Event #2: Hammer Museum

On December 3, 2013 I visited the Hammer museum, which I've been meaning to visit since the beginning of my UCLA career. I viewed the current exhibitions: “Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible”, “James Welling: Monograph"














Welling has created a hybrid ground between painting and sculpture and traditional photography. Welling's exhibition featured photographs, such as "Glass House": a portrayal of Phillip Johnson's house and living space with sunlight shining through and overlapping filters of images.

Glass House

Welling's project Flowers was very beautiful and inspiring. Welling photographed pressed flowers and included feathers from his great grandmother's diary. In order to create the flowers and the geometric abstractions, Welling created arrays of small colored gel. He placed them above a negative and used an 8 by 10 enlarger. He would print them on chromogenic paper and each gel produces the opposite color: red would produce cyan, green would produce magenta, blue, and yellow. I thought his use of technology was very creative.

Flowers

Geometric Abstractions (Math + Art!)

"Seeing Things Invisible" was quite an interesting since I did not know what to expect. His biography states that he experienced both significant recognition and painful isolation. "Seeing Things Invisible" was organized by the Menil Collection and presents 53 of Bess' paintings. At first glance, the paintings were very abstract and somewhat plain. His paintings did not incorporate lively colors and had very many random figures and dots.Towards the end of the exhibition there is a chart deciphering the many symbols used in Bess' art. He created these symbols to represent the different aspects of uniting males and females.

The Hermaphrodite

I found "The Hermaphodite" a little disturbing. Bess states, "The glans are the rounded part.. the membrane was cut in order to have the view of the stretched urethra-- red and white in the form of teeth...The curve of the thumb as it stretches the frenulum and skin is seen dimly." Bess' paintings and interpretations are very unique to me and I can't imagine what he experienced in his life.

http://hammer.ucla.edu/