LOS ANGELES — I locked my cellphone within the required case, grabbed a tiny LED flashlight, and parted the thick black curtains. It was extraordinarily nonetheless, an eerie sort of darkish. A docent introduced himself and welcomed me into the area — a disembodied voice that each startled and calmed me. I walked slowly, the darkness stunting my gait. I turned on my flashlight, and an orb of darkish blue appeared earlier than me on the bottom.
It’s unusual to willingly enter a managed area that you’re totally unable to navigate. I can’t say that I used to be afraid, however it felt like I used to be making ready for worry. I puzzled if the exhibition’s title — Concerto in Black and Blue — was an allusion to the ache of persecution, suggesting bruises and uniforms, racial sentiment. It felt like there have been solely two decisions: Lean into the lawlessness or escape from it.
This exhibition by David Hammons at Hauser & Wirth’s downtown Los Angeles location is the primary reprisal of his unique 2002 exhibition on the Ace Gallery in New York. By way of concrete description, this iteration consists of 4 giant adjoining rooms, all utterly darkish. Within the remaining and largest room are two free-standing partitions. Although you would possibly use your flashlight to seek for any refined clues or hidden works (as I did), there’s nothing. Or, quite, the one one thing is the shining of the blue flashlights given to guests on the entrance.
Set up view of David Hammons, Concerto in Black and Blue (2025)
Very similar to the unique presentation, this reprisal is shrouded in peculiar thriller. The gallery has neither made any official assertion as to why they’ve resurrected the work 23 years later, nor supplied any new context for the present. The one nod to the unique exhibition is a screening of a three-minute documentary of the 2002 opening by Linda Goode Bryant, proven in a distinct space of the gallery’s campus.
So as to extra precisely recreate the unique expertise of the exhibition, throughout which cell telephones with luminous LED screens weren’t but ubiquitous, the gallery mandates that guests place cell units into circumstances they maintain with them however are unable to open till they exit. This element was impactful past the sensible sense of historic constancy. It underlined the questions Hammons appears to be asking: How do you have interaction with artwork when it’s fleeting, morphing, troublesome to seize? What occurs when you’ll be able to’t simply detachedly stroll previous artwork on a wall? If artwork is proven in a gallery, however nobody can Instagram it, does it actually exist?
A concerto is basically a musical composition through which a solo instrument is in dialog with an orchestra. My first jiffy within the exhibition consisted of wandering as a solitary viewer, casting my lonesome gentle in opposition to the partitions of the expansive area. If I’m trustworthy, I used to be somewhat irritated, somewhat underwhelmed by the 4 huge empty rooms. I then nestled in a nook, shining my blue gentle behind me to alert anybody to my presence, and waited. Finally, a bunch of six got here in, and the room burst with the bobbing and swooping of their lights.
Flashlights returned to the gallery on the exit of the present
All of a sudden, the darkish rooms turned havens of strobed shadows, a cluster of blue lights separating and colliding time and again as if a choreographed dance. A glimpse of a hand, a distorted shadow of a head, the define of a band t-shirt shone for only a second. Upon registering my small blue orb glowing within the nook, 4 of their lights directed themselves proper at me. My solo gentle had gained an orchestra, and we have been, certainly, in dialog. The worry, lawlessness, and annoyance I had skilled when first getting into gave approach to a wholly completely different sensation: play.
At most artwork exhibits I attend, I hope to be left alone with scant others within the area. Right here, I hoped for gangs of parents to come back in and create the jaunty chase of their very own lights. It’s a testomony to Hammon’s instincts that he managed to create this continually morphing but elegantly easy framework through which every visitor actively composes the expertise. It prompts a rethinking of what we take into account worthy artwork. A gallery is a web site through which artwork is each socially and financially valued. One instantly footage towering partitions of pristine white adorned with that which nobody, below any circumstances, is allowed to the touch. Concerto in Black and Blue is the exact opposite of all of these issues: It’s darkish, engagement is important, and there’s no place for the artist to signal a numbered version. And but it sits so profoundly on the heart of all of it — within the why of it.
Concerto is, I’m assuming, a really low-cost present and one that’s difficult-to-near-impossible to promote — an anti-capitalist exhibition within the dwelling of a number of the most extremely valued up to date paintings on the earth. This exhibition can’t earn cash. It’s the childhood innocence of shadow puppets at bedtime. It’s being afraid of the darkish till you’re not alone in the dead of night. It’s the pleasure that comes from discovering one other’s gentle briefly crossing your path, shining yours on another person’s. It’s discovering your self in a spot you didn’t anticipate, and discovering neighborhood. The exhibition offers deeper that means to the phrase “you had to be there.” Since you did. And also you do. I used to be, and I look ahead to going again as many instances as I can. Blue gentle remedy.
Set up view of David Hammons, Concerto in Black and Blue (2025)
Concerto in Black and Blue is on view at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles (901 E. third Avenue, Los Angeles) via June 1, 2025.
