Excerpt: Simon Miller - Resort 2025

"Like Jasmin Larian Hekmat's brand, Cult Gaia.  I have a soft spot for this late 1970s homage to the divinely hedonistic 70s, through to the 1980s where the counter cultures went from their free love peace loving hippies, to the sexual liberated 70s and 80s, and its anti-nuke war rallies.  Ending literally overnight in the 1990s, when the Baby Boomers children, Generation X, ended up as one of the, without being too hard, stagnated and in a lot of ways traditionalist generations to date, despite dashes of rebellious simulacrum of those last Three decades.  It was seen more as a novelty, than a statement of change.  Now 24 years into the 2000s, not much has changed, this new formed conservatism has very much dug itself in, without a cohesive or interesting counter culture appearing on the horizon.  So, are we allowed to romanticize?

Why not?  As long as it is done without invoking the restless spirits of those boulevards of broken dreams, to which Chelsea Hansford of Simon Miller portrays in her respectful homage, via a devotion to her beloved Los Angeles 1970s template.  Reflecting a L.A.,when it began to replace, somewhat, New York City after the 1960s, as that American popular cultural beacon, with the plethora of heyday movie stars and celebrities, that have all since passed on, who would mingle with the locals at the iconic West Hollywood Chasen's American restaurant.  Even with its urban sprawl, L.A. throughout the 70s and 1980s reflected a personified aspiration of celebritydom, way before the digital age and the late Andy Warhol's famous quote, of everyone will be "famous" for 15 minutes in the future holds very much an oracle's relevancy, only to be updated to its now 15 seconds of feigning fame, via the digital reloops.  The pre-digital age felt more real.  Despite the crime, crumbling cities, grit and smog..."

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(A.Glass 2024)

Full review: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2024/11/simon-miller-resort-2025.html

Fall/Winter 2025/2026 review soon.