HUGUETTE CALAND
BRONZES
JANUARY 9 - FEBRUARY 27, 2021

Kayne Griffin is pleased to present a solo exhibition with the great artist, Huguette Caland, in the South Gallery exhibition space. Huguette Caland’s work spans different eras and locales yet finds itself intertwined with the Los Angeles art scene. Caland was experimental in her life and her art. Caland’s body of work features many series that reflect an exploratory practice that moves fluidly among styles, mediums, materials, and subject matter.

The exhibition, titled “Bronzes,” will feature a series of small bronze sculptures that the artist made in the 1980’s. These bronze works show the materiality of the medium and place at the fore the artists hands—each dip and groove highlighted with her bodily presence. The works, abstract in nature, still depict the human form but clumped together and twisted in ways that detach the work from being immediately recognizable and at a scale that’s far more intimate. The bronzes in the exhibition are life-time casts dated 2014 that originate from terracotta sculptures created in the 1980s.

Born in Lebanon, Huguette Caland’s artwork flourished upon her move to Paris in the 1970s. In 1987 Caland moved to Venice Beach, CA. Her home and studio functioned as a nexus for notable artists, poets, and thinkers, including Billy Al Bengston, Ed Moses, Ken Price, and Nancy Rubins amongst others. Her artwork benefited from the artist’s progressive lifestyle of adventure, sexuality and a resistance to a terse political climate. She always said her life was her art. Her body of work is a cohesive exploration of self, and more so, a push-back against societal codes.

Caland’s work has been exhibited at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and 36th Venice Biennale (1970.) In 2016 she was included in the Hammer Museum biennial, Made in LA. Most recently Caland’s work was included in the Sharjah Biennial (2019) as part of a group presentation curated by Omar Kholeif. She was also subject to a retrospective of her work at the Tate St. Ives in May 2019—her first UK museum solo exhibition. More recently over 100 pieces covering Caland’s career were featured in an exhibition at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha. Opening at The Drawing Center in the Spring of 2021, Huguette Caland: Tête-à-Tête will be the artist's most comprehensive solo museum exhibition. Bringing together works on paper and canvas from the past five decades—as well as caftans, mannequins, sculptures, and notebooks on and in which she wielded her pen.

Huguette Caland’s work is included in private and public collections across the Middle East, Europe and the United States, including The Tate, London; British Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Fondation Nationale d’Art Contemporain, Paris; LACMA, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego; Palm Springs Museum of Art, Palm Springs and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston amongst others.