"Made in L.A. 2025"

Alake Shilling, I had a long day please bring me a snack, 2025

"Made in L.A. 2025" has no subtitle. Viewers are mostly left to draw their own connections between the 28 artists and collectives in this year's Hammer biennial, aided by some references to Mike Davis, the January wildfires, and "a determination to safeguard history and place." This "Made in L.A." is a little smaller than some of its six predecessors, which is not necessarily a bad thing, and has no shortage of surprises. Essence Harding and Paulina Pobocha curated, with the assistance of Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow.

Drivers on Wilshire have already seen Alake Shilling's cartoon inflatable for the sculpture terrace.  Shilling primarily works in gritty painted ceramics that revisit early animated films and explore the borderland between cute and monstrous.

Alake Shilling, Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A., 2025

Patrick Martinez, Battle of the City on Fire, 2025
Patrick Martinez's Battle of the City on Fires references the fires, incorporating a painting on scorched panel. The neon piece Hold the Ice seems even more of the moment, but it dates to 2020. 

Patrick Martinez, Hold the Ice, 2020
Carl Cheng, Specimen Viewer No. 4, 1970–2016
Carl Cheng is a conceptualist whose art(ifacts) fall somewhere between Cornell boxes, industrial design, and Jurassic technology. Cheng used Wonder Bread as a medium for embossed prints. Each slice in the edition is numbered, and the ingredient list doubles as a gallery label. 
Carl Cheng, Erosion Landscape Bread Print No. 0006, 1979
Beaux Mendes, Dr. Lazarus (distemper on stretched linen), 2025
With Dr. Lazarus Beaux Mendes invokes the art history of anatomy/operation paintings. One of the doctors holds a bloodless heart; another's gown falls open to reveal a hard-on. The medium of distemper on linen recalls the Flemish Renaissance. A few galleries later you see the same scene rendered as a diorama of silicone dolls. 
Beaux Mendes, Dr. Lazarus (silicone dolls), 2025

Pat O'Neill, Safer than Springtime, 1964
Not the least of the show's surprises is Pat O'Neill, whose B&W photo of a crashed car and palm tree anchors the exhibition webpage. O'Neil is also responsible for a polychrome fiberglass, aluminum, and steel sculpture of a crime scene involving a gherkin. 

Pat O'Neill, L'il Neverbetter, 1969
O'Neill turns 86 this year. Known as an experimental filmmaker and CalArts teacher, he has been making sculpture since the 1960s. Based on the works here, O'Neill appears to be an unheralded master of the Finish Fetish movement. He's also a photographer in the ironic/snarky mid-century B&W mode. His cropped view of a Forest Lawn billboard ranks with the best photographic treatments of Glendale's monument to mortality and kitsch.

Pat O'Neill, Los Angeles, 1960s
Greg Breda, Vigilant, 2025
New Theater Hollywood / Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff, Theater, 2024–2025
Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Thresholds (FOUR SEASONS), 2025
Amanda Ross-Ho offers nearly twice-scale replicas of the door to her father's room in a nursing home. Staff seasonally decorate the home's doors to mark the passing of time for residents whose memories may be fading. In Ross-Ho's recreations different holidays commingle, unstuck in time.

Detail of Untitled Thresholds (FOUR SEASONS)
Bruce Yonemoto, Broken Fences, 2025
Freddy Villalobos, waiting for the stone to speak, for I know nothing of aventure, 2025
Kristy Luck, Always Arriving, 2025
Kristy Luck's Always Arriving is an Origin of the World as channeled by Hilma af Klint. Luck is one of the show's breakout painters.
Kristy Luck, Premeditation, 2025
Ceramic sculptures by Brian Rochefort
David Alekhuogie, Still Life with Jerk Chicken (archival pigment prints quilted to canvas), 2023
Kelly Wall, Wistful Thinking, 2025
Three sculptural installations by Kelly Wall remind us how odd the notion of a "souvenir" is. In one piece post-card racks hold ceramic paintings of the empty Los Angeles sky.
Kelly Wall, Something to Write Home About (#1–4), 2025

"Made in L.A. 2025" is at the Hammer through Mar. 1, 2026.

Choreographer Will Rawls' Unmade is performed on selected weekend dates
Alonzo Davis (recreated by 3B Collective), Eye on '84, 1984/2025 
The stairway commission honors the legacy of Alonzo Davis (1942–2025), muralist and Brockman Gallery co-founder, a pivotal figure for Black art in L.A. The paintings recreate Davis' Eye on '84 mural for the 1984 Olympics. 

Comments

Some are not saying hello, but I'm delighted by Patrick Martinez's "Hold the Ice," of 2020. Its meaning resonates all the more forcefully in this Project 2025 era that we find ourselves in.
Carl Cheng's "Erosion Landscape Bread Print No. 0006," of 1979, has no business in LACMA's collection. Far too much mold as it is.
Beaux Mendes's "Dr. Lazarus (distemper on stretched linen) variation, of 2025, is creepy and compelling. NSFW.
Re Pat O'Neill's "Los Angeles," of 1960s: Somebody needs to snatch that bad boy up, pronto.
Re Kristy Luck's "Premeditation," of 2025: The reds are stunning, perfection.
Re Kelly Wall's "Something to Write Home About (#1–4)," of 2025: Why is only 1 kiosk black? I want more, but I don't know what. Who is the Black painter with the wall of 200+ cards showing color variation in Black skin? I think that artist's message said it all.
I like Alonzo Davis's (recreated by 3B Collective), "Eye on '84," of 1984/2025. I don't know this artist.