by R. Thorne
A few days ago, Mara McCarthy, daughter of famed Los Angeles artist Paul McCarthy and proprietor of The Box Gallery announced that The Box would be shuttering its doors after 19 years at the end of its current exhibition, Wally Hedrick: SEX POLITICS RELIGION.
She explained that the decision was difficult but had “been brewing for some time.” McCarthy pointed to declining market support of her father’s work (sales from his practice helped fund and support the gallery) likely due to the broader market contraction, which Mara also mentions. Coupled with the loss of multiple homes within their family from last year’s Eaton fire, keeping the gallery open became unfeasible.
Messages flooded into their feed from artists, collectors, and other gallerists thanking Mara and her team for providing a space for “artists and the community.”
The Box’s final exhibition (a joint venture with Parker Gallery)—is a retrospective of Wally Hedrick—a Pasadena-born artist who swung between painting, sculpture, and assemblage—active in both the art and Beat literary scene (Allen Ginsberg read Howl for the first time in a SF gallery that Hedrick co-founded), and seemed to be at the center of whatever counter-culture movement was available during the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.
Hedrick, a proponent of improvisation, famously claimed that there was no continuity to be found in his works—purposefully so. Instead, Hedrick wanted to “focus on ideas” and believed that art and the making of it could be used to send a political message, going so far as to at one point “withdraw” showing his works in an attempt to end the Vietnam War.
The Box show contains some of Hedrick’s most political works—many rendered in mustards and blacks—some with written messages and others with thick black hand-drawn lines reminiscent of Keith Haring, but less dancey and more angry. A distressed sign hangs from the ceiling, mid-gallery that says “FIX IT”—a precursor to neon art-world messaging a la Patrick Martinez.
Sunflower (1952) is a tall metal assemblage composed of a large serrated disc set atop a thin triangular base made of metal tubing and large, pointed fork-like implements implying leaves with a hand-cranked spur set in the center. Sunflower reads less as flora than as a rusted weather-vane stuck forever in the wrong position.
In the painting Your Cliterin Geometry/The Artist’s Life/Skids SS (1979-80), Hedrick provides a large horizontal rectilinear phallic-shaped painting with a sharp and pointed tip. The main shaft shows what seems to be an electrical diagram rendered in thick black lines on light yellow. As the painting progresses to the right, the yellow becomes darker and the lines morph into a bulbous/atom-bomb-like cloud explosion sporting numerous busty curves. The cloud formation births an outstretched hand, open palm facing up with the words “PLEASE ADMIT – SS” written on it. A cartoon electrical bolt emanates from the middle finger tip which morphs into a swirling cloud of yellow on a dark background.
The works are graphic, sexual and angry and ease without translation into current contemporary vernacular.
The retrospective highlights a lifetime of work that centered on activism. There is nothing soft in Hendrick’s work. Lines are decisive, a limited color palette used with intent, and the sharpness cuts. It is exactly the kind of work one expects to not sell in the current climate, and so exactly what the public needs a place like The Box for.
Hedrick’s take on midcentury counterculture’s fixation with confrontation and fornication invites a variety of readings, but the message The Box is sending is as clear as it is loud: you will want this when it is gone.
Image: Courtesy The Box