Hammer Museum installation delivers vibrant, sensory experience
"Visitors can witness a new Hammer Museum installation before they even enter the galleries.
Painter and installation artist Yunhee Min made "Up Close in Distance," an installation in the lobby of the Hammer Museum which will be on display until Oct. 27. It displays a design involving pools of paint of many different colors. (Sim Beauchamp/Daily Bruin) “Up Close in Distance,” designed by Yunhee Min, will be on display in the Hammer until Oct. 27. With a design involving pools of paint in differing colors, it is the museum’s first project to be incorporated primarily into the lobby’s floor and staircase. Min, a traditional painter and installation artist based in Los Angeles, said side projects such as “Up Close in Distance” present an opportunity to pursue projects that are not limited by the same constraints as her conventional works.
“(Designing the project) is one of the things that’s interesting for me about doing side projects, because I get to work in a way that I can’t in the studio by myself,” Min said. “So I learned about different processes, technology, fabrication and materials.”
Min’s traditional paintings focus on color, with some projects requiring days of paint mixing to achieve the desired color and consistency. Though Min said “Up Close in Distance” did not require such extensive color preparation, there were multiple other steps involved in creating the piece. Using an entire manufacturing line of enamel paints, Min started by pouring the paint onto a 1% scale model of the lobby. After it dried, a photographer took up-close digital photos of the model. A digital graphics provider then digitally stitched the photos together and printed them onto vinyl flooring for the final installation.
The assembly process also required practical considerations. Adam Peña, the Hammer Museum’s manager of exhibition design and production, said installing the project involved addressing both production and aesthetic problems. For instance, Peña said some details would be lost within the triangular wedge where each step meets the wall. To solve the problem, Min made each wedge a solid color, also placing similarly colored rectangular bars lining the stairs. Min said her design choice calls attention to the architecture while also providing visitors a reference palette of all the colors she used.
The title “Up Close in Distance” directly references the photography aspect of the installation, in that the photos needed to be taken up close in order for the project to be clearly viewed from a distance, Min said. To completely capture the details of the model, she said the camera had to be positioned very close to the surface, beyond the typical viewing distance for the human eye. When designing the layout, Min said she took the dynamic nature of the lobby into consideration, viewing it as a transitional space that evokes a sense of anticipation or excitement."— Phillip Leung, Apr. 25, 2019
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Daily Bruin website.
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