‘Neither myth nor monolith, Los Angeles is many things to many people, and its cacophonous disorder is, perhaps, its most distinguishing feature,’ say Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha, the curators of the seventh edition of the Made in LA biennial, currently on show at UCLA’s Hammer Museum. The museum’s director Zoë Ryan says, ‘The Made in LA biennial offers a chance for local and international audiences to celebrate the incredible work being made by artists in this city.’
Hold the Ice, 2020, Patrick Martinez
(Image credit: Courtesy of artist and Charlie James Gallery)
‘From the outset of this process, our primary objective was to look at art, and to see as much of it as possible,’ say Harden and Pobocha. ‘We wanted to learn from artists and distill an exhibition from those experiences. While there are as many ideas circulating through the show as there are materials, an inquiry into one’s relationship to the city of Los Angeles animates much of the work we will present.’
New Theater Hollywood. Still from episode one of Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff’s Theater, 2024. Pictured: Leilah Weinraub
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artists)
The curators spent a year visiting studios, artist-run venues, commercial galleries and museums across LA County, and the 28 artists selected for the show comprise a multigenerational group whose work encompasses painting, sculpture, video, installation, music and performance. The younger generation is represented by the likes of Patrick Martinez – whose neon advertising signs advocate for human rights rather than products – and Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, whose New Theater Hollywood stages a wide range of experimental plays. Here, the duo weave together documentation from actual rehearsals with a fictionalisation of the life of a theatre owner in an episodic film that confuses stable and highly codified categories within Hollywood’s entertainment world.
The Hour Wherein, 2025, Greg Breda
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Patron, Chicago. Photography: Brica Wilcox)
More established artists include Pat O’Neill, who has been making sculpture since the 1960s. His amorphic forms are objects born of science fiction and the very real innovations of the aerospace industry that flourished in Southern California during the second half of the 20th century. Less surreal, California native Greg Breda’s paintings resist spectacle – instead, his subjects turn inward in states of tranquillity, with plants and indeterminate fields of colour acting as emotional architecture, holding space for memory and breath.
‘Made in LA’ is on show until 1 March at Hammer Museum
