Target Video's Solo Gallery Exhibit in Los Angeles - NOW!

The Cramps, Whisky A Go Go, 1978
The Cramps are one of the highlights of the Target Video body of work - their performance at the Napa State Hospital is infamous and fortunately, because of Target, the (moving) pictures can prove it.

I've often said it (and the Target principals think I exaggerate BUT, I think its true): San Francisco's Target Video was the punk rock version of Andy Warhol's Factory. Their solo gallery exhibit opens in Los Angeles tomorrow, November 17. The text below is directly from the press release for the over-arching project Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration of art/culture centers celebrating Art in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 (or as I call it from Post War to the beginning of Post Punk):

targetvideo77: Cal Punk & Performance



As a participant in Pacific Standard Time, Annie Wharton Los Angeles is pleased to present “Cal Punk & Performance,” the first solo gallery exhibition in Los Angeles by targetvideo77. In 1977, artist Joe Rees started targetvideo77, capturing some of the edgiest performances of the era. Rees (in collaboration with Jackie Sharp, Jill Hoffman, Sam Edwards and others) archived early performance art, punk, and hardcore bands on video and film, with the artists sometimes risking their own safety by shooting from precariously tall places, inside of an insane asylum, or within the confines of a prison.



“Cal Punk & Performance” will feature original works of music and performance art from targetvideo77’s rich archive, many of which have never been seen in a fine art context. A single channel installation of Black Flag videos will also be on view, featuring epic concert footage and their first video for MTV, “TV Party.” Included in the raw and compelling videos to be shown at AWLA is one of music's most infamous performances at Napa State Mental Hospital in 1978. The show was headlined by the Mutants and opening on the bill were the Cramps. This, along with performances and artists as diverse the Crime, Dead Kennedys, The Dils, Flipper, Mutants, and Noh Mercy that were recorded by targetvideo77 in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Photographic stills from the videos will also be shown in the exhibition, along with ephemera and posters from the original shows.


The Dils, San Francisco, 1978
The Dils were and are a perennial fave band of mine and one close to the true meaning of the punk rock movement - their music is a hybrid of the emotional launch pad for British punk, combined with the furious and frenetic pace of The Ramones


targetvideo77’s punk rock videos were featured in The Getty’s “California Video” exhibition in 2008, and has been exhibited in the Coliseum (Rome), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Steven Wolf Fine Arts (San Francisco and Chicago), The Fillmore (San Francisco), The Pacific Film Archive (San Francisco), Cinefamily Theater (Los Angeles), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and the San Francisco Public Library. Their work is currently featured in the MOCA/Pacific Standard Time exhibition curated by Paul Schimmel entitled “Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981.”



The exhibitions open in conjunction with Pacific Design Center’s Design Loves Art programming from 5:30-8:30pm on November 17 and runs through January 4, 2012. AWLA gallery hours are from 12-5pm, Monday – Friday. Please call for holiday hours.



More on Pacific Standard Time can be found here:

www.pacificstandardtime.org/galleries.


Darby Crash, Whisky A Go Go, 1977
Target Video captured some of the best and earliest performances of The Germs ever, full stop.