Karl Haendel’s new solo exhibition at the Kimball Art Center is titled “Less Bad.”
The title of the exhibition, which opens with a reception at 6 p.m. Friday and runs through December 1, sets a whimsical tone with new and older pencil and ink drawings on paper that Haendel created throughout his career.
“It’s reminiscent of how a museum exhibition tries to show the good stuff, the ‘greatest hits,’ but instead of calling them ‘hits,’ you say these are the works that aren’t so bad,” the artist said. “I always like to use a bit of humor in my exhibitions because art is sometimes seen as difficult to access, and I think the answer to making art for the general public is not to simplify it. You have to create opportunities… to bring people in.”
The title also refers to Haendel’s own struggles as a straight, white man trying to explore masculinity by challenging stereotypical definitions and becoming less bad.
“It offers a new charge of masculinity that is introspective and self-reflective in terms of how I see myself in relationships,” he said. “It’s about thinking about men being vulnerable and having access to a whole range of emotions, not just anger.”
These themes range from intimate experiences such as fatherhood, love, friendship and loss to broader themes such as tenderness, introspection and vulnerability, said Aldy Milliken, executive director of the Kimball Art Center.
“These are ideas that we can take up and talk about openly. And that gets the conversation rolling in a post-#metoo and Gus Walz world,” he said. “It opens and frames a conversation that we’re having right now across the country.”
This site-specific exhibition is being organized in collaboration with Dr. Andrea Gyorody, director of the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, according to Milliken.
“It was a long conversation involving the three of us,” he said. “We met in LA in the spring and talked about all the images in Karl’s work. Then we narrowed it down to a smaller, attainable number.”
From then on, the three discussed the exact themes of the show, Milliken said.
“Karl used his own expertise in storytelling and decided how the space and the works would relate to each other,” he said.
Haendel looked at the Kimball Art Center’s four exhibition spaces in terms of sightlines and how people feel in the space, rather than in terms of the venue’s history or sociopolitical or economic aspects.
“I’ve always been interested in bodies in space,” he said. “I really like to think about the perception and movement of viewers in space. That makes an exhibition participatory and active, so that they are more aware and receptive to their feelings and thoughts.”
One possibility is to paint the walls, said Haendel.
“It’s a way to enliven the space and give the viewer a rhythm,” he said. “It also makes the space wobble. It’s a way to make the space exciting and even a little off track and get the viewer’s senses moving.”
Haendel also felt that the Kimball Art Center was an accessible place where the public could also take classes and create their own art.
“Aldy and I wanted to focus on the process in the exhibition and how we could make the installation thematically, conceptually and materially accessible,” he said. “So some of the drawings will be super stylized and highly rendered, but other drawings will be simpler and just pinned to the wall. (That way) when the students come and see the pencil art just pinned to the wall, they might feel like they could do something like that too.”
Even the media – pencil, ink and paper – are accessible, and these materials are Handel’s trademark.
“I could draw pretty well as a child,” he said. “I think a lot of people who become artists are those who, as children, enjoyed making things, whether it was with clay or wood, and I really enjoy drawing.”
While studying for his graduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, Haendel made the “life decision” to focus on drawing.
“That was because there were artists my age who were exhibiting in commercial galleries,” he said.
At that time, art fairs were still in their infancy and the modern world of artists overlapped with the world of fashion. Stars like Beyoncé attended these events, Haendel said.
“So there was this international, elite, global art world that was producing young art stars,” he said. “While I was attending a school that was producing these stars, I found out that many of the artists who were making this kind of art had trust funds or other means to make a living.”
Since Handel had neither a trust fund nor rich relatives and drove a truck on his days off from lectures, he decided to find a less conspicuous medium such as painting.
“I wanted to make something that was close to me and that felt closer to conceptual art and closer to the kind of art I liked,” he said. “I wanted to make something that had a certain physical quality as an art object and something I could make.”
Although Handel had worked in video and performance during his school years, he liked the accessibility of drawing.
“It’s kind of primitive and it’s not hard to get a pencil and paper because it’s not expensive,” he said. “It’s not like CGI graphics and it’s also easy to store and ship. So I liked that I could do something with things that everyone has access to and that are relatively under-explored in the canon of art, and once I got started I realized there was a lot of room for development and I could make an argument for making drawing my career.”
Exhibition “Less Bad” by Karl Haendel
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Opening reception for the exhibition “Less Bad”
