Opening Reception: Friday, May 13, 6–8pm
Blum & Poe is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Julian Hoeber. The exhibition marks Hoeber’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, and the second chapter of an expansive ongoing project titled Going Nowhere.
The work of the project centers around designing and imagining an airport terminal—one from which there are no flights, but rather circuitous journeys through the structure itself. This imaginary terminal functions as a machine for rumination and imagination—an experience intended for the viewer, but also directly mimicking the artist’s process and practice, in and out of the studio.
The title Going Nowhere carries the double meaning of both the failure to make progress, as well as the insistence on permanence. It also plays on the etymology of the word ‘utopia,’ which literally translates as ‘nowhere.’ The project is in part a rewriting of various bits and pieces of Modernist utopian endeavors, some versions more sympathetic than others. With Going Nowhere the artist envisions what it would be like to make a space that produces contemplation and even laziness, while simultaneously acting as an architectural metaphor for the radical potential of introspection.
The exhibition includes new sculptures comprised of fiberglass-reinforced gypsum-cement; molds used for producing objects that are repurposed as sculptures in and of themselves; structural wall reliefs of curious, meticulous forms; as well as works on paper. Many of the artworks in the exhibition are part idea-development, part model, and part self-contained, informing in greater detail what the form of the airport may be—and solidifying the artist’s desire to imagine the building as generative of more than just a product of its inhabitants.
Developing a formal vocabulary which fuels Hoeber to produce an ever-evolving environment that allows for this sort of return to the center of a structure (or to the center of the self), this newest body of work cribs from the ideas and forms of Gin Wong, Janet Bennett, and Charles D. Kratka who worked for William Pereira on the design of the Los Angeles International Airport. As well, the work explores and riffs off of the mathematical architecture of Anne Tyng, who worked closely with Louis I. Kahn and is seen as a precursor to contemporary computational architecture. Through poetics and metaphor, Hoeber’s ongoing collaborative processes utilize the forms and materials to continuously sculpt negative space.
Julian Hoeber (b. 1974, Philadelphia, PA) has a BA in Art History from Tufts University, a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and an MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. His work is featured in public and private collections internationally including Dallas Museum of Art; Deste Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Rosenblum Collection, Paris; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; and the Western Bridge Museum, Seattle.