Andrew Schoultz, Cathedral, 2016 - 2020, acrylic on canvas over panel (comprised of 20 panels);
acrylic on wood bench, 146 x 388 inches

Andrew Schoultz: Mother Nature, Father Time
on view through July 11

Uncannily prescient, LA-based Andrew Schoultz’s new exhibition of paintings and sculptural installations looks at mortality—personal, societal, cultural, environmental—with an eye to taking responsibility, and glimmerings of hope.

To view the exhibition in person, please make an appointment for your visit. You will have 40 minutes to see the show privately. You may call the gallery or use our online calendar: calendly.com/hosfelt-gallery.

If you can't visit the exhibition in person, you can view the exhibition through this link.

When I’m hanging a solo show at the gallery, I give each work enough space to say what it has to say without distraction. You’d be surprised at how much power a small work can have on a big wall, how striking a single piece can be in a room all by itself, or how a wall left empty can be critical to an exhibition's balance.

But when I’m curating a group show or hanging artworks in a home — mine or someone else’s — my goal is to combine objects to tell a story or show you something you might not otherwise see. I want 1+1 to equal more than 2.

From Left to Right: Jay DeFeo, (two works) Driss Ouadahi, Marco Maggi, Nasreen Mohamedi, (three works) Yulia Pinkusevich, Reed Danziger, Ed Ruscha, Nicole Phungrasamee Fein, Tim Hawkinson, Russell Crotty

So I first look for coherence… stating the obvious, I group things that belong together.

Collages by (Top): Bruce Conner; (Bottom): John O'Reilly

From Left to Right (Top Row): Nam June Paik, Nicole Phungrasamee Fein, Roland Flexner;
(Middle Row): Bruce Conner, Roland Flexner, Gustavo Díaz, Anonymous Chinese Artist;
(Bottom Row): Marco Maggi, Jacob El Hanani

Left: Jean Conner; Right: William T. Wiley

That kind of consistency can be achieved by repeating motifs or stressing formal relationships, by media, by artist, or something as simple as color.

From Left to Right (Clockwise): Lordy Rodriguez, Antonio Asis, Eva Hesse

Left: Gustavo Díaz; Right: León Ferrari

Creating a dialogue between disparate objects can be extraordinarily effective, but it’s one of the most difficult things to do well.

From Left to Right: six panel painting by Jutta Haeckel, Nishinoya-style Lanterns (Edo Period, 1603 - 1868)

Of course, I’m also always trying to create compositional rhythm and balance.

Left Group (Clockwise): Antonio Asis, Stefan Kürten, Roland Flexner;
Middle Group (Clockwise): Isabella Kirkland, Nicole Phungrasamee Fein, Michael Buthe; Far Right: Bruce Conner

Between Them: An Installation Composed of Drawings installation view

A large group of small things isn’t easy to “get right." So first, I find a theme or themes, then create sub-groups within the group.

Between Them: An Installation Composed of Drawings installation view

From Left to Right: Gustavo Díaz, León Ferrari, Fortunato Duranti, Alberto Giacometti, Shahzia Sikander

Look at these hanging strategies employed at Insel Hombroich in Neuss, Germany — a museum with some of the best installation design I've ever seen.

A grid of small works framed at the same size is subtly broken into 3 unequal groups, with one work in the grid “missing.” The syncopation caused by that spacing startles you into closer attention.

Also noteworthy is the fact that these works are hung lower than you’d normally expect. What that does is oblige you to look down into the work… maybe even stoop a bit. It creates a particular intimacy between the viewer and the art… like you’re holding something precious in your cupped hand.

I’m going to interrupt myself here with a pet peeve. EVERYONE, ALWAYS hangs their art too high. Resist the temptation!

Long, uninterrupted walls are some of the hardest to pull off. Here, in what could otherwise be a tedious installation, works are grouped by artist and subject matter, with a different number of pieces in each group. The irregularity of the groupings animates the hanging. And as you work your way down the wall and the space narrows, becoming almost claustrophobic, the works become more and more intimate and delicate… from Giacometti to Schiele to the most wonderful Cézanne watercolors.

One more thing… note that the bottoms of the frames are justified. The standard method would be to center each piece, no matter its size, on the same horizon line. That would create a jagged line at both the top and bottom. Aligning the bottoms removes one element in the design, creating a quieter, more unified installation.

When creating groups, pay attention to how the energy of the work moves… in this case, I’ve grouped four Alexander Calder gouache on paper works so that the action of each moves toward the center of the composition. In other words, they don’t push your gaze off in some other direction, but keep your eyes moving between them.

Alexander Calder, gouache on paper; Courtesy of The Calder Foundation

Far Left: Nam June Paik; Second Group (Clockwise): Jacob Jordaens, Roland Flexner, Max Gimblett;
Third Group (Top to Bottom): Tyeb Mehta, Gabriel Orozco; Far Right: Alexander Calder

By all means, have fun...

Left: Jonathan Delafield Cook; Right: Rosetsu Nagasawa

Eccentricity is interesting.

