Hauser & Wirth Expands in L.A., Opens in West Hollywood With George Condo Exhibit
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Hauser & Wirth, the art gallery founded in Zurich in 1992 that represents the likes of Mark Bradford, Amy Sherald and Jenny Holzer, is expanding in Los Angeles.
Oil on linen, 228.6 x 215.9 cm / 90 x 85 in.
After opening in the L.A. Arts District in March 2016 — inhabiting the restored 116,000-square-foot Globe Mills complex — a new location has come to West Hollywood. The institution has taken over the Heritage Classics Motorcar Company building, the former vintage automobile showroom, at 8980 Santa Monica Boulevard. The 1930s Spanish Colonial Revival facade with its white stucco exterior and red tile roofing remains the same. Inside, there is 6,000 square feet of exhibition space.
More from WWD
“We’ve been enchanted and influenced by Los Angeles since the gallery’s earliest days, 30 years ago,” says Stacen Berg, partner and executive director at Hauser & Wirth. “Fourteen of our artists and estates are based in L.A. And most of our gallery artists worldwide have a special affection for the city. L.A. is a global arts capital with an outsized presence in the collective imagination, but it’s also a constellation of very different communities with distinct personalities and rhythms. Our goal in L.A. — as in New York, Zurich, and other places where we work — is to participate in those rhythms, to bring our artists into contact with the people who create local culture.”
Oil on linen, 215.9 x 228.6 cm / 85 x 90 in.
Why West Hollywood? It’s “a manifestation of Hauser & Wirth’s continued deep commitment to Los Angeles generally, but in particular this second space will allow us to establish exciting connections with expanded audience in a very vibrant area of the city,” she adds.
George Condo is the first artist on view, showcasing “People Are Strange.” Taking inspiration from the 1967 song by The Doors, the New York-based American artist is presenting large-scale works “filled with fragmented portraits and abstractions that echo L.A.’s sublime dissonance,” notes the gallery. “[The show] finds Condo offering up impressions of the strange world around him and, in doing so, capturing something universal about the human condition and the transforming effects of time’s passage.”
The inaugural exhibition is open until April 22.
“George Condo is quite simply one of the great artists of his generation who, like so many of our gallery artists, has a special affinity for Los Angeles,” Berg says. “And he has many, many avid fans among the city’s curators, collectors, writers, scholars and the public. With all this in mind, George has created a new body of work expressly to inaugurate this space — a gesture to L.A.”
Best of WWD
