The 1992-founded Zurich-based art gallery Hauser & Wirth, which represents artists such Mark Bradford, Amy Sherald, and Jenny Holzer, is growing in Los Angeles.
A new location has come to West Hollywood after it debuted in the L.A. Arts District in March 2016 and occupied the 116,000 square foot Globe Mills facility that had been refurbished. The organization has taken over the Heritage Classics Motorcar Company facility at 8980 Santa Monica Boulevard, which was formerly a showroom for classic cars. The white stucco exterior and red tile roofing of the Spanish Colonial Revival front from the 1930s remain in place. 6,000 square feet of exhibition area are located within.
According to Stacen Berg, partner and executive director at Hauser & Wirth, “We’ve been captivated and affected by Los Angeles since the gallery’s initial days, 30 years ago. “Our L.A.-based artists and estates number fourteen. And the majority of our gallery artists around the world have a particular soft spot for the city. L.A. is a major center for the arts on a global scale and has a large influence in popular culture, but it is also a collection of diverse neighborhoods with their own cultures and rhythms. Our objective in Los Angeles, as well as in New York, Zurich, and other locations where we work, is to engage in those rhythms and connect our artists with individuals who are responsible for local culture.
West Hollywood, why? According to her, it’s “a representation of Hauser & Wirth’s sustained profound commitment to Los Angeles in general, but in particular this second space will allow us to develop interesting connections with extended audience in a very active section of the city.
The first artist on display is George Condo, with People Are Weird. The American artist, based in New York, is exhibiting large-scale paintings “packed with fragmented faces and abstractions that mimic L.A.’s magnificent discord,” according to the gallery, drawing inspiration from the 1967 song by The Doors. The character Condo “offers up observations of the weird world around him and, in doing so, captures something universal about the human condition and the altering impact of time’s passage,” according to the description of the television program.“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.”
