LOS ANGELES — I locked my cellphone within the required case, grabbed a tiny LED flashlight, and parted the thick black curtains. It was extraordinarily nonetheless, an eerie type of darkish. A docent introduced himself and welcomed me into the area — a disembodied voice that each startled and calmed me. I walked slowly, the darkness stunting my gait. I turned on my flashlight, and an orb of darkish blue appeared earlier than me on the bottom.
It’s unusual to willingly enter a managed area that you’re totally unable to navigate. I can’t say that I used to be afraid, nevertheless it felt like I used to be making ready for concern. I questioned if the exhibition’s title — Concerto in Black and Blue — was an allusion to the ache of persecution, suggesting bruises and uniforms, racial sentiment. It felt like there have been solely two selections: Lean into the lawlessness or escape from it.
This exhibition by David Hammons at Hauser & Wirth’s downtown Los Angeles location is the primary reprisal of his unique 2002 exhibition on the Ace Gallery in New York. By way of concrete description, this iteration consists of 4 massive adjoining rooms, all fully darkish. Within the remaining and largest room are two free-standing partitions. Although you may use your flashlight to seek for any delicate clues or hidden works (as I did), there may be nothing. Or, somewhat, the one one thing is the shining of the blue flashlights given to guests on the entrance.
Set up view of David Hammons, Concerto in Black and Blue (2025)
Very like the unique presentation, this reprisal is shrouded in peculiar thriller. The gallery has neither made any official assertion as to why they’ve resurrected the work 23 years later, nor supplied any new context for the present. The one nod to the unique exhibition is a screening of a three-minute documentary of the 2002 opening by Linda Goode Bryant, proven in a unique space of the gallery’s campus.
With the intention to extra precisely recreate the unique expertise of the exhibition, throughout which cell telephones with luminous LED screens weren’t but ubiquitous, the gallery mandates that guests place cellular units into circumstances they preserve with them however are unable to open till they exit. This element was impactful past the sensible sense of historic constancy. It underlined the questions Hammons appears to be asking: How do you interact with artwork when it’s fleeting, morphing, troublesome to seize? What occurs when you’ll be able to’t simply detachedly stroll previous artwork on a wall? If artwork is proven in a gallery, however nobody can Instagram it, does it actually exist?
A concerto is basically a musical composition through which a solo instrument is in dialog with an orchestra. My first jiffy within the exhibition consisted of wandering as a solitary viewer, casting my lonesome mild in opposition to the partitions of the expansive area. If I’m sincere, I used to be just a little irritated, just a little underwhelmed by the 4 massive empty rooms. I then nestled in a nook, shining my blue mild behind me to alert anybody to my presence, and waited. Ultimately, a bunch of six got here in, and the room burst with the bobbing and swooping of their lights.
Flashlights returned to the gallery on the exit of the present
All of a sudden, the darkish rooms grew to become havens of strobed shadows, a cluster of blue lights separating and colliding time and again as if a choreographed dance. A glimpse of a hand, a distorted shadow of a head, the define of a band t-shirt shone for only a second. Upon registering my small blue orb glowing within the nook, 4 of their lights directed themselves proper at me. My solo mild had gained an orchestra, and we have been, certainly, in dialog. The concern, lawlessness, and annoyance I had skilled when first coming into gave approach to a completely completely different sensation: play.
At most artwork reveals I attend, I hope to be left alone with scant others within the area. Right here, I hoped for gangs of parents to come back in and create the jaunty chase of their very own lights. It’s a testomony to Hammon’s instincts that he managed to create this continually morphing but elegantly easy framework through which every visitor actively composes the expertise. It prompts a rethinking of what we think about worthy artwork. A gallery is a web site through which artwork is each socially and financially valued. One instantly photos towering partitions of pristine white adorned with that which nobody, beneath any circumstances, is allowed to the touch. Concerto in Black and Blue is the exact opposite of all of these issues: It’s darkish, engagement is important, and there’s no place for the artist to signal a numbered version. And but it sits so profoundly on the heart of all of it — within the why of it.
Concerto is, I’m assuming, a really low-cost present and one that’s difficult-to-near-impossible to promote — an anti-capitalist exhibition within the dwelling of a few of the most extremely valued modern paintings on the planet. This exhibition can’t earn a living. It’s the childhood innocence of shadow puppets at bedtime. It’s being afraid of the darkish till you’re not alone in the dead of night. It’s the pleasure that comes from discovering one other’s mild briefly crossing your path, shining yours on another person’s. It’s discovering your self in a spot you didn’t count on, and discovering group. The exhibition offers deeper that means to the phrase “you had to be there.” Since you did. And also you do. I used to be, and I sit up for going again as many occasions as I can. Blue mild remedy.
Set up view of David Hammons, Concerto in Black and Blue (2025)
Concerto in Black and Blue is on view at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles (901 E. third Avenue, Los Angeles) by June 1, 2025.
