Above Left: Redeemable Character, 2024, Urethane, epoxy resin, fiberglass, acrylic and oil on canvas, 77 x 69 1/4 x 2 inches, image courtesy of the artist; Above Right: Alex Hubbard.
"Building Your Own Projector”
Thursday, November 14, 4:00 p.m.
Watch a video of the Alex Hubbard lecture on YouTube.
Working across painting, sculpture, and video, Hubbard’s diverse practice references art history and extends the prescribed characteristics of his chosen mediums. His video works are composed like paintings — a flattened plane onto which a series of actions unfold — and render visible the performative nature of the artistic process. They feature sequences of simple acts of creation and destruction, often executed in a slapstick manner. In Collapse of the Expanded Field (2007) the viewer watches as the artist’s hands swiftly assemble a still life of flowers, chops off each bud stem by stem, and smashes the glass vase with a hammer until the constructed scene is wholly decimated and transformed. The evolving layered compositions present a visual cacophony that is the result of both deliberate gestures and aleatory effects.
Alex Hubbard (b. 1975 Toledo, Oregon) received a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland in 1999. In 2003 he attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York. Works by the artist are featured in the collections of numerous institutions, including Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Colección Jumex, Mexico City; FRAC Corsica, Corte; FRAC Poitu-Charentes, Angoulême; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; National Gallery of Victoria, Victoria; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; University of Chicago, Chicago; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. A publication of the artist’s work, Eat Your Friends, was published in 2015 by DoPe Press, and features a conversation with Hubbard and Debra Singer along with texts by Tan Lin and Jay Sanders. He lives and works in Los Angeles.