Santa Monica's Bergamot Station Arts Center

An early Saturday afternoon a couple weeks ago, MS and I headed to Santa Monica to take in some of the local art at Bergamot Station. On eight acres of land, over 40 different contemporary art galleries, design and architectural firms and the Santa Monica Museum of Art are housed in the largest art gallery complex and cultural center in Southern California.

We started with a few small galleries that were open at 11am and wandered into the Hiromi Paper shop. Every nook in this store had something interesting to look at... paper lanterns with unique shapes and colors cascading from the ceiling, and sheets upon sheets of beautifully handcrafted papers.

I purchased some washi paper tape that donned cute cats and flowers on them along with other gift items. This was a shop I'd love to visit again and maybe even take a class or two to learn the art of book binding.


When we walked into the Santa Monica Museum of Art, we were asked to wait until the artist was finished calibrating his 3-dimensional art exhibit. Little did we know that we'd get a sneak peak into the mad genius of Marco Brambilla at play and at work.

The Dark Lining, Marco Brambilla’s first solo museum exhibition, features seven major time-based works from 1999 to the present. Much of his work comprises found film footage edited, layered, and spliced to create compelling new narratives and stunning visual mosaics. With exquisite technical production and seamless editing, Brambilla’s multi-layered tableaux of interconnecting images and looped video blend into an expansive landscape that forms his hallmark style.

The exhibition at SMMoA will feature the premier of Evolution (Megaplex), 2010, a new large-scale 3D video collage, which displays the history of humankind through the lens of cinema. Brambilla combines hundreds of clips from genre films that re-enact historical moments as grand spectacle. This cacophony of images is looped and mapped into an infinite three-dimensional environment that scrolls horizontally across time. Evolution emphasizes conflicts through the ages, in a remix that seamlessly moves through past, present, and future, providing a satirical take on the bombast of the big-budget “epic.”

- From the SMMoA website

Like nothing ever seen before, this exhibit was mind-blowing. Moving images referenced by so many pop culture cult classic scenes, from Marty McFly's DeLorean to Star Wars' R2D2, it's hard to take your eyes away from all that was going on.


After visiting a number of other shops and galleries, we headed to Santa Monica Place for a late lunch and ate the large Spicy Fennel Sausage, Portobello Mushroom and Roasted Onion with tomato sauce at Pizza Antica ($17). With great flavors, the pizza was finished in no time at all!

It was a nice ending to an afternoon of art and culture in Santa Monica, and a newfound love at Bergamot Station. We'll be back for more, that's for sure!

Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90404
http://bergamotstation.com
T-F, 10a -6p; Sa, 11a - 5:30p

Hiromi Paper

(310) 998-0098

M-F, 10a - 5p; Sa, 11a - 6p

http://store.hiromipaper.com

Santa Monica Museum of Art
(310) 586-6488
T-Sa, 11a -6p
Closed Su, M, and all legal holidays

http://smmoa.org

Marco Brambilla
"The Dark Lining" exhibit
May 21 - August 20, 2011
http://marcobrambilla.com

Pizza Antica

395 Santa Monica Place, Suite 304

Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 394-4080
http://www.pizzaantica.com