Dennis Koch, Bitcoin Magazine’s art gallery coordinator, described why this space is important, saying, “Meetup locations like Bitcoin Park in Nashville or Bitcoin Commons in Austin affirm that there’s no replacement for spending time with Bitcoiners in real life. The same goes for the new Bitcoin Magazine Art Gallery. We want to build a tactical meetup and exhibition space for artists. Nashville has a tangible bitcoin vibe, and BMAG is going to be a big part of this expanding scene.” 

Next door, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles has two fantastic collage-centric solo shows on view until July 28th. Dennis Koch: Beyond the Funny Farm! Crypto-K, Cutouts, Cut-ups, Copies, Mirrors, Membranes, and Temporal Algorithms comprises sculptures and works on paper inspired by dizzying literary theory alongside modified LIFE magazines. The artist has incised into the publications, creating compositions that play off of the cover story and the images from advertisements within. My personal favorite is “Sex Kitten” Ann Margret, hair wild, surrounded by a chorus of televisions.It’s the show in the front room, however, that I found myself thinking about days after seeing. SOMETHING  ELSE: The Collages of Nathan Gluck is a survey of the late artist’s small works on paper that spans from the 1930s to the 2000s. Gallerist Luis De Jesus was a close friend of Gluck, who himself worked as a window dresser and assistant to Andy Warhol (among many other adventures). De Jesus lovingly organized this tribute with a personal eye to the artist’s singular wit and personality, sorting through a treasure trove of material in Gluck’s estate.

A pair of exhibits at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles demonstrates two distinctly different approaches to the manipulation of paper in the service of cultural commentary. "SOMETHING ELSE: The Collages of Nathan Gluck" celebrates the centennial of the late artist's birth. Mr. Gluck is primairly recognized as Andy Warhol's early commercial art assistant. But the show at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles presents an overdue retrospective of Mr. Gluck's own versatility and skill with collage, but also the wide-ranging possibilities of art form in general. Works on displayinclude photogram, steel engraving, gouache, watercolor, rubberstamps, and marbalized paper and exhibit stylistic influences of the decade in which they were created, such as cubism, surrealism, modernism, pop, word/ text, and postmodernism. 

Although many artists and non-artists alike engage with the process of collaging, a successful collage is not that easy to achieve. For the merger of unrelated images and/or texts to resonate beyond the obvious, there is much to take into consideration— point of view, message, cohesion of elements, formal arrangement, etc. Juxtaposing disparate elements from various sources does not necessarily construe art. Collage has a broad history and those who venture into collaging must take into consideration their historical precedents.

I think Dennis Koch is a total nut job. He is mad. He is crazy. Imagine Koch in his shack inventing strange drawing apparatus and mechanical coloring devices. And I am unreservedly digging his topographically psychedelic color field maps and crystallographic circular implosions at Luis de Jesus. I figured the subject matters and reference materials would be beyond me and reading the press release only confirmed my suspicion.

Who says fractals can’t be fun? Dennis Koch’s colorful canvasses first appear to be abstract, but the works are actually visual manifestations of mathematical codes and theories in Physics.Yet Koch shows that even though he works in geometrical recursion, his paintings look like inviting Froot Loops. He applies Systems Theory to his works, layering different steps to create a great, overarching superstructure. 

"The Newest" brings together a couple of collages, a few photos, a painting, a drawing and a sculpture by six young artists who live in Los Angeles. It's a sampler show that abandons logic for pleasure, leaving viewers free to weave whatever connections they want (or need) among its consistently intriguing works.