Cities of Day - Oil

The final installment of Cities of Days brings us into the season of Oil and metaphorical cities. Imbued with the corporeality of Anaïs Nin’s Cities of the Interior, we descend into the sensuousness and mystery of the lived body. Oil is the core—those deepest and darkest, hidden, or perhaps unknown places.

Throughout the year, Cities of Days has been uncovering cities in strata: moving from literal layers of Rock, to imaginary layers of Water, and now into experiential layers of Oil. Ideas give way to desire, plans resolve into ritual, physical structures transmute into emotion.

Over the next four months, we explore these depths with artists, designers, craftspeople, writers, and makers of all sorts. Together, we draw back the curtains of our previously explored buildings, breaching their facades and venturing inside.

In our upstairs studio, we host The Wax Apple as a shop-in-shop though November and December. The space is a container for, and creation of, memory, conjuring artist Juliana Hung’s Taiwanese childhood, with products selected with her Grandmother for sale. Regular Taiwanese food will help activate this project and the memories, new and old, it inspires.

In conjunction with the launch of Oil, we will be hosting GAS Gallery (a mobile, autonomous, experimental and networked platform for contemporary art) on Saturdays for the month of November, with their exhibit Anatomy of Oil on view.

We will also debut a project in collaboration with Tanya Rubbak: Communication by Seduction Project (Windows, Real or Imagined), a multi-part risograph print project, with limited edition folios, in which designers and artists will create windows into hidden structures where desires live.

In the upstairs studio throughout January & February 2019, Cities of Days—Oil hosts Days:Spa Spa:Days, a weekly forum & events for therapeutic healing and practices of self care, launching us into the New Year with freshly rejuvenated bodies and minds.In a series of sensory-oriented workshops, meals, performances and conversations co-hosted by therapeutic textile project SHELL, we will be connecting those working in disparate practices throughout Los Angeles with our community at Days. Our list of makers, thinkers, therapists and alternative healers include both those working experimentally as well as projects deeply rooted in historical practices of natural therapeutic technique. Each offers guidance developing personal toolkits of self-care and intentioned living.

Advanced Sunrise, Aimee Goguen, Alex Pines, Alexa Stark, Alicia’s Klassic Kool Shoppe, And/Or, Andrej Ulrem, Artists and Therapy, Blaue Distanz, Body Language Shop, Building Block, Bullhorn Press, Busted Brand, Capricious Press, Chelsea Mak, Chen & Kai, Dana Covit, Dani Danya, Dani Grossman, Daughter of the Land, David Gilbert, Discipline Press, Don Kaka, Donni, Effie Bowen, Ella Gold, Eli's Bees, Eunbi Ceramics, Feminist Library on Wheels, Figs Underwear, Fixed Air. Formina, Hansel from Basel, Hayden Dunham, Hayley Barker, Hopp Studios, House of 950, iiiii columns, Iko Iko, Jacqueline S. Nero, Jill Spector, Jmy James Kidd, Joel Evey, Julie Cho and Katie Hanburger, Kaarem, Kelsey Sundberg, Ladies and Gentlemen Studio, Liana Jegers, LL, LLC, Mansi Shah, Megan Whitmarsh, Metatron Press, Michaela Daly, Molly Allis, Neil Doshi, Niffich, NOTO botanics, Octave Jewelry, Odette Press, Olivia Booth, Oneself, Phile Magazine, Primary Elements, Rachel Rosenfield, Riah Buchanan, Rob van den Nieuwenhuizen, Ruff Cut, Samantha McCurdy, Sanguis Ornatus, Shell Studies, Small Things, Stephanie Specht, Sun Song, Tanya Rubbak, Todd Lerew, Truss, Vanessa Lilak, Vvork Vvork Vvork, Zizia Botanicals