Don’t Think: Tom, Joe and Rick Potts at POTTS

On view: December 8, 2019–February 16

At POTTS, an artist-run space set in a former plumbing supply store in Alhambra, the gallery is hosting its last show before closing. Fittingly, the exhibition features the three Potts brothers who ran the plumbing store (also called Potts), and still have art studios in the back room. The exhibition highlights the experimental nonchalance of the three and makes little distinction between “Art” with a capital-A, and other types of creative output that are less-often elevated to the gallery walls. Doodles are collaged across steel file cabinet doors (like a child’s artwork put up on the fridge), and a previously functional storage rack made of pipes sits center stage in the gallery space, like a minimalist monolith. The exhibition is light-hearted and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Although it is a show of art objects, art seems beside the point. Tom Potts, who made the functional pipe sculpture, explains in the press release, “For me, it is all about acquiring assorted pieces and putting them together to make something new.”