Karl Haendel: Pieces of Language

Public Scribble # 1; 2009; enamel on wall; 80 x 120 ft.; installation on Soho, New York City; Courtesy of Art Production Fund, New York.

Installation View, Whitney Biennial 2014, , Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, photo credit Sheldon C Collins

Karl Heandel at the Lever House, NY, 2010, Courtesy of Lever House Art Collection, photo credit Jesse Davis Harris.

Down Box (Football # 10),  2012, pencil on paper, 102 x 156 in., photo credit Robert Wedemeyer. 

Thumbprint #2, 2008, pencil on paper,  MDF frame, 112 x 84 inches.

Thumbnail #2 (Detail)

Killing Picasso#2  (mirrored), 2010, pencil on paper, 30 x 22 in,,  courtesy Yvon Lamder Gallery, Paris; credit Karl Haendel 

Unfinished Obama (mirrored) 2016, pencil on paper, 63.5 x 51.75 in., photo credit Trevor Good

Ripped Paper (Ripped) (White on Black) 2009 pencil on ripped paper,  mounted to board, 80 x 52 in., courtesy Harris Lieberman Gallery, NY. 

 

Installation View, Double Dominant 22 (El Hill), pencil on paper, 103 x 85 in..

Production # 2, 2008, 79 x 52 in.

In Studio Drawing In Brief, 2002

 

 My work is anchored in the production of large, labor-intensive pencil drawings.  Drawing is a medium that is often undervalued and underexplored, so it leaves me a lot of space to operate. Drawing is relatable and democratic, and I appreciate it for its affordability, lack of pretense, ease of storage, and small carbon footprint. But conceptually drawing also feels right to me, as it is visually appealing without being visually indulgent, allowing me to foreground the conceptual, linguistic and political content that I believe art can communicate so well. I think of my drawings as not as individual works, but more like pieces of language arrayed on the wall that syntactically need each other in order to function. For this reason I usually show my work as groups of drawings in installation form. Through juxtaposition and order, with help from the delicate virtuosity of the drawing surface, I try to slow viewers down, hopefully challenging them to think about how images shape our conceptions.

Karl Haendel is an artist who makes drawings, installations, films, and public projects. He received a BA from Brown University in 1998 and a MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003. He also studied at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Articles and reviews on his work have been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian, as well as in magazines including The New Yorker, Artforum, Frieze, Art and America and Modern Painters.  He has been included in the Biennial of the Americas (2015), the Whitney Biennial (2014), Biennale de Lyon (2013), Prospect (2011), and the California Biennial (2004, 2008).  His work is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Guggenheim Museum, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, MA, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany and the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway. He has been the recipient of grants from the Pollock Krasner Foundation and the California Community Foundation. He is represented by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY, Wentrup, Berlin. He lives and works in Los Angeles.