LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Hammer Museum presents Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World, the first North American retrospective of artist, performer, poet, essayist, and activist Jimmie Durham (b. 1940, Washington, Arkansas) who is one of the most compelling and inventive artists working internationally today. After studying art in Geneva and then returning to the United States and working for the American Indian Movement for several years, Durham became part of the vibrant New York downtown art scene in the 1980s. In 1987 he moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, and then to Europe in 1994. While his work has been widely shown and critically embraced in Europe and elsewhere, he has rarely exhibited in the U.S. during the last two decades. Nonetheless, Durham’s work is meaningfully connected to important activities, movements, and genres of American art since the 1980s—including assemblage using found objects, appropriation of text and image, institutional critique, the politics of representation, performance art—and, moreover, to the colonial history and political struggles of the country.

At the Center of the World, the artist’s first major U.S. exhibition since 1995, features nearly 200 works from Durham’s expansive practice including sculpture, drawing, collage, printmaking, photography, and video, dating from 1970 to present. With strategic wit and humor, his works tackle important issues like the vital role of art in critical thinking, modes of representation, genocide, and statehood. Boundlessly curious, Durham takes on subject matter ranging from specific historical events or figures—such as Malinche and Cortez—to classical architecture, religious martyrdom, quantum physics, and literary sources from Shakespeare to Jose Saramago. Durham’s work offers a vital perspective on present-day discussions about the relationship between the local and the global; the interface between art and activism; and the history of sculpture as a medium tactically and conceptually entwined with everyday life. Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World is on view at the Hammer from January 29 – May 7, 2017.

“We’re thrilled that one of the first exhibitions in our newly renovated galleries will be Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World,” said Hammer Director Ann Philbin. “Durham is an important American artist whose work is crucial to a full understanding of the history of American art. He provides a singular and vital perspective on America’s colonial history, while also approaching his work from a distinctly international position, believing that artists should be citizens of the world.”

“Durham’s interests are broad—history, science, architecture are recurring subjects, for example—and his wide-ranging work as an artist, essayist, poet, and activist cannot easily be defined. His distinctive wit, attentiveness to materials, and interest in language are central to his practice,” said exhibition curator Anne Ellegood. “Durham’s works represent what art does at its best: interrogate, complicate, implicate, remind, lament, satirize, and savor, giving us hope that intelligence today might outweigh the stupidity of yesterday.”

The retrospective is organized in roughly chronological order, elucidating various aspects of Durham’s practice:

• At the core of Durham’s practice is process-driven sculptural assemblage, which can take the form of a small wall relief, a human-scale freestanding sculpture, or a room-size installation. Combining natural elements with manufactured objects, much of it discarded or found and reanimated by the artist, the works question ingrained hierarchies of materials and mediums as well as the modernist preoccupation with originality and artistic heroicism.

• The exhibition traces Durham’s ongoing use of materials such as wood, stone, and animal parts (skin, fur, bone), and his deep knowledge of not only the physical properties of his chosen materials, but their geographic, economic, and cultural histories.

• Durham is committed to philosophical and critical inquiry and positions his art in opposition to categorization, monumentality, and what he sees as corrupt systems of belief. He is committed to shedding light on the complexities and limitations of historical narratives, notions of authenticity, and the borders and boundaries that try to contain us.

• An accomplished writer, Durham’s works often combine texts with objects, putting language and materials into energetic interplay. The combinations suggest possible meanings while also elucidating the playfulness of language, how it can be wielded to mislead or oppress, and its limited capacity to truly describe our experiences.