The Hammer Museum unveiled its new entrance on Sunday March 26, at the corner of Wilshire and Westwood Blvd, with an electronic display featuring a rotation of current exhibits.
Inside the spacious remodeled lobby an expansive art installation of intricately woven red yarn titled “The Network” follows the visitors up the stairs that lead to the inner courtyard and the elevator to the third floor galleries. Artist Chiharu Shiota, born in Osaka, Tokyo in 1972, who lives and works in Berlin, Germany, was inspired by the belief that, according to Japanese mythology, an invisible red thread tied to a baby’s finger at birth binds them to a network of people who will play significant roles in their life.
Another elevator takes you down from the third floor to the lobby of an adjoining building that used to be a bank, at the corner of Glendon Ave, where an immersive installation of green laser beams titled “Particulates” is visible at night from the street through large windows. Artist Rita McBride, born in Des Moines Iowa in 1960, was inspired by time travel, science fiction and quantum physics.
Cruel Youth Diary is an exhibit of Chinese photographs and videos by the generation of artists that created their work after the 1989 violent repression of protests at Tiananmen Square in Bejing. A tryptic of large chromographic prints titled “The First Intellectual” depicts a young man soaked in blood holding a brick ready to attack someone. Photographer Yang Fudong said that he doesn’t know if the problem stems from him or from society and the piece expresses his feelings of impotence and frustration.
Together In Time is the name of a selection of Contemporary Art that the Hammer started acquiring in 2005. A large mural fills the outside wall, it’s the reproduction of a 1973 Black and White photograph by Patssi Valdez, born in East Los Angeles in 1951. In “Portrait of Patssi” the young Mexican-American woman wished to present a glamorous image of herself, and at the same time show how a man would grab her.
The white plaster sculptures by Karon Davis, born in Reno, Nevada in 1977, “Stairway to Heaven” and “Principal Lewis” collectively titled “Game” illustrate how a young student with antlers on her head that mark her as prey walks into school under the watchful eye of the principal, where she may become a victim of gun violence.
Text and photos by Elisa Leonelli