Loft 9 Gallery / Hydrodynamica

A few years ago Hydrodynamica Project photographer Ryan Field developed a technique for photographing surfboards and objects associated with the Hydrodynamica here in the loft. He built a lighting structure and experimented with a variety of formats. The results were impressive. Ryan came out from Brooklyn last week to shoot more boards. He built a bigger and better lighting system, and for the past five days he has been photographing the boards shown in our Pacific Standard Time exhibit, as well as a host of other relevant boards we have gathered. The loft is full of an amazing gathering of boards: Greenough, Simmons, Lis, Diffenderfer, Gephart, Frye…and dozens of the absolute latest, state-of-the-art creations by Daniel Thomson and Ryan Burch.

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New Surfboard Exhibit Opens in East Village

The genius of Bob Simmons comes together in Hydrodynamica

By Jared Whitlock, San Diego Magazine

Legendary surfer Bob Simmons was a lot of things: a Caltech dropout, moody, eccentric, and most of all, a genius. He fast-tracked surfing’s evolution by making surfboards lighter and more responsive before tragically drowning at Windansea Beach in 1954. But surf historian Richard Kenvin wants people to know that Simmons is more than a historical footnote.

Kenvin’s Hydrodynamica: Remember the Future, an exhibit that opened this past weekend at Space 4 Art/Loft 9 Gallery (325 15th St. San Diego), showed that Simmons continues to push surfboard design forward.

The exhibit is part of Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration between more than 60 cultural organizations coming together to celebrate art in Southern California.

Surfers and artists filed into the gallery to admire Simmons’ unique balsa-wood surfboards.

Why was Simmons so ahead of his time? His understanding of physics gave him license to experiment with surfboard materials, shapes and fins long before other shapers. He was also famously reclusive. Free from the court of public opinion, he pursued radical designs that foreshadowed the shortboard and fish designs, crucial developments in the surfboard.

Attendees at the opening on Saturday also gazed at cutting-edge designs from current San Diego shapers like Carl Ekstrom and Ryan Burch (who were at the reception), among others. Some of Burch’s designs, in particular, looked influenced by Simmons’ plank-like surfboards. Six decades later, Simmons remains relevant.

Hydrodynamica: Remember the Future will be on display until March 9.

FULL ARTICLE ONLINE:
http://www.sandiegomagazine.com/media/Blogs/Around-Town/Winter-2012/New-Surfboard-Exhibit-Opens-in-East-Village/

Opening night was a huge success. Thank you to all who attended, participated and made the event possible.

The exhibit is free and open to the public from now through March 9, 2012. Public viewing hours are Tuesday-Saturday from 10am-4pm. The exhibit is located at Space4Art’s gallery at 325 15th Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

We will be hosting a lecture that will include the curator, shapers/designers and/or others closely related to the exhibit in March, as well as an exciting closing event. So please check back.

Special thanks to the creative geniuses:

Bob Simmons | John Elwell | Richard Kenvin | Carl Ekstrom | Steve Lis | George Greenough | Nicholas Mirandan | Bear Mirandan | Eli Mirandan | Skip Frye | Larry Gephart | Hanz Newman | Frank Nosworthy | Daniel Thomson | Ryan Burch

Special thanks to Space 4 Art, Volcom and Vans.

Below are some fun people pics. If you would like to post any pics from the exhibit, please send to mb@hydrodynamica.com. We welcome them!

Thanks as always,
MB

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The “Future” room is near completion, customized displays are being built and painted; huge prints will cover two main walls in the the “Remember” room. Film edits are being completed, surfboard and artifact descriptions are being finalized, signage is going up…John Elwell stopped by the gallery today. We’re pretty busy here.

Irwin Conspiracy and Steve Poltz will be setting up on the huge outdoor stage tomorrow. We will have refreshments (beer/wine) and a food truck here.

