The Future Perfect at Goldwin House

Our Los Angeles outpost, The Goldwyn House, is in Hollywood at the base of the Hollywood Hills and is also my family’s home, so the LA fires were something I experienced on a personal level. I was in Mexico with my family on a vacation when we got word that a fire was in LA. Never in my imagination did I consider the extent of loss that would unfold. But on Tuesday (January 7) as we started to get word of all the people who had lost their homes unexpectedly and tragically, it became much closer and more real. On Wednesday, the Sunset fire erupted, and all that empathy and fear became very personal as we began receiving evacuation notices for our home, which is also The Future Perfect’s LA gallery location. Watching on my phone, the fire looked like it was just blooming, jumping from 6 acres, 10 acres, 60 acres, 100 hundred acres. I remember that at 7 pm that night, it felt like we were going to lose our home, but the firefighters, whom I want to honor and acknowledge, just jumped on that fire. Ultimately our house was spared, and I feel an immense sense of gratitude for what we have been saved from. In no way do I feel like I can fully understand the scope of loss for those who lost everything. 

When faced with a tragedy like this, the connection to objects is put into a very different context. Briefly faced with the prospect of evacuation, I had to think about what things I would want to remove from my house quickly… my bar mitzvah box…things that my mother had given me…and in talking with people who have lost so much, what they miss the most are not necessarily the things that were the most expensive or the most valuable but the things that were the most nostalgic. A friend lost a painting that was made by his grandmother and hung in the foyer of his home alongside many works from many different artists. Of all the pieces this is the thing he longs for most. That is the power of the object, that it is imbued with meaning as it passes through our hands into others’ hands, that it ages and grows with us. We are impermanent, but the object may continue to exist through generations, and so the objects that have the most importance are the ones we carry forward. 

Now I’ve turned my attention towards what The Future Perfect is, and who I am, and what we can do for our community. We’ve changed our programming for Frieze LA [Feb.20-23] and will be highlighting the work of artists who have been impacted by the fires, including Willett and LGS Studios which will put a real physical manifestation of this catastrophic loss in front of people. These are artists who lost their homes. This is their work and they were fortunate their studios didn’t burn as well. We’re also putting together a silent auction and inviting the community to co-host this with us. We are supporting it with all sorts of creatives coming together. 100% of what we raise will be going to Grief and Hope, whose initiative is to support creatives impacted by the fires, and to our local firehouse, Station 41, who quite literally saved us from the destruction that has been felt by so many in our community. 

Further down the line it still feels too early to actually understand what this means for the future of Los Angeles. The gravity of loss still hasn’t fully sunk in. As a community, we’re still not allowed to visit these locations because of toxic waste. Once this critical cleanup is done, then I think people will really be able to reassess. And my instinct and hope is that people will stay and rebuild. In Los Angeles, there has been an overwhelming outpouring of support, and it’s just so beautiful to see a community come alive like that. On the flip side there are people who took advantage of evacuated homes. So as a community, we will need to be mindful.

I am hopeful for the future of Los Angeles and I think we will see an incredible bounty of creative energy that will be available and that will be put into the rebuilding effort.