Event Three

Event Three: Hammer Museum

I went to the Hammer Museum as my third event. I got to see many interesting exhibits and a great time and loved comparing this art to the previous museums.

The first exhibit I went in to was Mary Reid Kelly’s black-and-white video exploring the myth of the Minotaur. It was absolutely nothing like what I expected. I thought it would be a historic documentary with mythological Greek theories. The hybrid was half woman instead of half man. It was interesting that the visual language aligns with the artists’ own writings. Although it may not seem like it, her video explores the roles of women, sexuality, and language.

 

This is the half-woman minotaur from the Mary Reid Kelly exhibit

One of the most interesting pieces of art that I saw was James Deller’s “The History of the World.” This really stood out to me because EDM is one of my favorite genres of music, so I was immediately drawn to it when I saw “acid house” and “brass bands.” This image portrays the history, influence, and context for these two types of music. Not only is this textual portrayal about the music, but also suggests much broader social and political points that date from different eras. It also looks like this image is just a random flow chart, but it is actually a diagram that has been carefully organized.

This is James Deller's diagram connecting music to historic events

When I first saw this piece of art by Mark Hagen, I thought looked really cool and simple. The triangles reminded me of the geometry class I took in high school. I wanted to know more about the artwork so I read the excerpt on the artist Mark Hagen. I learned that he uses contradictory materials and often engages in DIY building. He is not a traditional artist in the sense that he uses unusual materials such as cement, steel, burlap, house paint, and obsidian to create art that embraces modularity, seriality, and geometric repetition. As shown in this piece of art, his style aims to create works that are disorganized as they are organized. According to the excerpt on the wall, he has cast cement units from imported plastic beverage containers, cardboard packaging, and a mold made from the 1960’s ceramic tiles on the façade of the abandoned Rampart police station near downtown LA. This just goes to show that art can be found virtually anywhere.

 

Mark Hagen's disoriented yet oriented geometric artwork

Here is the excerpt of Mark Hagen's work

I had a really great experience at the Hammer Museum and exploring all of the current collections. I thought that a lot of the exhibits were different from that of other museums. I learned a lot from this event and would highly recommend going to this museum.

The worker wasn't allowed to take a picture with me, so this is my ticket :)