Los Angeles, a city of substance? Hardly news. “Certainly in the last five years, what’s been happening to our city is a creative revolution,” says Azadeh Shladovsky, a furniture and interiors designer and Angeleno native, of the shift in discourse surrounding the city — from silicone implants and sunburned brains to secret apartment galleries and design innovation. (Shladovsky also creates conceptual furniture that has caught the eye of, for one, Peter Marino, who installed her works in a slew of Dior boutiques worldwide.) “What’s difficult to do is go beyond your own creative community; is to engage the larger community,” she continues. “Interior designers tend to go to their events; the art world tends to stick together; the film world and music people, too.” Shladovsky has a plan to change all that.
With the unveiling tonight of “Unscene,” an exhibition of sorts in her studio — located “off the beaten path, in its own little world in Mid-City” — Shladovsky hopes “to engage creatives as a whole,” she says. “It’s great to go have a cocktail and hang out with people, but you get to a point in your own life where you’re tired of going to events where there’s no substance.” While there’s no guarantee of an overnight transformation in the L.A. arts scene, the very nature of this show is sure to prompt discussion. The centerpiece of “Unscene” is an abstracted short film, made in collaboration with the indie director Sayer Danforth, which “pushes the envelope in how we perceive space,” Shladovsky says, and which will stream alongside seven conceptual art pieces.
The surreal film, excerpted exclusively here, features Shladovsky’s signature sculptural works — constructions of wood, metal and animal skins — placed in “environments that are visually incomprehensible and capture the moments in spontaneous ways,” the artist says. Shot over four days in the American Southwest, in distinctive landscapes near the Grand Canyon including Antelope Valley and Powell Lake, the film’s production was arduous. “My pieces are incredibly heavy — they don’t lend themselves to be put in a backpack and going on a hike,” she recalls. “In every location we went to, we were fortunate enough to find people who really wanted to help us.”
The kind of multidisciplinary thinking she hopes to foster with “Unscene” comes as second nature to Shladovsky. “People will look at my pieces and consider it furniture,” she says. “But for me, I consider my furniture as art…. If you’re a creative, inspiration can be expressed in any manner of form.” She intends “Unscene” to be the inaugural event that will establish her studio as “a place where people come together and have a substantive dialogue — a laboratory for ideas.” Without revealing all her cards, Shladovsky confides that she has “at least a half-dozen” projects in the works. “I feel it’s my responsibility as an artist to support other artists,” she says. “At the end of the day, it’s not about my work, but about coming together and have these experiences with other people that are meaningful — or at least, having the opportunity to do, which it is important.”
“Unscene” is on view through November 15, Azadeh Shladovsky Studio, 3645 10th Avenue, Los Angeles, azadehshladovsky.com.
