David Hammons Lights

a 1933 px wide screencap of an artforum jpg of a david hammons installation is all black, with a blurry lens flare of blue, with a center of white light, from a single blue flashlight of the sort hammons distributed to guests in a little basket at the gallery entrance. via ursula, the art magazine named after the mother/mother-in-law whose pharmaceutical fortune has underwritten the hauser & wirth gallery empire, a fitting tribute
Wait, Ursula made a screenshot of the installation image from the 2002 Artforum critics’ picks of David Hammons’ Concerto in Black and Blue instead of right-click-saving it? Now I feel like I’m betraying history by renaming the file.

How has there not been more Concerto in Black and Blue content floating around? Do people not go to Hauser & Wirth LA anymore? Is the glow of people recording themselves on their phones ruining it? David Hammons has restaged his epic 2002-3 work in LA. It’s on til June. So grab a little flashlight and become the artwork.

a circal 2002 jpg, 400 x 301 pixels wide, of david hammons' concerto in black and blue, is a field of all black, with a single slightly refracted burst of blue light on the left edge, caused by one tiny blue flashlight of the kind handed out to gallery visitors. via artforum
oh wait, the original Artforum img is actually beautiful. 2012/12/picksimg_large-6.jpg, 400×301 px. I must make this a work.

Meanwhile, Ursula has a great essay by legendary filmmaker, gallerist and Hammons whisperer Linda Goode Bryant, who filmed the opening night of Concerto in Black and Blue at the vast NYC outpost of Ace Gallery:

He allowed me to be inside for the opening, to make a short film of what happened inside. And what people didn’t know is that David was actually in there himself that night. I only knew where he was because I had a microphone on him. But he was otherwise totally invisible, moving around among everyone else, watching what they did and what they made, present and at the same time absent.

LGB talks incisively about walking and seeing with the artist, and getting hints of how he sees and works. It confirms my theory/suspicion/last-ditch hope that we are in fact living in David Hammons’ world, and often just don’t realize it.

a screencap of a 2019 corey vs corey youtube video documenting a visit to the david hammons exhibition in la, where a floor lamp with a sothebys shopping bag for a lampshade stands in an otherwise empty corner of the vast gallery. youtube ux cruft and the cvc art tv watermark along the bottom of the img
Hammons Sotheby’s Bag Lamp coreyvscorey-screencap

Meanwhile, the book finally documenting Hammons’ sprawling 2019 show at H&W LA is out now, not in May, which means the lamp with the Flavin X Sotheby’s shopping bag lampshade I had to scavenge screenshots in the backgrounds of peoples’ youtube videos like a dog to see is now beautifully photographed on its own.

a spread from david hammons' 2025 book about his 2019 show at hauser & wirth LA as two installation photos: on the left, a thin, mid-20th century brass floorlamp stands in the corner of a white cube gallery, plugged into the wall. its traditional lampshade has been replaced by an upside down shopping bag with a dan flavin light grid on one side, the kind that would hold an auction catalogue, or a gift bag. on the right, a french antique style red upholstered fauteuil with the front legs cut off sits on its side underneath five large, vertical framed photos of white people sitting in the chair outdoors, in a parklike setting, using their own legs to complete it. from the hauser and wirth shop

A Walker in The City | Linda Goode Bryant [hauserwirth/ursula]
David Hammons, Concerto In Black And Blue, 18 Feb – 1 June 2025 [hauserwirth la]

untitled_picksimg_large-6.jpg, 2025 [greg.org]
Previously, related: Untitled (unnamed.jpg), 2019
Previously, related jpg constraint, alternate naming convention: Untitled (300 x 404); Untitled (290 x 404)