Carl Ekstrom will have surfboards on display and available for sale, custom surfboards by Hydrodynamica will be available to order, signed photographs by John Elwell and Ryan Field…t-shirts and more.

We hope you can join us.

MB

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“Bob Simmons, Pioneer of the Modern Surfboard, Gets a New Exhibit”
by Dennis Romero, LA Weekly, January 26, 2012

The tale of Bob Simmons, a pre-beatnik surfer from Pasadena, who dropped out of Caltech and then avoided World War II when he injured his arm in a bicycling accident at Beverly Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, once was an underground legend. Now La Jolla’s Richard Kenvin, a surfing legend in his own right, has resurrected the man, the myth, by curating a new art show.

Simmons surfing in Malibu in 1949, PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN ELWELL COLLECTION

Pacific Standard Time, the regionwide initiative celebrating the postwar art of Southern California, has taken on Simmons via “Hydrodynamica: Remember the Future,” beginning Jan. 28 at San Diego’s Loft 9 and Space 4 Art.

The idea, as Kenvin explains, is to celebrate the impact the original L.A. beach bum had on the world of surf culture, which is no small splash. Simmons pioneered the modern surfboard, taking it from a solid-wood plank of near-Titanic proportions to something portable and, most importantly, maneuverable. As pre-eminent surf historian Steve Pezman puts it, the board from then on became a tool of “the dancer,” a “mode of expression.”

While young men were at war, Simmons was traveling the SoCal coast in his modified ’37 Ford beater, pioneering then-unknown spots, eating canned soybeans and evolving and perfecting the surfboard by using his Caltech smarts and a concept he picked up in a book meant for naval engineering: hydrodynamics, the liquid equivalent of aerodynamics. His boards had fins and foils, edges and curves. Employing balsa wood and later foam and glass, Simmons made wave-riding vehicles accessible to the Gidget generation to come. He helped take surfing from two-man-carry redwood planks to vehicles light enough to be called “girlfriend boards.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t there to see it: He drowned surfing La Jolla’s Windansea Beach in 1954. “He’s a colorful guy who is a symbol of surfing,” Pezman says, “which in itself symbolizes a lifestyle that has become a huge industry. Of all the characters at Malibu in the late ’40s, he was by far the most interesting and conflicted.”

Simmons’ boards are now arguably the most collectible in the sport. But do planks meant for sheer recreation constitute art? They are beautiful things: curvy, sometimes asymmetrical blades of balsa, based on the form-follows-function ethos but utterly sleek and eye-pleasing in their mission to facilitate human symbiosis with the ocean.

Pezman, publisher of The Surfer’s Journal, says that as monuments of contemporary history alone, Simmons’ works are museum-worthy. Polynesians used their boards to catch fish, he says, and only in Western culture has surfing become a leisure activity. In the 1950s, the adults had survived the Depression and valued security, but “the children who grew up at that time saw in surfing something that seemed more important — living for an aesthetic, riding a wave. They rebelled against mainstream values, and Simmons was an early role model — a beatnik.”

Andrew Perchuk, co-director of Pacific Standard Time and deputy director of the Getty Research Institute, explains how Simmons’ work fits right into PST, noting that PST-era artists such as Ken Price and Billy Al Bengston were accomplished surfers; Price even used an image of himself surfing in Malibu for an exhibition announcement. “Surfboards were precisely crafted, functional and glamorous objects,” he says, “and the artists sought to achieve a similar level of craft, attention to materials and sensuousness in some of their nonfunctional objects.”

Simmons’ shapes have been on display at the Surfing Heritage Foundation in San Clemente and the Honolulu Surf Museum. Outsized Los Angeles Times publisher and sportsman Otis Chandler proudly owned a Simmons that dated to the 1930s.

There are, however, sometimes opposing schools about who truly invented the modern surfboard. Joe Quigg was a Simmons conspirator who built similar vehicles at the time and who now discounts his friend’s influence.

