Alex Isreal & Bret Easton Ellis @ Gagosian

Over the weekend, I attended the opening for Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills.
I was greeted by a huge, door popping crowd which reminded me more of a rave than a gallery opening.  Inside Isreal, an LA native from a local wealthy family, had created many large, billboard size works.  They even smelled like billboards.  Ellis, a well-known Generation X author, collaborated with Isreal by supplying him with short texts that Isreal then plopped onto stock images that he pulled from the internet and had printed at Warner Brothers in various fonts.  The look is very "billboard on Sunset".  
I was struck by the large, at capacity crowd that could not get enough of standing in from of the works, especially the one titled, "I will Become My Own Kind Of Star".  
There were young want to be's as well as Hollywood;s A list, artists, unknowns, and established collectors.  It was really a shit-show but so very entertaining!  
I am interested to hear what everyone thought of the show.  Did it do what it claimed and capture "celebrity cultures as well as the slick appearance and aspirations of the entertainment capital"?  Did it really capture LA or was it really just showing that "reality television personality" that we see every night on the Kardashians??
Was the work a hard look at the creative culture or merely backdrops painted to engage our eyes? 
Larry Gagosian does create art stars, I am curious to see where this goes! 

​Todd Williamson