LOS ANGELES, CA.- On 13 March 2016, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, the new Los Angeles space of internationallyacclaimed contemporary and modern art gallery Hauser & Wirth, opened to the public in the vast former Globe Mills flour mill complex in the heart of city’s burgeoning Downtown Arts District. The site’s late 19th and early 20th century buildings and internal outdoor spaces have been transformed into a dynamic multidisciplinary arts center by Creative Space LA, in consultation with Annabelle Selldorf, Selldorf Architects. Here, under the direction of Partner and Vice President Paul Schimmel, the arts center will offer innovative museum-quality exhibitions and a dynamic schedule of public education programs that contextualize the art on view for diverse audiences, as well as an ARTBOOK bookstore; a space for Hauser & Wirth’s Book & Printed Matter Lab; the restaurant Manuela, opening summer 2016; a public garden, opening fall 2016; site-specific murals that engage the architecture of the complex; and a dramatic open-air courtyard where visitors will find sculpture as well as a place for quiet contemplation and informal gathering.

‘We have long dreamt of making a lasting contribution to the Los Angeles community that means so much to our artists and to us personally,’ said Iwan Wirth, co-Founder and co-President of Hauser & Wirth. ‘LA has been an essential part of Hauser & Wirth’s history since the gallery’s inception more than twenty years ago. The energy and originality of the city have fueled the work of our artists – those based in Los Angeles and those around the world inspired by it. So it seems particularly fitting to begin our third decade by creating Hauser Wirth & Schimmel in the city’s Downtown Arts District. We are thrilled to continue exploring new models for what an art gallery can be and do, in this city known around the world as a place for imagination, reinvention, and new forms of cultural expression.’

Among the more than 60 artists and estates represented by Hauser & Wirth are a number from Los Angeles: Mark Bradford, Thomas Houseago, Richard Jackson, Rachel Khedoori, Paul McCarthy, Diana Thater, and the late artists Allan Kaprow, Mike Kelley and Jason Rhoades.

‘In recent years, Los Angeles has exploded as a creative community for the visual arts,’ Paul Schimmel said. ‘Artists based here want to exhibit in their home town, and increasing numbers of artists from around the world want to live and work in Los Angeles. With Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, we aspire to give all of these artists a unique second home: a place to create and show their art in historical context, a place that encourages their most rigorous and best expressions, a place that brings them and their art into a dynamic, exciting, and transformational dialogue with the public.’
Drawing energy from and contributing to the vigorous cultural scene of Los Angeles, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel is an urban counterpart to Hauser & Wirth Somerset, the acclaimed arts center which opened in July 2014 on historic Durslade Farm on the outskirts of the historic town of Bruton in southwest England.

Hauser Wirth & Schimmel opened with the cross-generational international exhibition, ‘Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947 – 2016.’ Through nearly 100 works made by 34 artists over the past 70 years, this ambitious undertaking traces ways in which women have changed the course of art by deftly transforming the language of sculpture since the postwar period. Works on view reveal their makers inventing radically new forms and processes that privilege solo studio practice, tactility, and the idiosyncrasies of the artist’s own hand. ‘Revolution in the Making’ explores multiple strains of artistic approaches, characterized by abstraction and repetition, that reject the precedent of a monolithic masterwork on a pedestal, employing such tactics as stacking, hanging, and intertwining, to create an intimate reciprocity between artist and viewer. The exhibition examines how elements that are central to art today – including engagement with found, experimental, and recycled materials, as well as an embrace of contingency, imperfection, and unstructured play – were propelled by the work of women who, in seeking new means to express their own voices, dramatically expanded the definition of sculpture.

On view through 4 September 2016, ‘Revolution in the Making’ is co-curated by Paul Schimmel and Jenni Sorkin, art historian, critic, and Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

‘Revolution in the Making’ includes many works on loan from nearly 60 major American museums, private collections, and artists’ estates, as well as new sculptures commissioned for the exhibition.