“Simmons was not the sole inventor,” Pezman says. “It was a group effort of himself and Quigg, [Matt] Kivlin and [Dale] Velzy, and they each pushed each other, and it evolved weekly. They went from redwood and balsa to laminated balsa and Fiberglas. When they finally got to Fiberglas-sealed balsa postwar technology — balsa was lighter than redwood by far — all of a sudden they were free. They were set free to explore shape.”

More than an architect of boards, Simmons became a pre–James Dean, pre–The Wild One archetype of the California rebel. He camped out in his car, slept on the beach and rode rare waves, often solo and without a wet suit, in the coldest winter months. The coastal highway was his muse.

What’s appropriate about Simmons’ inclusion in PST is that he was pan–Southern Californian, known to ride the surf of Tijuana Slough, at the U.S. border, as much as he would dominate that of Windansea or Malibu with a strikingly casual stance and a studied, parallel line down the face of a wave.

“In the late ’40s there was crazy interaction between all those places,” says Kenvin, the exhibit’s curator, who writes for Pezman’s Journal. “There was a lot of interaction between San Diego and L.A.”

Kenvin notes that Simmons, for instance, taught Hawaiian big-wave pioneer George Downing how to repair a board using resin after Freeth banged his ride into Malibu Pier in 1948.

In addition to the San Diego exhibit, Kenvin, a Renaissance man of surf culture who once owned a streetwear company called Stoopid, has been working on a documentary, also called Hydrodynamica, about Simmons and the boards that would follow his lead, including some of the wide, twin-fin “fish” shapes to be included in the exhibit. The fish opened the door to the radical, wave-ripping style of the 1970s and beyond. Surfing went from cruising to slashing via the likes of Mark Richards, Larry Bertlemann and Buttons Kaluhiokalani.

“The fish is really a big part of what I’ve been working on,” he says. “That’s what led me to [Simmons’ original documentarian John] Elwell in the first place — wanting to know about boards that came before, the dual-fin boards coming out of San Diego.”

Elwell, Simmons’ San Diego surfing pal, kept Simmons’ story alive through the last few decades via his collection of Simmons-related items — photos, writings, articles and even boomerangs — some of which are featured in the exhibit along with vintage boards.

The 50-year-old Kenvin, who prefers to surf Windansea, home of the Tom Wolfe–chronicled surfing clan The Pump House Gang and site of Simmons’ last wave, defends Simmons’ singular influence.

“The Simmons board is like a spaceship. It’s an advanced hydrodynamic design,” he says. “Those boards are major building blocks to what became the board everyone is riding today.”

HYDRODYNAMICA: REMEMBER THE FUTURE | Loft 9 and Space 4 Art, 325 15th St., San Diego | Tues.-Sat., through March 10 | sdspace4art.org

READ FULL ARTICLE: http://www.laweekly.com/2012-01-26/art-books/bob-simmons-surfing-surfboard-hydrodynamica/2/

Most of the pieces for the “Remember” room have been hung. Now it’s onto the “Future” room with new pieces/surfboard artifacts by Carl Ekstrom (also featured in the “Remember” room), Daniel Thomson and Ryan Burch.

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Carl and Denise Ekstrom visting Hydrodynamica/Loft 9 Gallery; Mark Weiner and Richard Kenvin hanging and arranging exhibit artifacts for the upcoming show.

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Hydrodynamica: Remember the Future
Opening Night: Saturday, January 28th 2012, 4pm-10pm

Join us on opening night for an amazing exhibit curated by The Hydrodynamica Project.
325 15th Street
San Diego, CA 92101
in the Space4art galleries and Hydrodynamica/Loft 9 gallery

Public viewing hours through March 10, 2012
Tuesday through Saturday 10 am – 4 pm.
hydrodynamica.com
sdspace4art.org

Written by the curator/proprietor of Loft 9 Gallery, Richard Kenvin
http://hydrodynamica.blogspot.com/2011/12/hydrodynamica-participating-gallery-in.html

“Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California coming together to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene. Through the exhibitions of Pacific Standard Time , you can discover how the Southland became a great center for art and culture.” – from PST exhibition guide.

