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Waking U.S. Up to a New Rising Sun

Next time you drive south on La Brea Avenue just past Fountain Avenue, look up and to the left. Look twice. What seems to be just another billboard ad is really art.

Above the busy thoroughfare towers “Japan,” a conceptual piece about America’s changing relationship with that country by Bay Area artists Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan who hope to provoke some thought.

“It gets you to stop and be conscious,” Mandel said. “Most ads are designed to keep you unconscious.”

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“Japan” is the single exterior artwork in “Collaboration,” an exhibit exploring artistic partnership today through Nov. 27 at Security Pacific’s Gallery at the Plaza downtown. Mandel and Sultan, who have co-created billboards for 15 years, are one of 12 pairs of contemporary artists whose works are on view.

Like their other collaborative billboards, “Japan” mocks the mass media and explores social issues. In this case, the artists address Americans’ changing perception of Japan and its new economic status. They have rendered an awe-struck group of people poised expectantly in front of a mysterious golden glow that’s revealed as a robed figure pulls aside a curtain.

The “anxiety” over the Japanese “taking our resources from us” is “just below the threshold of our everyday awareness,” Mandel said. “My wife just read me this article in the newspaper that the Japanese are buying $16 billion in real estate in the U.S. this year alone.

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“So the people in the billboard are awe-struck because we really don’t know what to make of all this: Of Japan’s great economic resurgence, of that fact that we love Japanese cars, or that the Japanese standard of living is becoming higher than ours.”

Mandel, whose work with Sultan often incorporates found materials, said that the people in “Japan” are coiffed and clothed a la 1950s because the billboard image, produced by Patrick Media Group, a billboard company, is an enlargement of a Bible study book that was published during that decade. The artwork’s romanticized, dated style lends a historical perspective, he added.

“The Americans asked the Japanese to come here in the early part of the century to work as cheap labor. Now, they’ve become a big world power.”

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The “Japan” billboard will remain at its present cite through Oct. 31. It will then be placed at Wilshire Boulevard and Carondolet Street, downtown, until Nov. 30.

“Collaborations” was co-curated by Mark Johnstone and Tressa R. Miller, director of the Gallery at the Plaza.

Ed Ruscha, Sam Francis, Lita Albuquerque and Charles Arnoldi are among more than 60 major American artists whose works will be raffled off Saturday night in Santa Monica.

The raffle, sponsored by West Beach Cafe restaurant and the Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, will begin at 9 p.m. at the school, at 1714 21st St. A party will begin at 6 p.m.

First-place raffle winners will receive half of a 75-piece collection of artworks and four more winners will divide the rest of the collection among themselves. Winners need not be present to win. Tickets, which may be bought at the school or the restaurant, 60 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, to the party only are $15. Raffle tickets are $100. Some of the artworks are on view at the restaurant. All proceeds will help the school build its new Arts Education Building. Information: (213) 829-7391.

A guided tour to the studios of master craftsmen Sam Maloof, Harrison McIntosh and Rupert Deese is scheduled for Saturday by the Associates of the Brand Library Art Center.

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A lecturer will accompany the tour to the Claremont and Alta Loma studios and all three craftsmen will discuss their work. Tickets are $25, not including lunch at a Claremont restaurant. The tour leaves at 9:30 a.m. from the Brand Library Art Center, 1601 W. Mountain St., Glendale. Early reservations are recommended: (818) 956-2051.

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