Join the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino on Monday, November 30 for its behind-the-scenes look at “Made in LA 2020.”
Every Monday, the Huntington will release a new exhibition that showcases the talent that comes from Los Angeles, starting with a stunning textile piece by Christina Forrer on November 30.
Made in LA 2020 is the fifth iteration of the Hammer’s acclaimed biennial bridges east and west with complementary presentations at the Huntington and the Hammer Museum at UCLA. Throughout the exhibition, works by 30 Los Angeles-based artists are presented at both institutions – two versions that make up the whole. The exhibition features new installations, videos, films, sculptures, performances, and paintings, many commissioned specifically for the exhibition.
Forrer’s “Intervision,” 2020, is on display at the Huntington, and her “Gebunden II” will be at the Hammer on Monday. In these two large-scale works produced for Made in L.A. 2020, Forrer meditates on transference and trauma, considering how prejudice, anxiety, and strife can permeate generations – for example, from grandmother to mother to daughter – infectiously, via body language and mannerisms, and how these learned or genetically transmitted anxieties reverberate and perpetuate.
Christina Forrer was born in 1978 in Zurich. She creates tapestries, paintings, and works on paper depicting wildly dense scenes of conflict and debate. Crude figures argue, revolt, and assault one another; the compositions depict scenes of violence, torture, and aggressive embrace. The figures in Forrer’s works possess large eyes, mouths agape, and aghast expressions; they appear to be generationally tied, as if all part of the same wild, comically horrifying family.
Forrer’s practice is rooted in a tradition of tapestry and invested in the materials that construct such works, carefully weaving in color to create eclectic palettes and crafty, abject characters. She has had solo exhibitions at Luhring Augustine, New York (2019); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2019); Swiss Institute, New York (2017); The Finley, Los Angeles (2016); and Grice Bench, Los Angeles (2016; 2014).
She has also participated in group exhibitions at Lever House, New York (2017); Jewish Museum, New York (2015); and Midway Contemporary, Minneapolis (2015).
During the run of Made in L.A. 2020, members and visitors to the Hammer will receive passes granting free admission to The Huntington to view Made in L.A. 2020 in full.
Made in L.A. 2020 is organized by independent curators Myriam Ben Salah and Lauren Mackler, with the Hammer’s Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi, assistant curator of performance.
For more information, visit www.huntington.org/made-in-la-