A few months ago I went with Carl Ekstrom to inspect two pieces of his that were installed at the Mingei Museum for something called Pacific Standard Time, which is a massive collaboration of Southern California cultural institutions initiated by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. I went home and did some research and found that the Getty had been working on this massive joint effort for 10 years. They were on a mission to define and contextualize art and culture in Southern California from 1945-1980. The scope of Pacific Standard Time was broad: ceramics, conceptual and perceptual art, cultural identity and politics, design and architecture, the history of art spaces in Southern California, painting and sculpture, performance art, and photography and print making.

I then learned from John Van Hammersveld that PST was accepting proposals from independent galleries. So with two days left before the submission deadline I rushed together a proposal that focused on the work of Bob Simmons, Carl Ekstrom, Steve Lis, and Nick and Bear Mirandon…all of whom did their thing within the time frame of 1945-1980. I sent the proposal to the Getty. A month went by and I almost wrote it off. Then I received an email congratulating Hydrodynamica on being accepted to participate in PST.

I see this as an opportunity to continue telling a story, through surfboards and surfing, that had a tremendous impact on cultural identity in society and on the lives of individuals. Not just in California, but everywhere. Context is everything. If the story of surfing is only told from the perspective of “sport” we miss out on an incredibly rich saga filled with individuals who pioneered not just new ways to ride waves, but new ways to live. PST is a chance to acknowledge the role surfers played in Southern California’s creative realm during those years.

The more PST exhibits I visit the more I see a narrative and a story coming into focus. The forms and materials of post-war modernism in California from 1945 through the 1970s were used by surfers and reflected back to and absorbed by artists, designers, architects…and vice-versa. There is a relationship between a 1948 Simmons planing hull and a 1948 Thomas Church swimming pool. Look and see. Aerodynamic form. Curves and lines. There is a relationship between the monolithic polyester resin sculptures of Dewayne Valentine and the monolithic resin laminated boards of Simmons and Quigg. Surfers were not bit players in this drama of mid century California culture. They were in leading roles alongside the Shulmans, the Eames’, the Churchs, and the rest of the cast…

Los Angeles has always felt shadowed by New York in the realm of art. PST is an attempt to come out of this shadow. San Diego is in an even deeper shadow cast by Los Angeles. But look into the story of surfing in Southern California from 1945-1980 and you will see intense interaction, especially in the 1940s and 50s, between San Diego and Los Angeles, particularly between Malibu, Windansea, San Onofre, and the Tijuana Sloughs…and where did these guys turn their attention? To Hawaii…and that’s real root of all this stuff. Surfing in California came from Hawaii, and eventually went back to Hawaii transformed by post war materials like resin, foam, and fiberglass. George Downing and Bob Simmons patching a board together in L.A. in 1948? It happened…one of many milestones from that time. Could write a book about that one alone.

Support from friends at Volcom is helping to make this possible 🙂

Hydrodynamica: Remember the Future opening night will be Saturday, January 28, 2012 at the studios of Space4Art in downtown San Diego at 325 15th Street. The exhibition will be at the same location as Loft 9 Gallery but in a much larger space.

More information to come…

Visit http://hydrodynamica.com to learn more about The Hydrodynamica Project.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

http://www.pacificstandardtime.org/galleries

See Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 press center for more information (http://pacificstandardtime.org/presscenter)

LOS ANGELES GALLERIES JOIN IN CELEBRATION OF PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: ART IN L.A. 1945 – 1980

Art Galleries to Complement Pacific Standard Time’s Robust Schedule of Museum Exhibitions and Public Programs

