flyer. Image credit: 356 Mission.

victor-flyer

 

SETH BOGART AT OOGA BOOGA

This Thursday, join Seth Bogart and Wendy Yao at Ooga Booga for a ceramics sale and book launch party for SETH BOGART CERAMICS.

 

SETH BOGART CERAMICS BOOK LAUNCH AND CERAMICS SALE, Thursday, April 20, from 6 to 8 pm.

OOGA BOOGA, 943 North Broadway, #203, Chinatown, Los Angeles

sethbogart.com

twitter.com/oogaboogastore?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

https://www.instagram.com/p/BS4KCRJB3Ly/

Seth Bogart Ceramics Image credit: Seth Bogart and Ooga Booga

Seth Bogart Ceramics
Image credit: Seth Bogart and Ooga Booga

FRIDAY FLIGHTS AT THE GETTY!

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Something hip is happening at The Getty! Now you can visit the museum on the hill, and enjoy a beautiful California summer evening outside, listening to music, watching performance, and enjoying local beers and bites. Sarah Cooper is curating a great series of Friday night events at The Getty this summer: Friday Flights.

I’m really excited to announce that Wendy Yao of Ooga Booga is hosting this Friday!

If you can’t make this week’s event, you can catch a night hosted by No Age on Friday July 18th, and Mikael Jorgensen on Friday August 8th.

FRIDAY FLIGHTS HOSTED BY OOGA BOOGA

Date: June 27, 2014
Time: 6:00–9:00 p.m.
Location: Museum Courtyard
Admission: Free; no reservations required; Parking $10

Ooga Booga is an innovative storefront shop that features alternative objects, design, fashion, artist books and editions, as well as records and visual projects by musicians. Under the direction of owner Wendy Yao, the store presents objects with a disregard for conventional boundaries, with a punk-inspired irreverence, showing that artists and ideas in any discipline can be engaged in the same aesthetic discussion. For Friday Flights, Yao has invited a group of artists and musicians who, each in their own way, deals with performance—one of the deepest connections between music and the visual arts.

Avey Tare of the renowned sound innovators Animal Collective, teams up with Black Dice’s Bjorn Copeland for an sound installation and performance. Avey Tare, whose practice with Animal Collective spans ten studio albums that pushed electronic music into wholly new, kaleidoscopic territories, isn’t new to the museum context—he co-staged an environmental sonic experience inside New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2010. Bjorn Copeland’s distorted noise-rock with Black Dice has also thrived in the art context, appearing in an installation by artist Peter Coffin at Andrew Kreps Gallery, composing tracks for painter Richard Phillips, and performing in art venues like the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, The Andy Warhol Museum, and more.

Nguzunguzu are an integral force within the L.A.-based Fade To Mind collective, specializing in piecing together disparate club elements into a peculiar sound that is all at once tough, emotive, sexy, and scary. Nguzunguzu’s sets are a dizzying combination of digging, blending, and seamless re-contextualization. Never content to stay in one place for too long, Nguzunguzu’s journeys may take you around the weirder edges of chart R&B and hip-hop, Baltimore club, globetrotting urban pop, eski, zouk, footwork, kizomba, or kuduro, before splintering into genres unknown.

MAL PAIS is a collaboration between artists M. Cay Castagnetto and MPA conceived nine months ago and born today as a rant-band. From the lookout point between four tracks looping separate circles, MAL PAIS’s performance shadows the work of Henry Hills, Ester Ferrer, Libby Howes of the Wooster Group, and Yvonne Rainer.

Alexa WeirFlora WiegmannRikki Rothenberg, and Busy Gangnes are all Los Angeles-based dancers who, individually and collectively, bring dance to unique environments such as galleries, outdoor spaces, malls, and music venues. They will perform a three-hour structured improvisational score using found movement and borrowed choreography. The piece travels throughout the museum.

Wendy Yao

Wendy Yao