Understanding the chaos and grandeur of Hundley’s collage works means understanding the fundamental unit of their construction: the intimate and almost sentimental act of sifting through old objects and images, delicately cutting them out from their original form, and then pinning them like biological specimens (a decision that makes the act even more precious, compared to using something like adhesive). But Hundley does this hundreds if not thousands of times, sometimes without any images or ephemera attached to the pins, transforming the act into something obsessive and seemingly pathological. It’s easy to see how Hundley’s individual collage works earned him success. They stage a collision of old and new eras through collage and the post-internet age of information abundance, two visual languages that certainly have some household presence. And they stage that collision in such a way that their cultural commentary on contemporary living can be understood through the experience of viewing it, viscerally, instead of theoretical exercise/undertaking. Hundley is at his best with works like The Plague (2016), where he’s [created] the intimacy of a Joseph Cornell boxed assemblage, but also the mood and grotesque sprawl of a Hieronymus Bosch landscape.
Elliott Hundley, The Plague, 2016. Paper, oil, pins, plastic, foam, and linen on Panel. Courtesy of Regen Projects. Photo by Evan Bedford.
Echo, a twenty-year survey of Hundley’s work at Regen Projects, features some of these works, alongside an array of others, including freestanding and hanging sculptures, assemblages, paintings, photographs, ceramics, and works on paper. There is even a hallway displaying what seem to be objects of personal importance to Hundley, interspersed between some of his smaller works. Echo is installed and presented as an immersive experience into the artist’s practice, but it overreaches, starts feeling less like a commentary on its time (or of excess and abundance), but more of a product of it.
Installation view of Elliott Hundley’s Echo at Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Courtesy of Regen Projects. Photo by Evan Bedford.
Echo is installed much like Hundley’s collage works are assembled. Swarms of pins, images, and ephemera hover around individual works, which, according to the press release, was inspired by Hundley’s studio. This salon-style, everything-everywhere approach would seem to make sense, as it’s consistent with the theme of his work and provides a way to link the different media of his oeuvre, but is a step too far. There is so much going on—so many pins, so many choices, so many images intricately cut out—that it is implausible, if not impossible, that Hundley eked out this exhibition himself. Just looking at all of Echo can be measured in man-hours.
Fine artists use assistants all of the time, and for the most part it’s uncontroversial and no one even notices or cares. Filmmakers use hundreds to thousands of people, and this is seen as perfectly normal if not optimal. But there is a problem with it here. Hundley’s collage work is inherently intimate and personal, if not presented and promoted as such. When the use of assistants becomes so conspicuous, as it has with Echo, it changes the nature of the work. After all, part of what makes Hundley’s individual collage works great is because they seem created by one person. Breaching that illusion, Echo becomes less about the obsessive, intimate act of the artist—and the extraordinary effort and care of one man—but about the manufacturing of it.
[Should art be judged solely by its product, or are we allowed to consider the act of making it?]
Installation view of Elliott Hundley’s Echo at Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Courtesy of Regen Projects. Photo by Evan Bedford.
Echo’s conflict between feeling intimate or manufactured seems befitting in a culture that increasingly struggles with its own competing desires for authenticity and illusion. In a time when everyone has a camera, editing software, and a platform, the desire to constantly stage and curate one’s life seems to, ironically, take one farther from it—it creates a competing craving for authenticity. [social media effect on belief systems?] Maybe it shouldn’t matter what happens behind the scenes, and manufacturing something intimate is perfectly acceptable. But if that’s the case, I think there are more interesting questions about our tolerance and desire for illusion that we can ask ourselves. (that are not necessarily asked by Echo). Echo, though, seems more like a product of this type of identity crisis, not a commentary on it.
Installation view of Elliott Hundley’s Echo at Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Courtesy of Regen Projects. Photo by Evan Bedford.
It’s also questionable what Echo really achieves by its installation. It does blur the line between the art and the process of making it, but runs into perceptual issues with its more-is-better ethos. Unlike his individual collage works, which do corral overwhelming amounts of information into something more, Echo strains to tie together every collage, sculpture, painting, pin, image, brushstroke and fragment of at least three rooms of the exhibition.
Echo asks the viewer to conclude that its whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but it lacks the synergy or dynamic interaction of its parts that usually leads to that effect. Unlike his individual collage works, the installation spreads the viewer’s attention too thin, and as viewer bandwidth drops, less can be expected of each individual work, as it seemingly has a more important role as a part in a whole or, at worst, becomes decoration. I did not think that Echo really asked the viewer to do anything more than marvel at the immensity of its production.
There is an appeal to the spectacle of the installation, but I can’t help but think that this is because contemporary viewers (myself included) are conditioned into having their attention spread thin, and that low bandwidth shapes what we’re drawn to. Maybe tapping into this is ingenious of Hundley. Maybe it’s pandering. Maybe it’s unintentional. But it feels like something I would expect more from a social media company instead of an artist.
Elliott Hundley, Untitled (2013, oil on linen), as installed in Echo at Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo by Art Memo Magazine.
Like Echo’s installation, Hundley’s paintings seem heavily influenced by his propensity for hyper-collage, but the concept and method of his individual collage works do not make for good paintings. For one, they often have too much information. There are so many styles, marks, and clashing colors all densely packed into the canvas (often with the same texture brush work), that it is hard to take anything from these paintings other than “their chaos is the point.”
Installation view of Elliott Hundley’s Echo at Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Courtesy of Regen Projects. Photo by Evan Bedford.
Although I don’t think it’s his intention, Hundley’s predilection for collage makes his painting quote other painters a little too much, almost as if he’s collecting marks and styles like one would endearingly collect objects or images for a collage. Works like face and form (2013) and Untitled (2013), for example, are a little bit too close to the work of Albert Oehlen. Of course, artists are always drawing from, and building on top of, the work of other artists, but in the incremental difference between Hundley’s paintings and his precedents, it’s hard to discern what Hundley’s contribution to painting is, if anything. And at a gallery as eminent as Regen Projects, the inclusion of these paintings begs the question.
Elliott Hundley, 21.12.22.1 (2022, oil on linen), as installed in Echo at Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo by Art Memo Magazine.
I think Hundley has a lot more interesting things to say through his collage work, not his painting. And although Echo sometimes feels like more of a product of its time than a commentary on it (especially on its themes of excess and abundance), overall, it’s still a noteworthy exhibition. From what I can tell from other writers and artists, Echo seems to be quite polarizing. To me, Echo measures/reflects how cultural/aesthetic sensibilities are changing due to pressures on our attention, our relationship with illusion. Viewing and thinking about Echo leaves me feeling small. Not from the immensity of the exhibition, but being immersed in something much bigger / the slow motion of cultural change.
Elliott Hundley
Echo
January 14 – February 19, 2023
Regan Projects
6750 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90038
www.reganprojects.com
Read More Understanding the chaos and grandeur of Hundley’s collage works means understanding the fundamental unit of their construction: the intimate and almost sentimental act of sifting through old objects and images, delicately cutting them out from their original form, and then pinning them like biological specimens (a decision that makes the act even more precious, compared … Continue reading “Echo”