Los Angeles, CA, September 7, 2011—Beginning this fall and continuing through spring 2012, more than 70 art galleries in Culver City, Santa Monica, West Hollywood and the Greater Los Angeles area will join in the unprecedented cultural collaboration Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. Exhibitions at the galleries, timed to the presentation of Pacific Standard Time, will focus on works made during (or inspired by) the Pacific Standard Time era, from the years immediately after World War II through the turbulent 1960s and 70s. As diverse as the more than 60 Pacific Standard Time museum exhibitions and programs, the shows at more than 70 participating galleries will include Pop, Minimalism, assemblage, ceramics, political graphics, printmaking, conceptual art and much more. Participating galleries will present more than 125 exhibitions, which will open throughout Pacific Standard Time’s six-month run. About 50 of these exhibitions will be on view during the opening weekend, October 1-2.

“Galleries played a critical role in L.A.’s post-war art scene,” said Andrew Perchuk, Deputy Director of the Getty Research Institute. “These spaces gave artists venues for experimentation and innovation and created a much-needed community for artists and patrons at a time when other resources for artists were scarce in Los Angeles.”

“For many L.A. art dealers, Pacific Standard Time is an opportunity to revisit the fertile period when our own practices took shape, or to honor the art that inspired us to create galleries in the first place,” stated Margo Leavin, a prominent Los Angeles gallery owner. “It is deeply meaningful for Los Angeles galleries to come together as a community to celebrate the art and artists that make Los Angeles distinct.”

Margo Leavin Gallery will present an exhibition of paintings by John M. Miller, who since the 1970s (when he began exhibiting in Los Angeles) has been investigating a single abstract composition, consisting of meticulously rendered repeating rectangles.

Many of the gallery exhibitions will present works created from 1945 to 1980, the era explored by Pacific Standard Time, while also addressing the artists’ current practices. For example, Roberts & Tilton will present Red Time, a site-specific retrospective installation by Betye Saar. An amalgamation of found, created, borrowed and recycled objects, the installation will examine Saar’s past and present work. At Gagosian Gallery, legendary sculptor Robert Therrien will create a tableau in which two- and three-dimensional objects will be displayed on and around a maze of tables, forming an historical dialogue with his own work and allowing a retrospective survey of his art.

Additional gallery exhibitions include Untitled Slide Sequence at the Christopher Grimes gallery, a key 1972 work by photographer, theorist, historian and writer Allan Sekula, which examined the socioeconomic impact of Southern California’s aerospace industry through a succession of rapidly recorded images of workers leaving the General Dynamics Conair Division factory in San Diego. The gallery L.A. Louver will present Frederick Hammersley, highlighting important developments in the artist’s long career beginning in 1940 and examining his role as part of a group of Los Angeles “Abstract Classicists” during the 1950s. Marc Selwyn Fine Art will present Lee Mullican: Paintings from the 1950s, including works from the height of the Dynaton (“that which is possible”) movement.

Some participating galleries will also showcase works by artists who have not been represented in Los Angeles for extended periods of time. At the David Kordansky Gallery, Richard Jackson will have his first Los Angeles solo gallery show in 20 years, titled The Little Girl’s Room, featuring one of his darkly humorous immersive environments—part monumental spinning sculpture, part spray painting with liquid paint and part installation, designed to look like a little girl’s bedroom. Michael Kohn Gallery will present Joe Goode’s Nighttime Series 1977 – 1978, an important group of meditative black paintings, violently slashed through the canvas, which have not been seen in more than twenty years.

Several galleries will present new works by artists who came to be seen as icons of the L.A. art scene. Among these is Robert Irwin, who will create new light sculptures and installations for an exhibition at L&M Arts. At Regen Projects, new drawings by Raymond Pettibon will continue the artist’s exploration of his signature landscape of war, politics, popular culture, art, literature, sports, religion, and sexuality.

