Desiree Holman- Mama (2009)

A New Season Brings New Artists
Hammer Museum- Los Angeles, CA
09/09-01/10

Hammer Museum presents a slew of exhibitions, focusing primarily on the work of emerging artists. Each work offers something different- ranging from video montages of southwestern China, to sculptures that explore women’s maternal instincts, to large-scale sculptural environments.Chen Qiulin (September 29 -January 3, 2010)
For the past several years artist Chen Qiulin has been exploring and documenting the rapid and tumultuous urbanization of Sichuan, her home province in southwestern China, where she still lives today. Although Chen works in multiple mediums, she recently began using video to engage her interests, mastering it without formal training. The Hammer presents a selection of her videos from her first work in 2001 to her latest completed in the spring of 2009. From the chaotic dismantling of cities for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, to the effects of modernization and newly found materialism on the younger generations, to the devastation of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, Chen shows us with stark and brutal reality, as well as gracious poetic beauty, a new China being born. Organized by James Elaine, Hammer adjunct curator.

Chen Qiulin-Still from Peach Blossom (2009)
 
Related Program, Artist Talk- Chen Qiulin
Thursday, October 1, 7pm
Free
 
Desirée Holman (November 8, 2009- January 31, 2010)
In her drawings, sculptures, photographs, and videos, Desirée Holman makes figurative props that she manipulates in role-play games. Here Holman presents the Reborn project, which questions the notion of maternal instincts. Inspired by a subculture of women who purchase incredibly life-like baby dolls and care for them as if they were alive, Holman extensively researched this community and painstakingly hand-crafted several of her own “reborns.” The project also includes Mary Cassatt-inspired color pencil drawings of mothers and their babies and a video featuring several women interacting with the babies in a variety of unconventional scenarios. Holman’s work seamlessly brings together elements of fiction, fantasy, pop culture, anthropology and simulation, as she lures viewers into her games of make-believe. Organized by Ali Subotnick, Hammer curator.

Desirée Holman- Milkies (2009)
 
Rob Fischer (November 28, 2009-April 1, 2010)
Brooklyn-based artist Rob Fischer finds furniture, windows, mirrors, books, flooring, car parts, and other abandoned materials and reconfigures them to create large-scale sculptural environments that are like monuments to a forgotten past. Fischer’s use of these found materials is a commentary on the lifecycle of objects and how those discarded things will inevitably be reclaimed by nature. While his constructions contain an aura of melancholy and we feel the loss and the weight of the lingering presences of those who used these objects, the sculptures simultaneously acknowledge the possibility for transformation and regeneration. In Fischer’s work, decay is inextricable from rebirth. The notion of impermanence and recycling is paramount to the artist’s practice, and he often takes pieces apart and reuses the materials in other sculptures. For the Hammer’s Lobby Wall, Fischer recycles wooden floorboards from an old gymnasium to create a labyrinth-like mural that will extend off the wall. Organized by Hammer senior curator Anne Ellegood.

Rob Fischer-Bullrider’s Advice (2006)

Location:
Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Ángeles, CA 90024

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http://hammer.ucla.edu/

via EM Staff, 2 October 2009 11:30am | |