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 Three New Hammer Projects Exhibition at the UCLA Hammer Museum Opening October 4, 2000 The UCLA Hammer Museum announces three new Hammer Projects this fall by Simon Henwood, Paul Morrison, and Pentti Monkkonen. Hammer Projects create exhibition opportunities for emerging or under-recognized artists as well as present international contemporary artists who are not well-known to the general audience in Los Angeles. British artist Paul Morrison will create a mural for the Museum's lobby wall. Using botanical guides, children's storybooks, and cartoons as his inspiration and source material, Morrison creates large-scale monochrome landscapes that have been described as "Disney without the characters." Not unlike Alice's psychedelic-tinged Wonderland, many of Morrison's hypnotic fantasy environments seem to pivot between innocence and malevolence in the blink of an eye. Morrison alters our sense of scale, perspective, and positive-negative space to create visually striking compositions. Spiky brush and trees often obscure the view beyond the immediate foreground. Dandelion plants and other flora are enlarged to many times their normal size. Referencing Pop art and Op art as well as neo-romantic bookplate illustrations and the graphic art of Aubrey Beardsley, Morrison's Pop-naturalist landscapes flirt with abstraction in jarring and unexpectedly seductive ways. L.A.-based artist Pentti Monkkonen will exhibit a new sculpture in the Museum's Vault Gallery. Monkkonen's buoyantly off-kilter sculptures are absurdist versions of the sorts of miniature amusement park rides that are often seen outside of grocery stores. For his Hammer Project installation, Monkkonen will create a chateau. Monkkonen received his B.A. from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1997 and has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. British artist and filmmaker Simon Henwood will exhibit a new 3-D computer-animated video entitled Poor Johnny Pumpkin in the Museum's Lobby gallery. Henwood's paintings and mixed-media works explore the complex social and cultural terrain of childhood. Poor Johnny Pumpkin tells the story of a pumpkin-headed boy whose extreme sensitivity to UV light forces him to remain indoors during the daytime. The exhibition will also re-create a portion of Henwood's studio and will include preliminary sketches for his cartoon as well as gouache paintings of adolescent children. Henwood began his career as a writer and illustrator of children's books. He is the founder of the 'zine, Purr, which features the work of internationally-known artists, writers, and filmmakers; and Alice, an ongoing journal exploring the representation and recycling of childhood in the arts, media, and culture. Poor Johnny Pumpkin is currently in development as a series for SKY TV, the Fox TV network's sister station in the U.K. The UCLA Hammer Museum's new lobby gallery dedicated to contemporary projects is made possible through the generous support of The Ahmanson Foundation. The Contemporary Project Series is made possible, in part, with support from The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Peter Norton Family Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Return to Pentti Monkkonen | Paul Morrison | Simon Henwood |
