Goldman-Chiotakis transcript

Steve Chiotakis: Seems like LA's art scene has burst into something even bigger than it once was, and chronicling that transformation is what one exhibit attempts to do in El Segundo. It's called Touch, artworks and photographs together telling a story of LA's dynamic art scene, and it's curated by none other than KCRW's art critic Edward Goldman. Hi Edward!

Edward Goldman: Hi Steve!

SC: First of all, I think a lot of folks don't realize that there is an art museum in El Segundo, I think of LAX and I think of Dockweiler...

EG: Yes it's a museum which opened only a little less than three years by a very adventurous smart youngish couple. I think they're youngish. They are in their 40's with three adorable kids. And they just built on Main Street El Segundo in the city, which is so close to the Los Angeles Airport, the small museum which is one long gallery -- 100 feet long, 25 feet wide and two stories high -- and they use it for a series exhibitions. They don't collect art for this museum it's like a kunsthalle and they asked me several months ago to consider to do exhibition kind of reflecting adventureness, insightful knowledge that I have of Los Angeles art scene of the last several decades and that is what I'm doing right now.

SC: We're not going to ask obviously to critique your own work, but we are going to ask you about the work because it is an interesting exhibit. Some of the qualities I think of it are the photographs of all these LA artists and the spaces in which they work. Tell us about that.

EG: The whole idea of this exhibition happened after I came with a group of collectors -- my friends -- to the house-studio of the very well known Los Angeles photographer, Jim McHugh. For the last four decades -- even a little longer -- he'd been photographing Los Angeles-based artists in their studios. He's friends with many of them. He has more than hundred portraits, for example of David Hockney, so you see David Hockney, in the last 40 years in Los Angeles studios, and many other artists -- famous, less famous, up and coming. And seeing all these portraits in his house and some of the original art that I decided, "My God, with the privilege that I have as an art critic for KCRW the last couple of decades, to do something not academic, not a lecture-like, not a proper museum exhibition, but a little bit crazy, a combination of everything, and to share the audience something that I always feel guilty about that you can't take them with me to the studio of the artists, to museum storage, to the backroom of the gallery."

SC: I mean that's exactly what you do here, sort of take them behind the scenes, right?

EG: Yes and an instillation again of the so called "salon style," from floor to ceiling, where the art works really are touching shoulders, is almost like being in a Russian House -- Russia where I came from -- where if you have table only for six people, but you invited 12 people, nobody really minds — everyone is rubbing shoulders to each other, nobody can give a cold shoulder to each other, so that's kind of the sense of the exhibition.

SC: Well the exhibition is called Touch. This is Jim McHugh's work right? The renowned photographer here Edward Goldman and Edward Goldman is curiator at here, thank you so much.

EG: And I want to remind people that if they want to come for the opening -- public opening -- this Sunday, October 11, I will be there, greeting all of you, so.. Until Sunday!

SC: Alright, Edward Goldman! Thank you.

EG: My pleasure, Steve.