The highly anticipated Made in L.A. biennial is approaching, and the Hammer Museum has announced the 27 artists participating in the regional survey, including Hollywood-born conceptual artist John Knight, Hood Century Modern founder Jerald “Coop” Cooper and the avant-garde New Theater Hollywood, which is run by artists Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff.
The seventh edition of the biennial, which spotlights the work of regional artists, is curated by Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha. The 2023 biennial naturally organized itself around work mostly created in the throes of the pandemic (Times art critic Christopher Knight called it “the Pandemic Zoom Biennial”), but curators this year said they tried to steer clear of any one particular theme.
The unifying aspect of all the work, Harden and Pobocha said, is the city itself. That influence, of course, is as vast and broad as the urban landscape.
“There is a conversation happening between the artists, the work that they make and the context in which they make it — and that context being Los Angeles,” Pochoba said.
Harden and Pobocha spent months traversing the city, visiting as many studios and artists as they could in their search for this year’s participants. They started broadly and tossed preconceived notions about what the exhibition should look like. They also followed no hard-line parameters about who to visit, or where to visit. They said they considered nontraditional art practices that don’t cater to any particular client base.
The goal, Pobocha said, was to “follow the art, follow the artist, and see where that takes us.”
“We love our job, it’s research-based,” Harden said. “And part of that job is just talking with this whole new group of people. The most pleasurable moments come from doing the studio visits.”
This year’s biennial, which will run Oct. 5 to Jan. 4, 2026, gathers a crop of artists who were born as far away as Baghdad (Ali Eyal) and Haiti (Widline Cadet). The oldest is 85 (Pat O’Neill), the youngest 30 (Eyal). The other participants are David Alekhuogie, Black House Radio / Michael Donte, Greg Breda, Carl Cheng, Kristy Luck, Patrick Martinez, Beaux Mendes, Na Mira, Will Rawls, Brian Rochefort, Amanda Ross-Ho, Gabriela Ruiz, Alake Shilling, Nicole-Antonia Spagnola, Mike Stoltz, Peter Tomka, Freddy Villalobos, Kelly Wall, Leilah Weinraub and Bruce Yonemoto.
Some of the artists’ work will be selected for the recently announced joint collection managed by the Hammer, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Museum of Contemporary Art. Called the Mohn Art Collective: Hammer, LACMA, MOCA (or MAC3 for short), the collection started with a gift from philanthropists Jarl and Pamela Mohn with the expectation that it would expand every year. During Made in L.A. years, the mandate is that new pieces be chosen from the biennial. Eighty works from the last 12 years of the program were added to the collection by the Hammer.
Made in L.A. artists are eligible for three awards — the $100,000 Mohn Award for artistic excellence, a $25,000 award for career achievement and a $25,000 award chosen by visitors to the biennial.
