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"   Clare Rojas at her exhibition in LA this weekend. Photo: Billy Farrel Agency  Oscars weekend in Los Angeles is, simply put, majorly exciting; a good chunk of the world&amp;#039;s most beloved entertainers converge for a weekend of millions parties, dinners and a few more parties. Add gallery hopping to that short list\u2014thanks mainly to Larry Gagosian, who hosted not one but two major art openings and, of course, parties on two consecutive nights. Up first on Thursday night was a showing of the latest work from Ed Ruscha, the iconic LA artist, who chose a decaying urban landscape as the subject in this sprawling exhibition titled &amp;quot;Psycho Spaghetti Westerns&amp;quot; on North Camden Drive. A considerable crowd gathered for a first look at the giant paintings, including Drew Barrymore, Adrien Brody and Michael Stipe. On Friday, it was back to North Camden to Gagosian&amp;#039;s neighboring space for a combined showing of new work from James Franco and Gus Van Sant. For Franco&amp;#039;s contribution, the actor-cum-professor-cum-student-cum-poet-cum-artist-cum-Oscar presenter (the list goes on, but it&amp;#039;s not actually possible to keep track anymore) crafted a 12 hour long video from never before seen footage of Van Sant&amp;#039;s cult classic My Own Private Idaho. While the video wasn&amp;#039;t all that exciting (we didn&amp;#039;t actually make it through all 12 hours), the viewing area was fantastic.  Set designer extraordinaire Matthew Mazzucca (who&amp;#039;s worked most memorably with Marc Jacobs, Rodarte and Patrik Ervell) created an immersive space made to look like a filthy basement with stained walls, brown plastic folding chairs and randomly placed couches that looked like they might have been picked up off the street\u2014the effect was impressive to say the least. And Van Sant&amp;#039;s massive, gorgeous watercolors hanging from the walls of the main space didn&amp;#039;t hurt either. A diverse crowd, including Ingrid Sischy, Jeffrey Deitch and Robert Duvall, crammed in to fete the show&amp;#039;s opening. Finally, Saturday night was all about painter/musician/filmmaker Clare Rojas&amp;#039; exhibition, `Inside Bleak,&amp;#039; at the newly opened PRISM gallery on Sunset. The 3-floor architectural space was filled with Rojas&amp;#039; large paintings as well as an area for performance and video, where Rojas played a few songs under the name Peggy Honeywell for a crowd content to sit cross-legged on the gallery floor. Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Fabiola Beracasa and Russell Simmons stopped by to catch the show. We were sad to have to miss an ambitious show on Friday night at Regen Projects titled Black Swan\u2014an exhibition inspired by the movie and curated by Dominic Sidhu, including works from Matthew Barney, Walead Beshty, Banks Violette and Richard Prince, but as is usually the case, you can&amp;#039;t be everywhere at once. All in all, there was an impressive display of work and crowd support in LA this weekend, which, of all weekends, is an incredible opportunity to present art to a much broader audience what with such an international press conveniently in town for the you-know-whats. We look forward to watching LA&amp;#039;s vibrant art scene continue to thrive. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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