Hanna Hur: Two Angels
3400 W Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90018

Where do images come from Image generating is an act of submission. Patterning a ground with a grid and alternating colored squares takes time. This thickness of time produces a clearing for the mind’s eye. Repetitive gesture becomes a petitioning of the gods for the image to come near. When a form begins to come into focus, it is unwieldy and thwarts the gaze. The image demands a total relinquishing of self, of vision even. When it allows for its body to be seen, it appears only through a mirrored reflection of itself. The original image will not be looked at directly, it requires mediation, refraction. Looking at the sun dissolves vision, seeing becomes a way of dying. Two Angels I began to recognize who had arrived. An angel. Glowing and blessed, undeniably benevolent. Its light blinded me. The red angel emerged quickly afterward. In it I saw a different angelic nature: a pre-religious, pre-moral being. Benjamin’s angel. Or, the being that will come to you when you die. Both angels are impervious to vision’s limits. They never close their eyes. Vision, for them, is their entire bodies. They watch all earthly bliss and terror, never departing. A choir of two singing in harmony, looking.
Hanna Hur (b. 1985, Toronto) lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include: Shadow Tracer: Works on Paper, Aspen Art Museum, Drawing Down the Moon, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and The Inconstant World, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2021). Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art,Los Angeles and the Grunwald Center Collection at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. This is her second exhibition at the gallery.