Jolly Night at the Races

Downtown Los Angeles A one-night gesamtkunstwerk staged inside a 16,000-square-foot former marijuana production facility before its redevelopment. A circular indoor racetrack became the organizing structure for participatory horse racing in which guests carried miniature sculptural horses on silver tablespoons while drinking mint juleps. The event accumulated sculpture, painting, music, food, chance operations, found racing ephemera, a funereal horse-hoof procession, floral ceremony and live filming. Nelson also presented one of his first substantial paintings after a long interval, a thickly built image of the sun on raw linen that partially sloughed off during the evening. The original invitation described the project as an ensemble work, and that description is accurate: its form emerged through the interdependence of many individual contributions rather than through a single dominant object. Collaborators / contributors: Tony Brown; Joshua Beckman; Gioj De Marco; Chuck Moffitt; Chris Natrop; Edwina Nelson; Umar Rashid / Frohawk Two Feathers; Holly Vesecky; Chad Brown; Jose Alvarado; Jed Mayhew; Danielle Motor; additional guests and performers.