The Lab is continuing its 25th anniversary celebrations with an exhibition that opened tonight called PastForward, and I BARTed over after work to take a peek. For this show the gallery put out a call for artists (such as Torsten Zenas Burns and Darrin Martin, pictured right) to create work that responds to some of the more familiar names the Lab has shown in the past. I zeroed right in on Andrew Wingler's giant pieced-together photographs, one of the corner in the Mission that now houses the Beauty Bar and another of a punk band performing in what could be one of the old abandoned movie palaces along Mission's main strip, and understood almost on a visceral level how they link to Barry McGee's work, especially his (and Margaret Kilgallen's) graffiti and its way of staking a claim in public space. I was amused that not one but two artists took on Trevor Paglen, either confirming his trendiness or simply upholding my belief he's doing some of the most interesting and important work out there right now. Ryan Hendon's large-scale photographs of abandoned turret foundations hold an ethereal beauty that connected with Paglen's interest in the military, while JP Kelly's installation addresses similar concerns through the sinister words and diagrams that trace themselves in light on a glass warhead. I also really liked Aaron Rosenstreich's series of circular black-and-white photographs of constructed landscapes from around the Bay Area that refers to Rigo 23's cleverly tweaked street sign murals, as well as Jeremiah Barber's performance on video Portrait of My Father Illuminated by Pounding Dry Ground that perfectly captures the feeling of disquiet that Tony Oursler's pieces can inspire. Even if you didn't know the theme of the exhibition the work of the artists on display absolutely stands on its own, and I look forward to a hypothetical show 25 years from now in which they are the ones whose work provides the inspiration for a new batch of artists.
By the way, if you're reading this you should by all means be attending my 33 1/3rd birthday party tomorrow night. However if for some reason you cannot reach (or make it across the bridge) I will instead recommend the Flaming Lotus Girls' summer soiree This Is Your Brain...on Fire! They will be debuting their newest sculpture Soma, which reportedly takes on the form of a gigantic flame-spitting neuron. I can definitely throw my support behind that.