A Trip To The 14th Factory

We saw Simon Birch go buy with a mug, joking with his workers about keeping their eyes open so no one sits down. From what was overheard, a large fellow sat down and broke a stool, the pictures of this criminal sitter are suppose to be floating on Instagram. Why that matters so much is because the room in question, where the criminal attack upon an ottoman occurred, is taken straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and nothing in there should be broken by someone trying to snag a selfie. It's one of the exhibits at the 14th Factory, an art exhibit near a no longer functioning jail covered in graffiti near downtown.

14th Factory
Mon: Closed

Tue: 11am - 6pm
Wed: 11am - 6pm
Thu: 11am - 8pm

Fri: 11am - 8pm

Sat: 10am - 10pm

Sun: 10am - 6pm
Entry to The 14th Factory closes 45 minutes before the closing time.
440 North Avenue 19 
Los Angeles, CA 90031

$13.50 – $150 

*Street Parking and valet for $10

 

We weren't sure we were in the right place until we saw the flags and the ramps leading up to the gallery, really, a no longer in use factory that did Chinese importing. Now, now it was a playground and a haunted house for patrons to look at. A place where selfies were needed every few steps. The one standing out the most, possibly the sci-fi recreation of a room where time's meaning seems to falter and more than one of you can be.

a friend helped put the multiple images of me, you'll have to Photoshop yourself for a similar effect

Off with your shoes and in you go for your timed session in the bedroom from 2001. It seems the love Stanely Kubrick got a few years ago at LACMA with his own special show hasn't stopped. The iconic room where Dr. David Bowman sees himself growing older and in more than one place is now something you can visit in real life.

 

You can be part of the neoclassic architecture if you can only get past the meteor that it's housed in. "The Meteor" as dubbed by its creator Simon Birch, who passed by us, a mug in hand, worried about fat people breaking chairs, brought the exhibit together with an international list of artists. One of his pieces looks like thought and word bubbles were painted black and fell from the sky and were collected in a pile. That's "The Meteor" that houses 2001. 

 

It's sort of like a dream mentality of flowing through each piece. Much of the passages are dark or suddenly lead you to a new dream. Like past the darkness of "The Meteor" we found ourselves in a new section. The moon was in the center.

Or at least a park with the landscape of the moon with swings. And people were swinging on them and you might have guessed they hadn't in a while. The nostalgia and the fun kicked as we swayed back and forth, only gaining enough momentum when getting a push. In the middle of the factory we were swinging and it was a lot of fun. 

 

This area was called the Garlands, it has so much going on if you learn it's design idea, but if you just wanted to ride a swing it's a delightful scene. On too much going, we mean a trail of poppies in the lunar park is suppose to represent the boundary lines imposed by the Chinese Qing Empire when it was illegal to visit other countries, that's a lot for swings in the center of a factory. On a more relaxed level it captured the nostalgia of youth and added the idea of having a moon park to us.

Strangely many pieces have more than one connection, many from music and film concocted and connected to ideas and feelings the artists had. A bit of a connection to Marvel comic characters seemed to show up more than once. Though the fight seen in "The Inhumans" piece is also a name for super-powered Marvel characters it was shown as a video installation of a massive brawl of 300 Chinese men not wearing shirts fighting each other. The fight, which could been choreographed better, as the fight instantly was made fun of by another patron saying, "When does it become an orgy?"It doesn't. It repeats on six screens at different angles with no reason as to why the men are fighting or who is good or bad.

"Hypercaine" is a piece that made us feeling like visiting a church. A church of fallen kings. A wide swatch of different crowns are before you. You can study them or pray to them with  benches in front of them. The different crowns made of different materials were created by artists to represent what we seek to collect on our journeys or a mythical adventure.

The overall connection to each piece from the words written out for whomever is visiting is a connected story of heroism and mythology. To us, it seems like a much more tighter connection to those artists feelings on certain subject or multiple subjects. 

 

The name of the places comes from "Thirteen Factories" of 18th century Canto Region and how trade worked well between them even though they were of different nations. The main idea of the 14th Factory is to show off how art canreclaim and underutilized area.

Did it? It's an entertaining exhibit that might have you thinking you're own ideas, like these artists had about mythological heroism and transforming on your journey.