Hammer Projects: Walead Beshty
April 20-July 23, 2006
24 Hour Armageddon: A Cold War Slumber Party
Saturday, June 17, noon through Sunday, June 18, noon
Artist Talk
Tuesday, June 20, 7pm
HAMMER MUSEUM
10899 Wilshire Boulevard,
Los Angeles CA 90024
www.hammer.ucla.edu
HAMMER PROJECTS: WALEAD BESHTY
On View at The Hammer Museum, Walead Beshty’s project, EMBASSY! A Dismal Science Waiting Room, takes the abandoned Iraqi diplomatic mission to the former DDR as its point of departure. Made in transit between Berlin and Los Angeles, the works in the show are an index of governmental limbo, the non-places of international travel, and the embassy itself, creating a constellation of objects which bear the marks of otherwise invisible forces. The exhibition is comprised of photographs distorted and abstracted by their travel through airport security x-ray machines, a sculpture “made” by the Department of Homeland Security, a direct dial phone connected to a provisional line at the embassy, and a “dismal science reading room” containing a collection of reproduced materials read in preparation for the project, encountered in its execution, and taken from the embassy itself. Beshty’s work comments on the history of photography, as it inflects on our conception of place, on the powers and limitations of the medium and on the ways in which it both depicts and transforms contemporary culture, producing works which lie unsteadily on a line between past and present, fact and fiction, day and night. His past series have shown desolate shopping malls and abandoned housing developments, eroticized consumer goods and strangely un-erotic nudes.
Hammer Projects: Walead Beshty is organized by Aimee Chang, former assistant curator and exhibition coordinator at the Hammer Museum. For more information on this project and other Hammer Projects, including an interview between the artist and the curator, please consult the Hammer website.
Hammer Projects are made possible with support from The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Annenberg Foundation, Fox Entertainment Groups Arts Development Fee, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and members of the Hammer Circle.
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR THIS PROJECT WAS PROVIDED BY ART2102 LOS ANGELES.
24 HOUR ARMAGEDDON: A COLD WAR SLUMBER PARTY
24 hours of screenings of films addressing the theme of Armageddon including Omega Man (1971), The Day After (1983), and The Day of the Triffids (1962).
Free. Seating is first come, first served.
Organized by Walead Beshty, with the assitance of James Bewley, Director of Public Programming.
HAMMER MUSEUM, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard,
Los Angeles CA 90024
For more information, call 310-443-7000, TTY 310-443-7094 or visit www.hammer.ucla.edu
MUSEUM HOURS: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday 11 a.m. 7 p.m.;
Thursday 11 a.m. 9 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m. 5 p.m.
MUSEUM ADMISSION IS FREE DURING THE SUMMER, MAY 30 THROUGH SEPTEMBER 3, 2006.
