Extra Credit 2: Hammer Museum - Judith Hopf

For my last extra credit event, I visited Hammer Museum in Westwood to take a look Judith Hopf’s exhibition. Judith Hopf is a German artist who produce works that are “funny and engaging but also challenge viewers to consider the political and economic contexts within which the international contemporary art world operates.”

When I entered into gallery that was having Judith Hopf’s exhibition, I was shocked. It is because when I see the word exhibition, I expect there to be a lot of art work that people can take a look at. However, the room was very small and there were only handful of art pieces there. However, I still enjoyed the exhibition a lot, because all of the pieces were so intriguing.

First, there were three art works that were hanging on the two sides of the wall. All of these are called “Waiting Laptops” and as the title implies, three pieces all has laptop on the center. However, when I first saw it, I did not know it was laptop it was in the center of each piece. The laptops have arms and legs and some of them even wear hats on top. I believe the artist really like the concept of anthropomorphism, because these are not the only art works that resembled the human being. The color that are used is very limited.  In Waiting Laptops, only grey, black and white are used. I think Judith Hoph wanted to illustrate society’s significant dependence on technology.

Then, there were several sculptures that were made of bricks. I think there were five different sculptures that were made of bricks. There was sculpture that resembles basketball. I think it is more like soccer ball, but the color reminds me of the basketball. There were sculptures that have the shape of human feat. It was obvious that both works resemble human feet, but it was interesting how the artist used differently curved and patterned bricks. Even though both were resembling human feet, it seems very different to me. Then, there was another brick sculpture that seemed like mixture of bird and human to me. To me little half-circle shape on the top reminded me of eyes, two bricks that are stick out looked like the bird’s beaks. The long and thin shape that are attached to both side seemed like human’s arm. The piece that I liked the most was the brick sculpture that has the shape of human hands with all fingers folded except for the second finger. I liked this piece because it seemed like it was middle finger that is up.

There were also ropes on two different areas. Three differently colored ropes are attached on the ground on one side and these ropes were of different thickness. On the other side of the room, these exactly same ropes are hanging down from the ceiling. However, there weren’t any descriptions and I am still not sure what is the meaning behind these ropes, but they somehow seem to be getting along with other art works pretty well.

The last part of the exhibition was the video art titled “Up.” There was nothing so dramatic in the video and video itself was pretty short. The video has a car driving in the countryside at a pretty high speed. Then, as it gets closer to screen, the car suddenly flips onto one side and when it returns back to the ground, we see basketball that seems to be fallen from the car and this ball is rolling down on the road as the video ends.

One thing that disappointed me was that there weren’t any descriptions beside each work piece. It would have been better if there were at least a short description beside each work to help audience better understand the meaning and purpose behind each work. However, overall, I think Judith Hopf tried to send us a message about how human are being too reliant on technology and being consumed by it and tried to warn us about how technology might affect humanity. These days, almost all the young people are using smartphones and use various types of SNS to demonstrate their personality and the waiting laptops tried to illustrate this phenomenon of human becoming part of technology by giving human characteristics to laptops. I thought most of the works in this exhibition are the examples of how technology intersects with art. Technology itself is not used to produce art. However, the art works try to represent the effect of technology on human.  I could also relate mathematics with some of the art works. When Hopf was constructing sculptures with bricks, she probably had to calculate the right size to cut out the bricks to have shapes that she want and I could also see some patterns in the bricks and having patterns can be considered implication of mathematics.

I would recommend other people to visit this exhibition before it ends. It was free to visit Hammer Museum and it is pretty close to campus. Also, it does not take that much time to explore all aspects of the exhibition, as there aren’t that many thing inside the exhibition. Moreover, this exhibition seems to be closely related to the topic about technology from our DESMA9 course, so if people have some free time, I would recommend them to experience nice works in this exhibition.

I have Hammer Museum sticker on my cloth, which is given to the visitor (Proof of Attendance)