An Exquisite Salon Exhibit at Marine Contemporary’s Top Secret Headquarters

By Daniel Rolnik On July 26, 2012

Once a year, Claressinka Anderson, who owns the gallery Marine Contemporary in Venice Beach, opens up her home for a private art salon with an intimate guest list. This year, she co-organized an exhibit of 8 artists with the independent curator and Huffington Post contributor Yasmine Mohseni. The energy of Claressinka’s space was incredibly relaxed and elegant, especially since the work could be enjoyed and studied by collectors as it would most likely appear in their homes.

The art-star Damien Hirst discusses the importance of this kind of atmosphere in “Interview #3″ of his book On My Way To Work. In the midst of the short interview, he describes to the author how an artwork in someone’s home has a total life behind it that isn’t as present when it’s in the white cube space of a gallery. But beyond the setting, every person that was invited was extremely interesting and friendly, which is actually something rare to see at most opening receptions. Although, one of the featured artists in the show, Nathan Hayden, whose large piece was above the couch in the living room and whose smaller drawings were presented underneath the glass of a modern table in front, was definitely one of the coolest. He told me about how he dances for at least an hour every morning before he begins to work on his art, which was just such an awesome concept to think about.

Towards the end of the evening, the band White Fence performed. They delivered a lo-fi aesthetic to the hi-fi crowd, which was pleasant to hear in the distance while walking around the works in the hallway and special project room.

PS: My favorite art gems were a couple of pillows that had song lyrics embroidered onto them like “Sweetness I was only joking” by The Smiths and “I wanna be anarachy” by The Sex Pistols.

PPS: The Sculpture of the spoon above is by Ry Rocklen