In addition to in-depth solo shows, galleries will also present group exhibitions on themes related to the Pacific Standard Time era. Nye+Brown will present an exhibition of art, artifacts and the written word, The Lords and the New Creatures, investigating the historical relationship between Los Angeles artists and the automobile, with works by John McCracken, Billy Al Bengston, John Chamberlain, Peter Alexander, Ed Ruscha, Craig Kauffman, Larry Bell, Catherine Opie, Rob Reynolds, Brian Wills and others.

The historical role of galleries in the ascendance of Los Angeles-based visual artists will itself be the subject of some shows at participating galleries. The Cirrus Gallery, established in 1970 by Jean Milant after printing some of Ed Ruscha’s Standard Station works, promoted Los Angeles artists locally and internationally, including early participation in Art Basel. The exhibition Once Emerging Now Emerging will present a forty-year archive of L.A. art history and of Cirrus Gallery itself, organized as a rotating, four-part show aligned to the entire span of Pacific Standard Time. The four shows will focus on moments when particular artists such as Guy de Cointet and Barbara T. Smith had their early involvement with the gallery, and will also present works by international and local emerging artists of today. Cirrus Gallery will invite artists to react to the archival information through a specially created website that will funnel into the exhibition, integrating the once-emerging with the now-emerging.

Information about participating galleries and exhibitions is current as of August 2011. Beginning in early September, complete listings of the gallery exhibitions will be available online at http://www.pacificstandardtime.org. List of Participating Galleries (as of September):

1301PE
ACE Gallery
Angles Gallery
Arena 1
Art Resource Group
Bleicher Gallery La Brea
Blum & Poe
Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art
Cherry and Martin
Christopher Grimes Gallery
Cirrus
Couturier Gallery
Craig Krull Gallery
David Kordansky Gallery
David Lawrence Gallery
Denenberg Fine Arts Inc
dnj Gallery
drkrm/gallery
Eames Office
Francois Ghebaly Gallery
Frank Lloyd Gallery
Gagosian Gallery
Garboushian Gallery
Gemini G.E.L
George Stern Fine Arts
Here is Elsewhere Gallery
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts
Jancar Gallery
Kantor Gallery
Kayne Griffin Corcoran
L&M Arts
LA Louver
Larry Bell Studio Annex
Leslie Sacks Contemporary
Loft 9 Gallery
Lois Lambert Gallery
Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)
Louis Stern Fine Arts
ltd Los Angeles
Luis de Jesus
M+B
Marc Selwyn Fine Art
Margo Leavin Gallery
Merry Karnowsky Gallery (MK2 Projects)
Meyer Fine Art
Michael Kohn Gallery
MIXOGRAFIA
Monte Vista Projects
Museum of California Design: JF Chen Gallery
Nye + Brown
POP tART Gallery
PRISM
R.B. Stevenson Gallery
Regen Projects
Richard Telles Fine Art
Robert Berman Gallery
Roberts & Tilton
Rosamund Felsen Gallery
Rose Gallery
Royal/T
Samuel Freeman
Stendahl Galleries
Stephen Cohen Gallery
Steve Turner Contemporary
Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
Tasende Gallery
The Box
Thomas Paul Fine Art
Timothy Yarger Fine Art
Tobey C Moss Gallery
Western Project 4
William Turner Gallery

About Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 – 1980 Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together for six months beginning in October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world. Each institution will make its own contribution to this grand-scale story of artistic innovation and social change, told through a multitude of simultaneous exhibitions and programs. Exploring and celebrating the significance of the crucial years after World War II through the tumultuous period of the 1960s and 70s, Pacific Standard Time encompasses developments from L.A. Pop to post-minimalism; from modernist architecture and design to multi-media installations; from the films of the African-American L.A. Rebellion to the feminist activities of the Woman’s Building; from ceramics to Chicano performance art; and from Japanese-American design to the pioneering work of artists’ collectives.

Initiated through $10 million in grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time involves cultural institutions of every size and character across Southern California, from Greater Los Angeles to San Diego and Santa Barbara to Palm Springs.

Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.