To put it plainly, it is impossible to capture the entire breadth of the Hammer Museum’s fifth biannual exhibit “Nine Lives: Visionary Artists from L.A.” in an 800-word article.
Nine Los Angeles-based artists with more than 125 pieces of work spread over nine distinct sections is something that shouldn’t just be limited to words, but experienced in person.
The sheer enormity and diversity of this collection of art pieces rarely found in one place is, in itself, worth a visit.
The exhibit, which opened on Sunday to the public, begins with a selection of 10 pieces from Llyn Foulkes’ nearly 50-year repertoire and winds its way through each artist’s section. Foulkes’ 250-pound, seven-year masterpiece “The Lost Frontier,” which hangs just inside the exhibition doorway, is a three-dimensional construction that, according to curator Ali Subotnick, “emblemizes Los Angeles, the wasteland, and the dark and the light,” which are recurring themes throughout the exhibit.
“It exemplifies the show and how artists respond to Los Angeles in their work,” said Subotnick. “Foulkes doesn’t just paint on canvas, as you can see.”
Interestingly enough, it was those very canvas paintings that got Foulkes recognized in the art world but have been purposely omitted from the Nine Lives show.
“The art world likes the easy stuff, the work everyone can have in their house,” Foulkes said. “These constructions speak differently. They’ve got more guts to them. They are more personal. These take time to do.”
Many of Foulkes’ pieces contain graphic material, including his series of “Bloody Heads” mixed media constructions, and a real, shriveled dead cat placed in “The Lost Frontier.”
However, Foulkes also appears playful at times by incorporating his lifelong nemesis and proclaimed merchandising symbol Mickey Mouse into works such as “Deliverance,” in which he has finally shot and killed Mickey with a handgun.
Just around the corner, Hirsch Perlman, head of the Department of Sculpture at UCLA, is exhibiting five larger-than-life, black-and-white prints featuring a cat. It may not sound like much, but blown up into 6-by-9-foot prints, the feline frenzy can get intimidating.
“The cat in the photos is somewhere between cartoon and legend,” said Perlman. “There’s some Tom and Jerry, where the art is Tom and the viewer is Jerry, but I also think of historical references like the Egyptian cat god Bastet.”
Taken at slow shutter speeds to display the cat’s movement and placed in a circular fashion around the room, Perlman’s cat appears to surround the viewer in a display of anxious aggression.
“I’m playing with the way the photographs can affect the environment of the room,” said Perlman. “The photographs, in a way, manipulate and sculpt the room’s feeling, making the viewer feel a sense of powerlessness.”
A couple of rooms over, Victoria Reynolds’ meat portraits are a collection of lamb, pork uterus, cow tripe, reindeer and pork bone paintings that are stylistically reminiscent of Baroque art pieces, and that Reynolds calls, “frivolous, pink and sensual.” Reynolds, who hand-picks her meat from places like the Chinese market in Las Vegas and a reindeer slaughter house on wheels in Sweden, captures the intrinsic details of the meat, straight down to the sinews and globules of fat.
“I want people to live in the moment,” said Reynolds. “If there’s this visceral thing happening on the canvas, it reminds you that you’re living right here, right now locked inside this flesh machine.”
Placed within ornate, gothic frames echoing the deep red curves and sweeping movement of the meat, Reynolds’ portraits become stunningly beautiful and awfully graphic all at once.
“You look at them and can’t help being drawn in,” said Subotnick. “They’re seductive, but then you realize what the subject is and you get a little repulsed, yet you keep going back because they’re so beautiful.”
Foulkes, Perlman and Reynolds are just the tip of the iceberg at the Hammer’s extensive new exhibit. Filling out the “Nine Lives” lineup is Julie Becker’s compilation of drawings and mixed media, a replica of the Playboy Mansion’s infamous Grotto created by Kaari Upson, Charles Irvin’s quirky ink, acrylic and prismacolor prints examining the absurdities of sex and bodily functions, amateur anthropologist Jeffrey Vallance’s international collection of trinkets and tokens, including a Black Forest gnome and Tonga soap on a rope, Charlie White’s startling examination of the angst, vulnerability and desire of the transition phase between teenager and womanhood captured in photographs and a short film, and finally, Lisa Auerbach’s collection of politically critical knitted sweatshirts promoting Obama and admonishing the Octo-Mom.
Although completely drawing from Los Angeles sources, Subotnick’s compilation of artists and art pieces does not lack diversity. What came at first to the table as an international project quickly turned local.
“I realized, unlike New York, which is about the finished product and the market, Los Angeles is an amazing place of production, the making of and the process, which is something I focused on,” Subotnick said. “I discovered there was just no reason to go outside Los Angeles.”