Concord #8
On View at the Getty Center: Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970
Ron Miyashiro’s Concord sculptures combine found objects with simple materials such as wood and cardboard. Though small in scale, the dark colors and imposing machine-like forms of these assemblage sculptures hint at troubling subjects, such as aggression, confinement, and war. Several also incorporate more organic forms, including narrow orifices that suggest a dark sexuality. Miyashiro was one of the four young artists included in War Babies, the controversial 1961 exhibition at Henry Hopkins’s Huysman Gallery; there, Miyashiro showed small paintings with darkly erotic undertones that anticipated the somber quality of his Concord series.