My favorite attraction at the old-school, long-gone amusement park of my childhood was Aladdin’s Castle, a dimly lit wonderland of tilted floors, collapsing stairways, and mirrored mazes. In 2017, just north of the L.A River, an art funhouse has moved into a repurposed factory in Lincoln Heights.
Conceived by British-born, Hong Kong-based artist Simon Birch, THE 14TH FACTORY—a group show of twenty-one international artists—follows, room by room, Joseph Campbell’s template of “the hero’s journey.” Campbell’s work—a favorite of George Lucas and writers of long-form cable drama—is a curious choice for a contemporary art installation, given its formulaic conservatism and superficiality. Needless to say, it’s not everyone’s journey. So feel free to dispense with the prescribed narrative, and enjoy THE 14TH FACTORY as an enfilade of moments. Some highlights:
Doug Foster ‘s large-scale video The Dormouse, the only light at the far end of a long dark passageway.
Simon Birch and KplusK Associates‘ The Barmecide Feast, a to-scale double of a key room in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Remove your shoes and enter. The uncle and great-uncle of 14TH FACTORY architect Paul Kember were draftsmen on the Kubrick film, and facilitated the exact reproduction of Harry Lange’s original design.)
Knitting Conversations by fabric and performance artist Movana Chen, shown here as an enormous tapestry woven from shredded book and magazine pages.
The Inhumans—a mesmerizing, large-scale video directed and photographed by Wing Shya, in collaboration with Birch—features 300 Beijing workers (male), charging, fighting, and writhing in slow motion on five large, mostly in sync, screens.
This Brutal House—a video by Scott Carthy, again in collaboration with Birch and in slo-mo—documents a group of New York street dancers. Video and overall sound design is by Gary Gunn.
THE 14TH FACTORY was denied permission by the city to open as an exhibition space. Birch got around this by calling the installation a film production site, for which he does have a permit. Birch is an excellent draftsman, and a room of his drawings sits just inside the exit courtyard, where his Clean Air Turbulence—a group of truncated airplane tails in a metal pool—is installed.
THE 14TH FACTORY, through April 30.
440 North Avenue 19, Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles
Still from the film This Brutal House, directed by Scott Carthy, based on a concept by Simon Burch, sound design by Gary Gunn.
Image courtesy of The 14th Factory and Scott Carthy. Special thanks to Gloria Yu.