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Andy Warhol: Light and Dark, with Music by Ezra Buchla

Andy Warhol: Light and Dark, with Music by Ezra Buchla

Andy Warhol, Kiss, 1963, (c)A Andy Warhol Museum

In conjunction with the exhibition Andy Warhol: Shadows, Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA is proud to present a special screening of Warhol’s films Kiss (1963) and Blow Job (1964) with live music by experimental composer Ezra Buchla. Shadows, which became an increasingly important concern in Warhol’s two-dimensional artworks over the course of the 1970s, also played a starring role in his earlier film work. A single light, at once harsh and hallowing, illuminates actions, both mundane and profane, by turns captivating and alienating. The resultant play of light, shadow, time, and attention are among the most influential and arresting artworks of the twentieth century.

Beverages & light refreshments will be available for purchase at Lemonade Café until 10pm.

Tickets: $12 general admission; $7 students with valid ID

Tickets available in advance at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/258310

FREE for MOCA and Los Angeles Filmforum members; must present current membership card to claim free tickets

INFO 213/621-1745 or education@moca.org

Andy Warhol (b. 1928, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; d. 1987, New York) grew up in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. From 1945 to 1949, he studied art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, receiving a B.A. in Pictorial Design. In 1949 he moved to New York to pursue a career as a commercial illustrator and began exhibiting drawings and paintings in the 1950s. In 1962 his first solo exhibition, Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans, was mounted at the historic Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles and later exhibited at MOCA in 2011. Thereafter his work—which spans prints, drawings, Polaroid photographs, silkscreened canvases, 16mm and Super 8 film, and writing—was widely shown nationally and abroad.

Ezra Buchla (b. 1981, Berkeley, California) is a musician/technologist from Los Angeles who uses viola, voice, and software. He fronted the avant-pop-core band Mae Shi from 2003-2006, played in the band Gowns from 2005-2010, and now performs solo work that deals in folk tonality, indeterminacy, dense psychedelic song, and electronic formalism. He also collaborates and performs with many artists, including clipping., Chelsea Wolfe, Andre Vida, Father Murphy, and Claire Cronin. Ezra also develops music software and firmware, recently creating the framework for the open-source ‘aleph’ sound processor by monome. For more information: www.catfact.net

Acknowledgements:

Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA is supported through both organizations by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. Additional support of Filmforum's screening series comes from the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles. We also depend on our members, ticket buyers, and individual donors.

Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA furthers MOCA’s mission to be the defining museum of contemporary art with a bimonthly series of film and video screenings organized and co-presented by Los Angeles Filmforum—the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, video art, and experimental animation.

For more on Los Angeles Filmforum, visit lafilmforum.org, or email lafilmforum@yahoo.com. For more information on MOCA, visit moca.org.

Kiss

(1963. 16mm film, black and white, silent, 54 minutes at 16 frames per second.)

Originally screened serially as The Andy Warhol Serial, Kiss is comprised of 13 couples kissing for the duration of a whole roll of 16mm film, including Gerard Melanga, John Palmer, “Baby” Jane Holzer, Marisol, Ed Sanders, and Naomi Levine, and more.

Blow Job

(1964. 16mm film, black and white, silent, 41 min. at 16 frames per second)

The act indicated by the title, if it is happening at all, takes place entirely off screen. A man—originally uncredited, but later identified as DeVerne Bookwalter—his face in close-up, illuminated by a single light, rocks forward and back in apparent ecstasy, and at times, it would seem, boredom. Duration, repetition, and desire are all elegantly conjured in this masterful portrait.