Three Exhibitions: 'You Look Beautiful Like That. The Portrait Photographs of Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe'; David Shrigley; 'Mirror Image'. Three projects: Amy Adler; Aaron Noble; Karen Yasinsky.
Exhibitions
You Look Beautiful Like That
The Portrait Photographs of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé
February 9 - May 5, 2002
This exhibition focuses on the portrait photographs of two African photographers, Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé,
both of whom were commercial portrait photographers working in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Their gorgeous,
black-and-white portraits of local people were taken during the period before and after Mali achieved independence
from France in 1960. Both Keita and Sidibe adapted the traditions of portrait photography to make unforgettable
images that reflected his clients' personal style and social identity within the community. These are photographs of
African subjects made by Africans for an African audience, offering audiences a unique opportunity to examine the role
of portrait photography in the construction of national and post-colonial identities.
Curated by Harvard Ph.D. candidate
Michelle Lamuniere, the show travels to the Hammer Museum from the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University.
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David Shrigley
February 9 - May 5, 2002
David Shrigley is a young artist based in Glasgow, Scotland. The exhibition includes drawings, photographs, and
sculptures. Shrigley's work is funny, dry, and sometimes disturbing. His caustic take on the world is expressed through
childlike, comic-book style drawings that combine text and image and which often depict the world as an absurd place.
Shrigley embraces the paranoias, obsessions, insecurities, moral conundrums, and anxieties of contemporary life. He
pokes fun at a range of cultural absurdities, from the British Royal Family to the art world itself.
Curated by Amada
Cruz, the show travels to the Hammer Museum from the Center for Curatorial Studies Museum at Bard College in New
York.
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Mirror Image
February 9 - May 5, 2002
"Mirror Image" is an eclectic look at some of the ways in which artists have explored ideas related to self-portraiture.
In many of the works the line between straightforward self-presentation and the assumption of a more-or-less
fictional persona is decidedly blurred. This exhibition seeks to explore this area of ambiguity. As in a mirror, the artists'
images shown here are accurate reflections of their appearances, yet are often at the same time complete reversals,
or alternate identities. Among the artists whose work is included are Mark Bradford, James Ensor, Oskar Kokoschka,
Nikki S. Lee, Christian Marclay, and Robert Rauschenberg.
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Hammer Projects
Amy Adler
February 9 - April 28, 2002
Adler has long been fascinated with public figures--especially movie stars and musicians--whose
mechanically-reproduced images circulate endlessly throughout our culture and yet whose private identities remain
inaccessible to the public. In early 2001, Adler photographed the young actor Leonardo DiCaprio at her home in
London. Adler's brief session with DiCaprio proved to be the very antithesis of a celebrity publicity shoot: intimate,
casual, un-posed and spontaneous. Her characteristic working method serves to further undermine the conventions of
the "celebrity shoot." Adler made drawings of the DiCaprio photographs, and then photographed the drawings. The
drawings and the original negatives were then destroyed, resulting in six singular images that are each one-of-a-kind,
the only remaining physical evidence of Adler's fleeting encounter with this elusive celebrity.
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Aaron Noble
February 16 - July 14, 2002
Inspired by comic book imagery, Aaron Noble's paintings incorporate super hero body parts morphed, stretched, and
free floating in a 'negative space' landscape. He is known in San Francisco for his earlier WPA styled outdoor murals
depicting the city's labor history. Now his interests involve contemporary popular street culture, Western comic art,
Japanese Anime and Manga, video games, and technology. He will be creating a series of large-scale paintings for the
museum's lobby walls. Noble lives and works in Los Angeles.
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Karen Yasinsky
February 9 - May 5, 2002
In the lobby gallery, Karen Yasinsky will exhibit a recent project entitled Still Life with Cows, which includes an
animated video and related works on paper. Using hand-made dolls and sets, and stop-action animation she creates
a surreal yet somewhat familiar environment where two female figures explore the everyday 'nothingness' of domestic
life, desire and relationships. Yasinsky lives and works in New York.
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UCLA Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90024
tel 310.443.7000
tty 310.443.7094
310.443.7020 (receptionist, Monday-Friday)