L.A. summons the spirit of glam-surrealist artist Steven Arnold

2 hours ago 1

Steven Arnold "Cocktails successful Heaven" accumulation astatine Del Vaz Projects.

He has been described arsenic a magician and “being of light.” As Salvador Dalí’s kindred tone and protégé. As the Andy Warhol of the West Coast. The creator Steven Arnold ought to beryllium a household name. The accumulation “Cocktails successful Heaven” astatine Del Vaz Projects successful Santa Monica, which opened this week with a enactment co-hosted by Karen Hillenburg and Christine Messineo of Frieze, is simply a hopeful measurement successful this direction.

On Monday night, the assemblage transformed into a replica of Arnold’s legendary location and workplace successful Los Angeles, known arsenic Zanzabar, which has been compared to Warhol’s Factory for the luminaries it attracted (Timothy Leary, Debbie Harry, Ellen Burstyn) and the originative synergy it inspired. Throughout the ’80s and into the aboriginal ’90s, Zanzabar was big to queer gatherings and parties, arsenic good arsenic surrealist photoshoots with exquisite paper-cut acceptable designs that Arnold wholly made from hand. “My location is simply a temple for me. It’s a spiritual space, it’s wherever the creativity happens,” helium says successful the 2019 documentary made connected him, “Heavenly Bodies.” Arnold died astatine the property of 51 successful 1994, from AIDS-related complications, and near down a mind-bending assemblage of enactment that is present housed by ONE Archives astatine the USC Libraries.

At Del Vaz, characters from Arnold’s ethereal photographs and films came to beingness successful performances directed by creator Tyler Matthew Oyer: At the door, 2 French waiters, dressed successful Mozart wigs and archetypal coats hand-painted by Arnold, checked disconnected impermanent names from an 8-foot scroll. Inside, performers dressed arsenic the prima and satellite — their mostly nude bodies spray-painted golden and metallic — languorously laid implicit a banquet array abundant with crudités, conjuring a country from Arnold’s astir celebrated film, “Luminous Procuress,” which was projected connected the wall. In the courtyard, a bodybuilder posed arsenic a unrecorded mentation of Michelangelo’s “David” sculpture. It was an ode to the joyous, maximalist satellite that Arnold meticulously and affectionately built successful some beingness and creation — due to the fact that for him determination was nary distinction, creation was life.

Steven Arnold, "Intersection of Dreams," 1985

Every item of the enactment came from thing recovered successful Arnold’s archive. The creator manager of the exhibition, Orrin Whalen, planted a fewer of Arnold’s existent belongings successful the lukewarm country wherever his photographs and drawings hung: his ornate metallic bracelet rested connected a seashell, and replicas of his reddish leopard people concern cards fanned unfastened connected the beforehand table. “Cocktails successful Heaven” is besides the rubric of Arnold’s unpublished memoir and became the root worldly for the party’s chef, Gerardo Gonzalez, who scanned for passages wherever the creator mentioned his favourite foods — chiefly hors d’oeuvres and copious glasses of Vermouth.

Guests connected Monday included manner and creation satellite luminaries, including artists Ron Athey and Joey Terrill, decorator Zana Bayne, erstwhile Hammer Museum manager Ann Philbin, and jewelry decorator Sophie Buhai, who mingled nether the dangling grapevines and successful a structure wherever upside-down pinkish umbrellas suspended from the ceiling. The formal codification was “Complete Fantasy Conglomerata Divina Magnificata,” and the assemblage did their portion wearing feathered hats, leopard-print tops, aureate sequinned dresses and polka-dotted look paint. It was lone fitting to wage homage to Arnold this way, a manner icon successful his ain close who was erstwhile voted the champion dressed antheral of Los Angeles by L.A. Weekly.

The evening signaled that this is not the benignant of amusement that volition deaden an creator down solid vitrines. “We tin summon artists’ spirits done gatherings,” says Jay Ezra Nayssan, founding manager and main curator of Del Vaz Projects, which is besides Nayssan’s home. “This opening is an facet of a task that should beryllium arsenic important arsenic the accumulation itself … Queer civilization is carried not lone done assistance but done laughter, perfume, clasp and touch, done dinners and concerts — and immoderate forms are waiting to beryllium invented.”