LOS ANGELES — The seventh iteration of Made in L.A., the Hammer Museum’s biennial exhibition showcasing artists working in the greater Los Angeles area, contains few surprises. The curators’ self described “no-methodology methodology” results in a scattered exhibition that feels bland and curatorially unimaginative.
Despite this, the show contains some strong work, especially in cases where the artists have been given their own rooms — for example, Hannah Hur’s gorgeous five-panel installation “Suspension” (2025), installed in a vault-like gallery. Each painted panel consists of a grid of faint white lines dotted with white flower-like patterns. The interaction between the grid and the flower motif creates a sense of spatial confusion when viewing the work. This effect is only enhanced by the room’s architecture: The lines in the cement floor and the curved shadows cast from a panel, which appears to be floating in midair, become a vital part of the viewing experience. Hur’s quiet work transforms one’s perception of both the viewer’s physical space and the spaces she creates within each painting.
Installation view of Hanna Hur, “Suspension” (2025), acrylic, colored pencil, Flashe, and pigment on canvas
Na Mira disorients histories and mythologies in “Sugungga (Hello)” (2025).” The work references a Korean allegory in which a sick dragon king trying to cure itself lures and is subsequently tricked by a rabbit. Two videos are projected onto opposite sides of a holographic glass — one filmed in a cab driving around the outside perimeter of a walled former military building, constructed by the Japanese army and later used as a US military base, and the other showing an inflatable rabbit sculpture inside of the grounds. These projections collapse inside and outside. They cast ghostly moving shadows and distorted imagery around the room and onto other viewers. The story of Korea’s occupiers is literally embodied by this one building, and the work’s confusing boundaries cast the viewer as both victim and complicit co-conspirator, as both inside and outside systems of power.
Another standout is an assemblage by Gabriela Ruiz comprised of cartoonishly painted screaming faces, a surveillance camera that displays the viewer on a screen, and an LED streetlamp. This piece perfectly embodies our fraught relationship with technology, wherein we willingly allow ourselves to be surveilled by social media platforms under the guise of connecting with others. These platforms have also manipulated and damaged our thought patterns, siloing us into our own personalized echo chambers and flattening commerce, memes, life milestones, and horrifying news clips into a single bland stream of content vying for our attention. The work is appropriately titled “Collective Scream” (2025).
Gabriela Ruiz, “Collective Scream” (2025), acrylic, gouache, pastel, colored pencil, acrylic pens, epoxy clay, metal hooks, metal pipes, metal hardware, LCD monitors, TV monitor, roll-up gate, LED streetlamp, and surveillance camera on wood panel
Other highlights include Amanda Ross-Ho’s hilarious and poignant oversized replicas of her father’s residential nursing home door adorned with seasonal decorations, Carl Cheng’s singular erosion machines, and Patrick Martinez’s installation of a ruined and graffiti’d cinderblock structure, “Battle of the City on Fire” (2025).
Without a clear curatorial thesis, Made in L.A. reverts to the default modus operandi of large museum group exhibitions, which is to add legitimacy and cultural capital to artists who have already been vetted by the market or other institutions. Even as a relative newcomer to Los Angeles (I moved here about five years ago), many of the artists included are already familiar to me and have been showing regularly throughout the city. I’d love to see the next Made in L.A. go “off menu” a little more.
Na Mira, “Sugungga (Hello)” (2024), two-channel Hi8 and HD video, holographic glass, 14 min.
Patrick Martinez, “Battle of the City on Fire” (2025), stucco, cinder blocks, neon, acrylic paint, spray paint and latex house paint on scorched panel
Carl Cheng, “Alternative TV #9” (1979–2016), plastic chassis, acrylic water tank, LED lighting and controller, electrical components, conglomerated rocks, and plastic plants
Bruce Yonemoto, “Broken Fences” (2025), monitors, lacquer, wood
Amanda Ross-Ho, work from the series Untitled Thresholds (FOUR SEASONS) (2025)
Alake Shilling, “Is there hope for me once more” (2025), glazed ceramic
Made in L.A. 2025 continues at the Hammer Museum (10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Westwood, Los Angeles) through March 1, 2026. The exhibition was organized by Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha, with Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow.
