Karon Davis: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection
- – This is a past exhibition
Karon Davis (b. 1977, Reno, Nevada) creates sculptures and multimedia installations that touch on issues of history, race, and violence in the United States, using materials as varied as plaster strips, chicken wire, glass, and readymade objects. Drawing on her background in theater and film, Davis creates haunting tableaux inhabited by protagonists both historical and imagined. The figures are created using the artist’s unique plaster method, amalgamations of life-size casts taken from friends and family as well as her own body. The material reflects her longtime interest in ancient Egyptian mummification practices, using wrapping to memorialize different bodies and their complex histories.
Acquired from the artists’ 2019 project GAME, an outdoor commission for the back lot at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, this installation of three figures rendered in Davis’s familiar lexicon of plaster and wire remarks on the long and continuing legacies of violence in American schools. As with much of Davis’s work, the figures take on an aura of haunting unfinish, the broken quality of their materials relating to an interior brokenness, exposing the frayed and crumbling structures of a delicate democracy.
This presentation is organized by Connie Butler, chief curator, with Vanessa Arizmendi, curatorial associate.
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![White plaster sculpture of a child with antlers playing cats cradle]()
Karon Davis, Cat's Cradle, 2019Plaster strips, chicken wire, steel armature, glass eyes, antlers. 28 × 25 × 57 in. (71.1 × 63.5 × 144.8 cm). Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Purchased with partial funds from Frieze and individual gifts from Bill Block, Jay Brown, Richard Buckley, Marcy Carsey, Rosette V. Delug, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Viveca Paulin Ferrell, Andrew and Bronya Galef, Linda Janger, Mihail Lari and Scott Murray, Leslie McMorrow, Phil Mercado, Cindy Miscikowski, Susan Nimoy, Michael Rubel and Kristin Rey, and Ellen and Bill Taubman. -
![Life-sized plaster figure of a girl with deer antlers, climbing the stairs]()
Karon Davis, Stairway to Heaven, 2019Plaster strips, chicken wire, steel armature, glass eyes, antlers, shoes, cloth backpack. 72 × 37 × 24 in. (182.9 × 94 × 61 cm). Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Purchased with partial funds from Frieze and individual gifts from Bill Block, Jay Brown, Richard Buckley, Marcy Carsey, Rosette V. Delug, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Viveca Paulin Ferrell, Andrew and Bronya Galef, Linda Janger, Mihail Lari and Scott Murray, Leslie McMorrow, Phil Mercado, Cindy Miscikowski, Susan Nimoy, Michael Rubel and Kristin Rey, and Ellen and Bill Taubman. -
![Life-sized plaster sculpture of a stern-looking man with deer antlers, standing arms crossed in front of an open door]()
Karon Davis, Principal Lewis, 2019Plaster strips, chicken wire, steel armature, glass eyes, antlers, shoes, bowtie, glasses. 87 × 24 × 24 in. (221 × 61 × 61 cm). Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Purchased with partial funds from Frieze and individual gifts from Bill Block, Jay Brown, Richard Buckley, Marcy Carsey, Rosette V. Delug, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Viveca Paulin Ferrell, Andrew and Bronya Galef, Linda Janger, Mihail Lari and Scott Murray, Leslie McMorrow, Phil Mercado, Cindy Miscikowski, Susan Nimoy, Michael Rubel and Kristin Rey, and Ellen and Bill Taubman. -
Karon Davis: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, installation viewHammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 11—April 9, 2023. Photo: Charles White -
Karon Davis: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, installation viewHammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 11—April 9, 2023. Photo: Charles White -
Karon Davis: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, installation viewHammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 11—April 9, 2023. Photo: Charles White -
Karon Davis: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, installation viewHammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 11—April 9, 2023. Photo: Charles White -
Karon Davis: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, installation viewHammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 11—April 9, 2023. Photo: Charles White -
Karon Davis: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, installation viewHammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 11—April 9, 2023. Photo: Charles White -
Karon Davis: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, installation viewHammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 11—April 9, 2023. Photo: Charles White
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