Gazebo! by George Raggett Veers from Tradition
New Hammer Project on view at the Hammer Museum, March 14-June 27, 2004
March 22
Los Angeles, CA —The Hammer Museum presents the first museum exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist George Raggett, featuring his site-specific work Gazebo! Filling the museum’s Lobby Gallery, the work transforms the venerated garden gazebo into a humorously dysfunctional structure that invites visitor interaction.
Gazebo! is an off-kilter wood-frame construction heavily adorned with plastic-colored beads, wind chimes, paper lanterns, and synthetic leis and lilies among other inexpensive, disposable trinkets. Emulating the traditional purpose of a gazebo as a leisure space, George Raggett invites his visitors into the brightly-colored and internally-lit structure. According to the artist, “interaction, whether comfortable or not, is critical. I felt compelled to create a desperate Feng Shui coating over an otherwise blank interior.” Raggett manipulates natural phenomena such as gravity, color, light, sound, and texture while placing the work in the historical context of landscape and park design, the tradition of the English garden follies, and modernist plinths. The artist is “most interested in a desperately positive, interior-centered, and possibly animated structure, inhabiting an otherwise distant modernist and rational space.”
George Raggett was born in 1972 in Las Vegas, Nevada. He received his B.A. from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1996. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has shown at Acme and at Cirrus Gallery, both in Los Angeles, and at White Columns in New York. Reviews of his work have appeared in Time Out New York and the Santa Barbara News Press. This Hammer Project is Raggett’s first museum exhibition.
This Hammer Project is co-organized by Hammer Projects curator James Elaine and former assistant curator Claudine Isé, who is now associate curator at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio.
The Museum will host a Gallery Talk with George Raggett on Sunday, March 28 at 3pm.
ABOUT HAMMER PROJECTS
Hammer Projects are a series of exhibitions that focus primarily on the work of emerging artists, and reflect the Museum’s commitment to contemporary art by providing international and local artists a laboratory-like environment to create new work, or to present existing work in a new context. Hammer Projects are made possible with support from The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and members of the Hammer Circle.
HAMMER MUSEUM
Through its permanent collections, exhibitions, and programs, the Hammer Museum endeavors to illuminate the depth and diversity of artistic expression through the centuries up to the present moment. Founded by Dr. Armand Hammer in 1990, the Museum houses several collections of art: The Armand Hammer Collection of Old Master, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist paintings, including important examples of work by Rembrandt van Rijn, John Singer Sargent, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Mary Cassatt; The Armand Hammer Daumier and Contemporaries Collection, featuring the painting, sculpture, and lithography of 19th-century French satirist Honoré Daumier and his contemporaries; and The Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, contains over 45,000 works on paper, including prints, drawings, photographs, and artists’ books dating from the Renaissance to the present.
For more information about the Hammer Museum:
VOICE: 310-443-7000; TTY: 310-443-7094; WEB: www.hammer.ucla.edu
Museum Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 11am–7pm; Thursday, 11am–9pm; Sunday, 11am-5pm; closed Mondays, July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.
Admission: $5 for adults; $3 for seniors (65+) and UCLA Alumni Association members; free for Museum members, students with identification, UCLA faculty/staff, and visitors 17 and under. Admission is free for everyone on Thursdays. Access for people with disabilities is provided.
Location/Parking: The Museum is located at 10899 Wilshire Boulevard. Parking is available under the Museum. Rates are $2.75 for the first two hours with Museum validation, $1.50 for each additional 20 minutes. There is a $3 flat rate after 6 p.m. on Thursdays. Parking for people with disabilities is provided on levels P1 and P3.
Museum Tours: For reservations and information, call 310-443-7041
The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center is operated by the University of California, Los Angeles. Occidental Petroleum Corporation has partially endowed the Museum and constructed the Occidental Petroleum Cultural Center Building, which houses the Museum.
New Hammer Project on view at the Hammer Museum, March 14-June 27, 2004
March 22
Los Angeles, CA —The Hammer Museum presents the first museum exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist George Raggett, featuring his site-specific work Gazebo! Filling the museum’s Lobby Gallery, the work transforms the venerated garden gazebo into a humorously dysfunctional structure that invites visitor interaction.
Gazebo! is an off-kilter wood-frame construction heavily adorned with plastic-colored beads, wind chimes, paper lanterns, and synthetic leis and lilies among other inexpensive, disposable trinkets. Emulating the traditional purpose of a gazebo as a leisure space, George Raggett invites his visitors into the brightly-colored and internally-lit structure. According to the artist, “interaction, whether comfortable or not, is critical. I felt compelled to create a desperate Feng Shui coating over an otherwise blank interior.” Raggett manipulates natural phenomena such as gravity, color, light, sound, and texture while placing the work in the historical context of landscape and park design, the tradition of the English garden follies, and modernist plinths. The artist is “most interested in a desperately positive, interior-centered, and possibly animated structure, inhabiting an otherwise distant modernist and rational space.”
George Raggett was born in 1972 in Las Vegas, Nevada. He received his B.A. from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1996. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has shown at Acme and at Cirrus Gallery, both in Los Angeles, and at White Columns in New York. Reviews of his work have appeared in Time Out New York and the Santa Barbara News Press. This Hammer Project is Raggett’s first museum exhibition.
This Hammer Project is co-organized by Hammer Projects curator James Elaine and former assistant curator Claudine Isé, who is now associate curator at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio.
The Museum will host a Gallery Talk with George Raggett on Sunday, March 28 at 3pm.
ABOUT HAMMER PROJECTS
Hammer Projects are a series of exhibitions that focus primarily on the work of emerging artists, and reflect the Museum’s commitment to contemporary art by providing international and local artists a laboratory-like environment to create new work, or to present existing work in a new context. Hammer Projects are made possible with support from The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and members of the Hammer Circle.
HAMMER MUSEUM
Through its permanent collections, exhibitions, and programs, the Hammer Museum endeavors to illuminate the depth and diversity of artistic expression through the centuries up to the present moment. Founded by Dr. Armand Hammer in 1990, the Museum houses several collections of art: The Armand Hammer Collection of Old Master, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist paintings, including important examples of work by Rembrandt van Rijn, John Singer Sargent, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Mary Cassatt; The Armand Hammer Daumier and Contemporaries Collection, featuring the painting, sculpture, and lithography of 19th-century French satirist Honoré Daumier and his contemporaries; and The Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, contains over 45,000 works on paper, including prints, drawings, photographs, and artists’ books dating from the Renaissance to the present.
For more information about the Hammer Museum:
VOICE: 310-443-7000; TTY: 310-443-7094; WEB: www.hammer.ucla.edu
Museum Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 11am–7pm; Thursday, 11am–9pm; Sunday, 11am-5pm; closed Mondays, July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.
Admission: $5 for adults; $3 for seniors (65+) and UCLA Alumni Association members; free for Museum members, students with identification, UCLA faculty/staff, and visitors 17 and under. Admission is free for everyone on Thursdays. Access for people with disabilities is provided.
Location/Parking: The Museum is located at 10899 Wilshire Boulevard. Parking is available under the Museum. Rates are $2.75 for the first two hours with Museum validation, $1.50 for each additional 20 minutes. There is a $3 flat rate after 6 p.m. on Thursdays. Parking for people with disabilities is provided on levels P1 and P3.
Museum Tours: For reservations and information, call 310-443-7041
The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center is operated by the University of California, Los Angeles. Occidental Petroleum Corporation has partially endowed the Museum and constructed the Occidental Petroleum Cultural Center Building, which houses the Museum.