Louis Carreon: Celebrity Vault Friday 13th February 2009

“High friends in Low Places: New painting by Louis Carreon Friday February 13th-March 12th” at Celebrity Vault in Beverly Hills.
Carreon’s new works are an invigorating testimony to the fusions of new and old. His paparazzi parodies and anime graph art meets haute couture style affirms the realization that Graffiti art is Real Art with Real price tags. I hope he sells them all.
I toured around B.H. to kill time. Nick at Taschen books gave me some clues about Albert Oehlen and Keith Haring, artists that fit in to a new uglypop capitalist-critical/embracing esthetic, ala Tom Sachs.
I had been thinking about Sachs the day I found Carreon’s Hollywood studio. Nick at Taschen gave me advice re: the unpaid jobs of the future (coincidental with the collapse of the money system.)
Then I flew around the corner to the Gallerie Michael which houses the most delicious prints of Picasso, Dali, Talouse-Lautrec, Joan Miro, etc. All roughly affordable, for fine art, at only 5,000-15,000 a pop. I talked with Bill, who charmed me by asking for my last name, and filled me in on the lithograph and Albrecht Durer aficianado Richard, who gave my friend and I the most unforgettable lecture last summer.
The Gagosian on Camden seems to have a flashing light epileptic-inducing show by Carsten Holler called “Reindeers and Spheres.” It was closed. As was Barney’s, thank heavens, as I had a bad craving for Vetiver Extraordinaire and Bois D’Orage (French Lover) and have now renounced my fling with Tom Ford fragrance and would like to repatriate with Fredric Malle. It’s a war.
Back at the Celebrity Vault, I saw the shoes, the very primary color robotic rubix cube shoes by . . . the designer eludes me, except to say these are very important shoes. A funny piece by Stephen Verona entitled “HA HA HA Hirst” helped us restore irony to the whole skull cliché, which we still are rocking out.
I mean, until death do us part.
The Maxfield Bleu boutique pays homage to the skull, and Carreon himself places the skull in the centerstage along with the repeated image of the innocent teddy bear, who appears as “worthless” or with a heart pillow embroidered “f--- you.”
I enjoyed Carreon’s painted handbags, as the art-couture fusion is a necessary transpirence in commodity market terms, ala Murakami for Louis Vuitton.
The radical incorporation of text within, underneath, and superimposed on canvas, is a strategy that unnerves some, but it is one of my favorite things ever, and Carreon, brilliantly lets his vicious wit rip on Hollywood’s depravity.
He demurely puffed at a cigarette whilst his damsel-friend held handcrafted signature anime teddy bear masks for the guests. He ran away quickly to schmooze with a very pretty public . . .
I feel inspired . . . that someone sees the emptiness of Hollywood’s self-mythologizing . . . and the media’s involvement with perpetuating our shallowness . . .and I feel inspired that he can repackage and remarket it back at the vestiges of our ruling class, and that the irony of it all sells itself . . .
A mummified Chanel, or the Dior Dollar sign skull . . .
Some quotes from his text-riddled canvases:
“Hollywood love me . . .the dopest . . . unri(ch?) fashion . . . Los Angeles Crimes . . .street sushi . . . she is the storm . . . party bait xoxo . . . worthless . . . i love you . . . glamour night . . .addict . . .fame . . .scum bags . . .unfair (Dior) collection . . .hopeless . . . London, London, London, we met at Piccadilly Circus . . . long live the queen . . . bottle service . . . fashion issues we all have them . . .one night stands . . .the clubs the sex and the money . . . Vanity Fair . . .love . . .the dope issue . . . the cool kids in town & who they are f---ing . . . Hollywood filth . . . fAme (with the Anarchist A!) . . . how to be faithful (or not) . . .”
With so many works, and miniatures galore, Carreon should be in every home . . .
The DJ was Billy Morrison from the Cult.
Brigitte Bardot, Iggy Pop, and Andy Warhol were still looking great in celbrity photographs and you should really pop by the Celebrity Vault if you get a chance, especially for Carreon’s show which closes March 12, 2009.