From Left to Right: Reed Danziger, Ed Ruscha, Nicole Phungrasamee Fein, Russell Crotty

The reflective quality of the Marco Maggi drawing made on an array of hanging steel rulers, plays off the neutral color and interior light of a Max Gimblett painting which, because of its oval shape, refers to a mirror.

Left: Marco Maggi; Right: Max Gimblett

Here, the optical vibration of the moiré painting by Anoka Faruqee seems to animate the painting of honey bees by Stefan Kürten... you can almost feel the buzzing.

Top: Anoka Faruquee; Bottom: Stefan Kürten

In my living room, I’ve played with the trope of the modernist grid to create harmony between an oil painting of a chain link fence by Jutta Haeckel, a carved paper sculpture by Marco Maggi and an LED work by Jim Campbell. I really love that in the central part of the Campbell, the grid becomes diagonal… echoing the forms in the Haeckel. On the table with the Maggi is a very early speaker piece by Alan Rath.

From Left to Right: Jutta Haeckel, Alan Rath, Marco Maggi, Jim Campbell

Picture rails — a great way to organize small artworks and play with their arrangement.

From Left to Right: Stefan Kürten, Chris Ballantyne, Ben McLaughlin, Gideon Rubin, Cornelius Völker, Anoka Faruqee, Jutta Haeckel

From Left to Right: Unknown, Rina Banerjee, (two works) Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers), Ruth Marten

Lordy Rodriguez, Selma to Montgomery, 2020, ink on paper, 26 x 52 inches

In this work, Lordy Rodriguez represents the pivotal 54-mile march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery to commemorate the 55th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," the first of three nonviolent protest marches in Alabama during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Rodriguez uses color and scale to reflect the tension and resistance that marked the critical movement.

Rodriguez is a Bay Area artist known for his abstract ink drawings. Fascinated by American social and political phenomena, Rodriguez uses a vocabulary based on the language of cartography to expand on and explore key moments in our shared history.

Rina Banerjee, flourish me different in wind and drift and breezes set sale always in motion and mindful adaptation, in not yet settled in fertile selection, in open folds and ceaseless creases, in remote reaches this was wrinkled and snagged touched stopped with what nature teaches came to shed peel so these layers as evolution loosens makes us each time, every time this a tiny bit different, 2014, steel structure, textiles, beads, feathers, thread, bulbs, 36 x 40 x 20 inches

The Drawing Center’s Chief Curator, Claire Gilman, and artist Rina Banerjee will be in conversation Wednesday, June 17 at 3 pm PDT to discuss the medium of drawing as a vehicle for exploring issues of identity, equity, human entanglement and interconnection, and globalism and migration. Register for the Zoom conversation here.

Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World will be on view at the Frist Museum in Nashville beginning on October 2, 2020.

Alan Rath: Virtual Unreality catalogue

Nothing short of magic happens when you combine the catalogue Alan Rath: Virtual Reality with the custom image-recognition application developed in conjunction with the book. When the full-page catalogue images are viewed through the app on a smart phone or tablet, the sculptures come to life, revealing the complexities of their movements and animating them as they were intended to be seen.

“Outside the realm of art, the history of robotics and artificial intelligence exemplifies the human drive to make life easier, better, and longer. To make us more productive with less effort, to restore our bodies, to make us richer, to make us feel loved… Alan Rath’s creatures, on the other hand, are autonomous beings, with their own quirky personalities and raisons d’être. We are content to simply watch them do their thing rather than expect them to behave and obey. Their unexpected behavior is in fact one of the most enchanting things about them. If anything, we serve them by providing the necessary attention and presence to keep them 'alive.' They require nothing more from us, and we happily oblige.”

From the essay, Alan Rath’s Lineage: A Brief History of Kinetic and Robotic Art, by Dianne Dec

Larry Rinder recommends All That Followed by Gabriel Urza

"I came across this writer, and this book, as a consequence of buying a house in the Surprise Valley in the far, northeast corner of California. It’s an area settled largely by Basques, and Urza, whose house I bought, is a descendent of Basque immigrants.

All That Followed is a novel set in Euskal Herria (the Basque region of Spain) in the late 1990s. Joni, the protagonist is, like the author, an American of Basque heritage who goes to live for a time in his ancestral homeland. Joni ends up staying for decades and finds himself enmeshed in a tangled web of local sexual and political intrigues. Despite his extended residence in the small town of Muriga, where he serves as the English teacher at a private high school, the locals never truly accept him into the community. Being both an insider and outsider, Joni is a compelling witness to the desires and deceptions that lead inevitably to the tragedy at the heart of the story.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the book is its evocation of the physical locality, political currents, and social temperament of the Basque region. Urza does a great job of educating his reader, even as he weaves an engaging and gratifying narrative. Despite the particularities of the time and place, the core of the novel is a universal story of the banality that often lies at the heart of idealism… political, sexual, or otherwise."

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Hosfelt Gallery is located at 260 Utah St, between 15th & 16th streets. Wheelchair accessible entrance at 255A Potrero Avenue. For more information call 415.495.5454 or visit hosfeltgallery.com.

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