Alake Shilling: Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A.

Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A. (2025), Alake Shilling’s monumental inflatable, produced in partnership with Art Production Fund, depicts one of her signature characters—a stern-eyed bear in a hot-pink convertible—atop a colossal strawberry-studded shaped hilltop with daisies. Installed outdoors, the sculpture reflects Shilling’s long-standing interest in scale, whimsy, and surrealism. Like her ceramic works, this figure balances cuteness with unease, inviting viewers into a world of fantasy. Shilling conjures an emotionally textured ecosystem, drawing from cartoons, evoking California funk’s playful materiality and the often grotesque figuration associated with the Chicago Imagists, a group of artists working in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s known for their cartoon-like forms, bold colors, and irreverent humor. Her work treats character and surface as containers for humor, ambivalence, and estranged joy.

Alake Shilling’s Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A. (2025) is copresented by the Hammer Museum and Art Production Fund in association with Made in L.A. 2025.

Art Production Fund is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to commissioning and producing ambitious public art projects, reaching new audiences, and expanding awareness through contemporary art.