THE MODERNIST (directed by Catherine Opie by way of Chris Marker’s La Jetée) is a deadpan eulogy to the demise of traditional American liberalism in the months leading up to the conflagration of Election Night 2016.

Stosh Fila (a.k.a. Pig Pen)—possibly playing either a Tea Partier or the owner of several “Feel the Bern” buttons—goes about his daily task of researching and then torching several once-avant-garde-but-now-mainstream architectural landmarks in the hills of Los Angeles: works by A. Quincy Jones and Pierre Koenig, and the John Lautner-designed homes of Benedict Taschen and James Goldstein.

Reports of these Oedipal feats of arson are splashed over the front pages of the Los Angeles Times, along with headlines noting Hillary Clinton’s “historic” Democratic nomination and the race for 270 electoral votes.

Fila creates a wall collage of yesterday’s papers, and as November 8 approaches, takes a match to his own creation.

To view the 22-minute film, Michael Maltzan has designed a sleek cinema inside Regen Projects, and thirty-three MODERNIST stills have been hung along the walls of the gallery.

 

CATHERINE OPIE—THE MODERNIST, through February 17.

REGEN PROJECTS, 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles.

regenprojects.com/catherine-opie

regenprojects.com/opie/press-release

Stosh Fila (a.k.a. Pig Pen)  in The Modernist (2017). Image credit: Regen Projects.