Elliott Hundley: Clearing
Regen Projects, Los Angeles
May 17 - June 22, 2019
REGEN PROJECTS
6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90038
www.regenprojects.com
Regen Projects, Los Angeles
May 17 - June 22, 2019
ELLIOTT HUNDLEY
Clearing II (detail), 2019
© Elliott Hundley, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles
Regen Projects presents Clearing, an exhibition of new work by Elliott Hundley. Forgoing an explicit narrative structure, Elliott Hundley furthers his investigation into the language and material process of abstract painting, collage, and sculpture. This is his fifth solo exhibition at the gallery.
Clearing, referring to a spatial opening or a meditative clearing of the mind, marks a decisive development in Elliott Hundley’s practice. Known for his wide use of media and quotidian objects, the works in the exhibition privilege time and artistic practice over control and intention. Culling over 20 years of archival material from the studio, Elliott Hundley embraces the degradation and resuscitation of imagery throughout his practice to create constellations of new meaning imbued with his personal sensibility and methodology via collage and painting.
There are five panel works in the exhibition. Clearing III features four rows of automatic drawings, photographed and reprinted at different stages of completion in chronological order. Fluid gesture and rhythmic process give rise to form, perceptible through a yielding of narrative restraint in favor of materiality. The dichotomy of the rigid lines and supple drawings create a fixed emotional tension – visceral and captivating – yet meditative. Corporeal fragments from his photographs, found mechanical renderings, and other signifiers punctuate the surface of the work transforming it into a poetic landscape that is representative of Elliott Hundley’s distinct visual language. The panels’ lyrical compositions demonstrate Elliott Hundley’s expansive knowledge of history, literature, and theater thereby coalescing new relationships and oppositions.
Three benches with accompanying sculptures will anchor the gallery space. Finished in bronze, Elliott Hundley renders an aura of permanence and artificiality in the objects. Accrued patina left behind by handling leaves an ephemeral gesture, reiterating the body as an instrument of performance.
“Under Hundley’s meticulously improvisational direction, the formal and pictographic elements collide, combine into molecular configurations of meaning, disintegrate, and recombine, in a process that is analogous to the way our churning human consciousness constantly makes sense out of the flood of phenomena with which it’s confronted.” Doug Harvey, Cut Up or Shut Up: The Unspeakable Narratives of Elliott Hundley, Elliott Hundley: The Bacchae, 2011
In addition to his artistic practice, Elliott Hundley is the inaugural curator of Open House, a group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles that features works drawn from the permanent collection. The exhibition furthers his exploration into the visual and material language of collage and is on view through September 16.
Elliott Hundley (b. 1975) received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (1997) and his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (2005). He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Selected solo exhibitions include The Bacchae, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2011); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2012); and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2006). He has been featured in numerous group shows, including the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2017-2018); A Journey That Wasn’t, The Broad, Los Angeles (2018-2019); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017-2018); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2015); and the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art (2015); among others.
Elliott Hundley is a recent recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Guggenheim Fellowship (2019).
Work by the artist is held in prominent museum collections, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Vancouver Art Gallery; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; among others.Hundley is a recent recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Guggenheim Fellowship (2019).
REGEN PROJECTS
6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90038
www.regenprojects.com
