March 4, 2021
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The gradual accumulation of imagery for an initially undetermined use is a critical element of the artist’s process. At his studio in Los Angeles, Hundley presides over a vast archive of two- and three-dimensional materials collated from books, magazines, and establishments in his local neighborhood. Categorized alphabetically and according to color or mood, these materials are brought into dialogue with Hundley’s own photography of his family and friends, whom the artist dresses and directs as if characters from a play. While some are evidently protagonists, constituting a focal point on the canvas, others lay among dense folds of visual information, assuming the role of a face in a crowd or phantom figures arising from unknowable depths.
Hundley leverages an abiding knowledge of classical mythology and literature to weave a fabric of allusions, informing projects such as his 2011 solo exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio, which travelled to the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, and took on the Ancient Greek tragedy The Bacchae by Euripides as its subject matter. In 2006, the artist’s installation at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, referenced Greek figures Aphrodite, Medea, and Penelope, and 2016-17, Hundley presented solo exhibitions based on Antonin Artaud’s surrealist 1933 play There Is No More Firmament.
In 2019, Hundley inaugurated the exhibition series Open House at MOCA, Los Angeles, exploring how the visual and material logic of collage has informed artists in MOCA’s collection, as well as his own practice.
Elliott Hundley’s work is included in significant international public collections including The Broad, Los Angeles, CA; DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Turkey; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. -
About the Artist
Portrait by Max Knight.