Unique Bus Bench Art Returns ~ DTLA & Boyle Heights

MAP and Do Art are back with another round of unique art to be placed on bus benches around Downtown and Boyle Heights. This time, Los Angeles based photographers Andrew Bush and Michael Jang showcase their work in Council District 14 with eighteen installations. The exhibit is sponsored by the office of Jose Huizar and Martin Outdoor Media. Check out the previous installations in our post here. Keep reading for map, location list, previews of the work, and info on the artists.

MAP and Do Art’s objective is to create conversations with people on the street about these portrait series, which carry intimate personal views of family, celebrity and those en route. The viewer holds the privileged role of voyeur, observing and surveilling the oftentimes unaware subjects in Andrew Bush’s Vector Portrait series which captures travellers on the roadways of Los Angeles since 1989. The selection of Michael Jang’s work is from his extended family portrait series ‘The Jangs’ that he shot while a student at CalArts in 1970 under the direction of Diane Arbus’ teacher Lisette Model which were recently purchased by the SFMOMA, and his celebrity series ‘The Banquet Crasher’. These pictures are far from your average family snapshots, or celebrity shots, in fact, they are filled with a sense of humor and expose the uniqueness of character.
The unconventional exhibition ‘Those who pass us by’ aims to reach out to people on the streets of Los Angeles, and replace advertisements with an art series that is relevant to the site and demographic of the audience. Art has the power to inspire, enhance, and transform cities and their citizens. This is a exhibition for Los Angelenos, by Los Angeles artists for Los Angeles residence. ‘Those who pass us by’ is designed to stop you for a moment on your daily route.

The Los Angeles based art organization Do Art Foundation and Canadian public art collective Make Art Public [MAP] have come together to create a series of 18 images at 18 locations replacing advertising to display art. These collectives are dedicated to promoting art & culture through urban regeneration strategies. DO ART & MAP focus on the promotion and creation of work visible in the public landscape. This is put in place with the support of Councilmember Jose Huizar and Planning Director Tanner Blackman. Martin Outdoor Media installs and maintains over 5,000 bus benches throughout the city, including overseeing the advertising on the benches.

ARTISTS:

Michael Jang (Los Angeles) Michael Jang’s is a unique story. For the last forty years, he has earned a living as a portrait photographer, capturing iconic figures such as Jimi Hendrix, Ronald Reagan, and Robin Williams, among others. However, this unassuming Asian-American photographer has also been simultaneously infiltrating and documenting a number of groups and subcultures from all strata of society: from celebrity parties in Beverly Hills to the youth of Castro’s Cuba, from South City gangs to Old West rodeos, and from the punk rock scene of the late 70s to the teenage garage bands of early 2000s San Francisco. His images are allegories of particular points in time, characterized by their candid honesty, decisiveness, and vivacity. SFMoMA has recently acquired a number of his early prints and has exhibited them alongside contemporaries such as Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, and Lee Friedlander.

Andrew Bush (Los Angeles) Represented by M+B Gallery in Culver City. The Vector Portraits series has been exhibited extensively in solo and group shows, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College (Wellesley, Massachusetts) and Staatliche Kunsthalle (Baden-Baden, Germany). Bush’s work is held in prominent public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The George Eastman House (Rochester, New York) and The Victoria & Albert Museum (London). In 2008, Yale University Press published his monograph Drive, which includes an interview by Jeff L. Rosenheim, the Curator of Photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Andrew Bush currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

ABOUT:
José Huizar was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master’s degree in Public Affairs and Urban Planning from Princeton University and a Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law. He is the first Mexican immigrant elected to the City Council in Los Angeles’ history and in 2004, he became the first Latino to serve on the Princeton Board of Trustees.Councilmember Huizar has been awarded numerous awards and distinctions, including profiles by the Los Angeles Business Journal as one of the 25 figures in the Los Angeles Area that “stand out for their potential to shape lives” and by Hispanic Business Magazine as one of the “100 most influential Hispanics” in the United States.
“This project gives us the opportunity to bring art to the public right-of-way,” said Councilmember Huizar, describing how the project got started. “I want to thank all our partners, especially the artists, for lending their talents to the City.”