Hammer Blog

Dream Home Resource Center, Olga Koumoundouros's most recent investigation into the realm of home ownership, addresses the immateriality of real estate transactions and the shift from home as emblem of the American dream to house as commodity. Inspired in part by the Hammer Museum's exhibition A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living and Jones's vision of modern architecture, Koumoundouros fast-forwards more than half a century to the present, a moment filled with far less optimism about housing in the United States.

I am happy to announce the opening of Telescope, a non-profit styled project space in a rare but still existing urban village of Beijing. The village of Cao Chang Di houses many of Beijing’s best contemporary art galleries and is very close to the well known 798 art district. Telescope is in a converted massage parlor and the first Cao Chang Di gallery not in a segregated gallery area.

The central focus and purpose of Telescope is to give voice and support to the emerging artists of China, to provide opportunities and exposure for them here and abroad. There are no other spaces like Telescope in China, so the potential to directly help the art community in a unique way and to provide a non-commercial model is great. I hope that we can develop future collaborations with museums, non-profits, galleries, and collectors in the west.

A Telescope website is

Dream Home Resource Center, Olga Koumoundouros's most recent investigation into the realm of home ownership, addresses the immateriality of real estate transactions and the shift from home as emblem of the American dream to house as commodity. Inspired in part by the Hammer Museum's exhibition A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living and Jones's vision of modern architecture, Koumoundouros fast-forwards more than half a century to the present, a moment filled with far less optimism about housing in the United States.

We are so pleased to bring you the special guest series, Telescope.

In 2008, Hammer Projects Curator, James Elaine, relocated to China. He has since settled in Beijing and recently opened the non-profit art space, Telescope.  Jamie will be our feet on the ground and bring us his musings on art, life in China, and anything else that might strike his fancy.

This is his space.  Welcome to Telescope.

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BIO
James Elaine is an artist and curator of contemporary art living and working in Beijing researching the contemporary art of China. From 1999 to 2010 he was the Hammer Projects curator at the Hammer Museum Los Angeles where he curated or oversaw more than 80 project exhibitions and 3 large-scale group shows of local and international emerging artists. His Hammer exhibition, THING: New Sculpture from Los Angeles, 2005, won the International Art Critics Association’s award for best thematic

Dream Home Resource Center, Olga Koumoundouros's most recent investigation into the realm of home ownership, addresses the immateriality of real estate transactions and the shift from home as emblem of the American dream to house as commodity. Inspired in part by the Hammer Museum's exhibition A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living and Jones's vision of modern architecture, Koumoundouros fast-forwards more than half a century to the present, a moment filled with far less optimism about housing in the United States.