Hammer Projects Present: Max Hooper Schneider @ Hammer Museum In Los Angeles

Artists are often likened to inventors or scientists, and in the case of Max Hooper Schneider the comparison is more than metaphoric. Schneider’s background in landscape architecture and marine biology strongly informs his artwork. Research and scientific investigation are key to his process. He explores the relationships between philosophy and nature, the personal and the political, destruction and construction, and what he calls nonhuman and human agents. Blending his diverse areas of expertise, his idiosyncratic sculptures, installations, and drawings challenge conventional systems of classification, suggesting a worldview that strives to dislocate humans from their assumed position of centrality and superiority as knowers and actors in the world. Schneider created a new immersive installation for his Hammer Projects exhibition, his first solo museum show. The exhibition is on view through September 1 at the Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Sarah Lucas Presents 'Au Naturel' @ Hammer Museum In Los Angeles

Over the past 30 years, Sarah Lucas has created a distinctive and provocative body of work that subverts traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity. Since the late 1980s, Lucas has transformed found objects and everyday materials such as furniture, cigarettes, vegetables, and stockings into absurd and confrontational tableaux that boldly challenge social norms. The human body and anthropomorphic forms recur throughout Lucas’s works, often appearing erotic, humorous, fragmented, or reconfigured into fantastical anatomies of desire. Au Naturel is on view through September 1 at the Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the Hammer

Made In L.A. 2018 @ The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles

Made In L.A., the Hammer Museum's exceedingly comprehensive biennial just celebrated the opening of its fourth installment, and it's decidedly the best one yet. Curated by the Hammer's senior curator, Anne Ellegood and Erin Christovale, the newest member of the Hammer's curatorial team, the show features 33 artists from widely diverse backgrounds who employ immensely disparate media and span an age gap of 68 years. While the biennial doesn't proclaim any particular theme, almost all of the work presented is new and was made in response to the predicaments of the present. Much has happened since the last installment of 2016, and our collective experience has been marked by devastating fires, hurricanes, earthquakes and drought, government-mandated religious bigotry, deportations sans due process, countless recorded accounts of police brutality against black and brown citizens, countless school shootings, etc. Heavily steeped in political and social response as it may be, though, there's nothing didactic or sanctimonious about it. Instead the thread that connects all of these works together is one that explores the idea of citizenship in the present moment. In it we see stories of our past, how they led to the present, how they define who we are, and determine what is in store. A collective moment to "count using only your breath" as taisha paggett instructs us to do on a handwritten note taped to a microphone. She is one of several artists who will be performing and activating the space throughout the run of the show. Throughout the summer there will also be numerous lectures and walkthroughs with the curators, so there are plenty of reasons to take your time and come back a few times. Artists featured include: Carmen Argote, James Benning, Diedrick Brackens, Carolina Caycedo, Neha Choksi, Beatriz Cortez, Mercedes Dorame, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Aaron Fowler, Nikita Gale, Jane Gordon & Megan Whitmarsh, Lauren Halsey, EJ Hill, Naotaka Hiro, John Houck, Luchita Hurtado, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Candice Lin, Charles Long, Nancy Lupo, Daniel Joseph Martinez, MPA, Alison O'Daniel, Eamon Ore-Giron, taisha paggett, Christina Quarles, Michael Queenland, Patrick Staff, Linda Stark, Flora Wiegmann, Suné Woods, and Rosha Yaghmai. To learn more about lectures, performances and programming related to Made In L.A., visit the Hammer. The exhibition will be on view through September 2, 2018 at The Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Kupper