“April 21, 1980
Alexander Iolas was coming to lunch [at the Factory] with a couple of clients and we needed a couple of boys to entertain. And I called James Curley and he brought his cousin David Laughlin, who works at the Coe Kerr Gallery. Iolas arrived, and his contact that he never takes out of his eye got lost, and he had me look for it, but I couldn’t see it….
“August 5, 1982
I introduced [Factory assistant] Robyn to Iolas….Robyn’s such a nice kid but he has no ambition, and he does want to be an artist, so I thought that since Ronnie Cutrone left and things worked out so well for him…that maybe it could happen for Robyn, too. So 74-year-old Iolas grabbed Robyn’s hand….Iolas thought he’d get Robyn’s energy. But I was hoping Robyn got his.” — from The Andy Warhol Diaries*
In FALL INTO RUIN, at David Kordansky in its closing week, writer-photographer-filmmaker-curator-provocateur William E. Jones brings together twenty of his interior photographs of the Athens villa of international art dealer Alexander Iolas. Taken in 1982, they are displayed in hand-coated inkjet prints made this year. Included in the exhibition is Fall into Ruin, Jones’ 30-minute documentary about Iolas, featuring Jones’ narration and stills taken during trips Jones made to Greece in 1982 and 2016.
“Iolas can be credited with mounting Warhol’s first and last gallery show in his lifetime, bringing Surrealism to the United States, and introducing the East Coast to Ed Ruscha. Unlike Iolas’s contemporaries—who included Ileana Sonnabend, Leo Castelli and Bruno Bischofberger—Iolas’s legacy has nearly faded into obscurity after he succumbed to AIDS in 1987, at 80.” — Ann Binlot
Through August 26.
David Kordansky Gallery
5130 West Edgewood Place, Los Angeles.
*Andy Warhol, The Andy Warhol Diaries (New York: Warner Books, 1989), 283, 456.
See “Abandoned Places and Urban Decay, Villa Iolas, Athens.”
From top:
Installation, William E. Jones, from Fall into Ruin, David Kordansky Gallery.
Andy Warhol, Alexander Iolas.
Exhibition poster for show at Alexander Iolas Gallery; Andy Warhol, Alexander Iolas.
Installation, William E. Jones, from Fall into Ruin, David Kordansky Gallery.
Images courtesy William E. Jones and David Kordansky Gallery.
