Separate From Life: “Made in LA” Curator Hamza Walker Talks Shop with Use All Five

Hamza Walker: Despite the exhibition’s title, Made in L.A. is hardly a provincial affair. While LA can be characterized as a world unto itself, it is nonetheless a world with artists of varying stature, from those with an international profile to those who rate as best kept secrets. So while there may be an inside, LA is nonetheless a global center. I never thought to ask but I assumed inviting me was a way of acknowledging that the scope and quality of art produced in Los Angeles transcends region.

Hamza Walker: If my perspective is to have value it should not be taken as that of an outsider. Los Angeles is a major locus of contemporary art. Its activities contribute substantially in defining the field. Moreover its regional art historical narrative has been roundly acknowledged as inseparable from a national and by default international post-war art historical narrative. While I wouldn’t altogether dismiss notions of inside and outside, my sense, in coming from a place with a much smaller community, was LA has arrived at a point where the inside/outside issue can be productively suspended. In some sense, it’s all outside.

Hamza Walker: I came to LA for the first time in 1992 with the intention of moving here. I was 25 years old. I stayed in a youth hostel in Venice where I shared a space with an Austrian couple and their baby. They were body builders funny enough. I found L.A. simultaneously ridiculous and sublime. After a few days at the hostel, I stayed with a friend, Andrea Kalas who is an amazing film archivist/preservationist.

Hamza Walker: Five years later, in 1997, I had the good fortune of spending a lot of time with Raymond Pettibon. The Renaissance Society and the Philadelphia Museum co-organized a retrospective curated by Ann Temkin and my former boss, Susanne Ghez. Ann and I co-edited the catalogue, The Raymond Pettibon Reader. Subsequent to that, I made LA a regular destination.

Hamza Walker: In terms of art, no. With respect to Made in LA, the artists are a mix of natives and non-natives and their work reflects a broad array of practices not necessarily specific to any regional traits.

Hamza Walker: There are no themes. Any recurring themes are happenstance and were not imposed by us. We just went out and looked at a lot of art. The main thing was making it fit, meaning giving the work the space it needed.

Hamza Walker: The visits were the basis for choosing the artists and, or, their work.

Hamza Walker: FABULOUS. We have an understated simpatico.

Hamza Walker: As a native, Aram knows the scene in a nuanced fashion. That said, it was not as much a question of a unique perspective as much as the way our perspectives jibed. We are both interested in how the visual arts rub shoulders with other disciplines—music, performance, literature, fashion.

Hamza Walker: Aram and I wanted to provide more in depth experiences with each artist and we wanted to have a range of artists that reflected the city’s dynamism. We don’t expect visitors to like all of the art, but we wanted them to be able to engage in substantive fashion with the work of those artists they do like, even if it is only 2 or 3 artists.

Hamza Walker: We did not have plans for it to expand into the website, but we were completely open when the opportunity presented itself. Along that train of thought, we were wary of having satellite spaces. Yet we wanted the show to breathe rather than feel as though it were contained in the Hammer in a hermetic fashion. Todd Gray and Aram Saroyan’s work, like Guthrie’s website project, represent non-traditional platforms.

Hamza Walker: The digital experience, broadly defined, is a ubiquitous part of our lives. The museum experience, however, has always been seen as separate from life, like the distinction, in anthropological terms, between the sacred and profane. While I don’t think the digital experience has had a substantial impact on the in-person museum visit itself, I do think our increasing interaction with screens has made us more conscious of being in the presence of work in unmediated fashion. Paradoxically, it is at that very moment that viewers often feel compelled to take selfies, to virtually validate that very experience. This, however, holds true of any experience. To have an experience is to be made aware of one’s presence. That presence invokes another’s absence, an absence that can be abridged through digital technology.

Hamza Walker: There are fewer artists. As I mentioned earlier, Aram and I wanted to present a more in depth look at fewer artists. As simple as this sounds, it has a substantial impact on how the exhibition is structured.