Exquisite L.A.

Featuring taisha paggett, Ashley Hunt, and Young Chung

Portraits by Joe Pugliese

Exquisite L.A. is a blueprint of a collective shape. Drawing on the history of the Surrealist Exquisite Corpse, we wish to create a communal portrait of the current Los Angeles art world.

Consisting of photographic portraits, and spanning a year of consecutive Carla issues, each artist photographed introduces the next with a short text accompanying their portrait, outlining their connection or interest in the artist that will follow them in the series.1 This is an ongoing story of Los Angeles—its twists and turns, side streets, and freeways.

Rooted in classical portraiture, the photographs presented capture the artists in a neutral space, isolated from their work or studio. Their individual gaze, pose, or gesture becomes a continuous visual marker for the exquisite corpse that is Los Angeles.

Issue 5:

Fay Ray → John Baldessari → Claire Kennedy →

Issue 6:

Analia Saban → Ry Rocklen → Sarah Cain →

Issue 7:

Brenna Youngblood → Todd Gray → Rafa Esparza →

Issue 8:

taisha paggett → Ashley Hunt → Young Chung

For the full introduction to this project, and to view previous portraits, please refer to Carla issue 5, which was published in

July 2016, or view HERE.

taisha paggett on Ashley Hunt

Ashley Hunt possesses a generosity of the heart that’s hard to match. It is the floodlight of his work as both an artist and a teacher.

Ashley Hunt on Young Chung

It’s no coincidence that Commonwealth and Council first began in Young Chung’s living room, which had until then been his studio as an artist. The first time you eat with Young, you will notice him attending to your needs before you realize you have them—he sees you’re missing silverware, he knows what you want to eat, he tops off your wine, he shares what he knows about where a dish comes from, he ensures that you’re comfortable. Many know this as a generosity that defines Young’s curatorial practice and his direction of C&C, long since moved beyond that living room. It is the ethic of a host, of a hospitality that considers us—us artists—as desiring beings, lovers and resisters, asking what do we want to become, how can that become our art world? Was the shift in his living room for his art to give way to his curating? Or was curating a new medium as an artist—a gesture of making space for someone else’s work, a generosity and care that could surpass what an object or image can do? Young knows the answer, but he might not say.

Young Chung

Young Chung marks the end of Volume I of “Exquisite L.A.”

This photo essay was originally published in Carla issue 8.

Claressinka Anderson’s poetry and essays have appeared in Autre Magazine, Chiron Review, Artillery Magazine, and elsewhere, as well as in the anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion. Through her ongoing collaborations with artists, her work engages the interstitial spaces of contemporary art and literature. Born and raised in London, she lives in Los Angeles where she is at work on her first libretto. 

More by Claressinka Anderson