Marta Pozzan’s Art Party

Every month, art critic Marta Pozzan reports from her favorite gallery show… with her new wardrobe crushes thrown in, too.

WHERE? DEPART Foundation, 9105 West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90069
DEPART Foundation is an emerging arts organization dedicated to the development and support of contemporary artists whose work and careers are departing from their previous endeavors or predecessors. Since its founding in 2008 it’s served as a catalyst for the Italian art and cultural community, strengthening the dialogue between Italy and the international art world.

WHEN? July 9 – September 12

WHAT? Petra Cortright’s NIKI, LUCY, LOLA, VIOLA

28-year-old Petra Cortright is the It-Girl the art world’s It Girl. Even Stella McCartney commissioned the young artist for a series of video performances featuring pieces from her fall/winter collection. Petra’s best known for her webcam videos—“selfie” inspired digital portraits that are equal parts performance and documentary. Her work is diaristic in tone, beautifully irreverent, and intimately poignant in their intentional fallibility. NIKI, LUCY, LOLA, VIOLA is her first solo exhibition. The experience features a series of new video works and animations compiled from open-source, screensaver software, and purchased virtual strippers. “Niki,” “Lucy,” “Lola,” and “Viola” are the virtual erotic dancers purchased by Cortright, from readily available online software, to populate her own synthetic and painterly landscapes and green screen voids.

WHO? MOSCHINO SS ’15

Cortright’s internet-inspired artworks play with the ambivalence of viral internet culture and her irreverence so much goes along with Jeremy Scott’s extreme choices in colors, designs, imagery and messages. Their work embodies the anxiety of a culture raised with virtual modalities of self-expression, where yet the artist and consumer both become participants in the banality of this culture, born and raised in the age of technocracy.