Off-Site Exhibition: A Shape That Stands Up
- – This is a past exhibition
A multigenerational exhibition that considers the gray area between figuration and abstraction, as mediated through humor and the grotesque.
The exhibition’s title is inspired by an ongoing series of drawings by artist Amy Sillman, which borrows from a sentence in Jayne Anne Phillips’s 2009 book Lark and Termite that reads, "Deep inside his pictures, a shape stands up and listens." A Shape That Stands Up focuses on works made over the last 15 years that follow a historical lineage of artists—from Philip Guston and Willem DeKooning's dissolution of the body into line, color, and near violent gesture, to later artists, such as the Chicago Imagists, or those associated with the California Funk movement. Each artist’s approach presents a challenge to the orthodoxy of beauty and mimetic precision in creative production, mediated through humor, fantasy, and the grotesque.
A Shape That Stands Up is organized by Hammer Museum assistant curator Jamillah James.
Participating artists include:
b. 1981, Long Island, New York
Kevin Beasley
b. 1985, Lynchburg, Virginia
Sadie Benning
b. 1973, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Robert Colescott
b. 1925, Oakland, California; d. 2009, Tucson, Arizona
Carroll Dunham
b. 1949, New Haven, Connecticut
Jamian Juliano Villani
b. 1987, Newark, New Jersey
Jason Meadows
b. 1972, Indianapolis, Indiana
D’Metrius “DJ” Rice
b. 1981, Washington, District of Columbia
Tschabalala Self
b. 1990, New York, New York
Amy Sillman
b. 1955, Detroit, Michigan
Henry Taylor
b. 1958, Oxnard, California
Torey Thornton
b. 1990, Macon, Georgia
Sue Williams
b. 1954, Chicago Heights, Illinois
Ulrich Wulff
b. 1975, Kempten, Germany
Brenna Youngblood
b. 1979, Riverside, California
The Hammer Museum at Art + Practice is a Public Engagement Partnership supported by The James Irvine Foundation.