Beverly Center as art gallery? How some big-name artists are behind those construction barricades
Curator Jenelle Porter organized the Beverly Center's Art Program in association with the Hammer Museum at UCLA to commission temporary art installations by Los Angeles artists. Exhibiting artists include department of art professors Catherine Opie and Barbara Kruger as well as visiting professor Anthony Lepore.
You may have seen it on your way to the Apple store. You likely rushed by.
Stitched into the Macy’s wing of the Beverly Center — now an eyesore of construction scaffolding and detour signage due to a massive renovation — is recently installed art by Lisa Anne Auerbach to temper the clutter. The temporary, site-specific work, “Strik Strikke, 2017,” is a mural more than 1,000 feet long depicting intricate knitting patterns rendered in candy-colored hues and a pixelated effect.
Auerbach’s work is part of a Beverly Center art project that’s morphing along with the building’s $500-million renovation. As the mall makes way for a new food hall, parking lot and updated facade, art in the form of construction barricades and scaffolding scrims brightens the space and injects passing shoppers with a bit of culture. Independent curator Jenelle Porter organized the project in association with the Hammer Museum at UCLA and brought in UCLA Art Department professors Barbara Kruger, Catherine Opie, and other big name artists who Porter felt would be provocative.
The first four artworks at the Beverly Center — by Opie, Lockhart, Geoff McFetridge and Dave Muller — went up shortly after the construction groundbreaking last summer. Others, by Julian Hoeber and Karen Kimmel, went up in the fall. Now that the construction has progressed and new barricades have been erected, most have come down and new works — mostly temporary vinyl murals — have been installed in their place.
On Thursday, the Beverly Center will announce the artists behind the second wave of works: Auerbach, Kruger, Ed Fella, and Anthony Lepore. — Deborah Vankin, Apr. 20, 2017
Read the full article at the Los Angeles Times website.