The Hyundai Project: Art + Technology

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art(hereinafter "LACMA") has its roots in the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, established in 1910 in Exposition Park. In 1965, LACMA opened to the public in its Wilshire Boulevard location with the permanent collection, special exhibitions and public programs and has been offering a broad range of experiences over the decades. LACMA and Hyundai announced the collaborative partnership in 2015 to explore two significant fields together, one of which is Art + Technology. Numerous initiatives including exhibitions which push the boundaries of merging art and technology and challenge creative minds of today will be presented under the umbrella of ‘The Hyundai Project’ throughout the LACMA-Hyundai partnership.

As a first step, Hyundai has supported the acquisition of Robert Irwin’s Miracle Mile (2013), currently on view in BCAM, and James Turrell’s Light Reignfall (2011). The two works are significant in that both artists were members of the initial Art + Technology at LACMA, a program of the late 1960s that brought together prominent artists and major corporations. The ‘Art + Technology Lab’ which can be said to have been inspired by the ‘60s program has been providing grants, in-kind support, and facilities at the museum to support new projects that take purposeful risks and foster collaboration across disciplines. Hyundai is the presenting corporate sponsor for the lab supporting artists to explore new possibilities while also offering the opportunity to the public to view new trends in contemporary art.

<HYUNDAI Meets, The Hyundai Project 2015: Art + Technology at LACMA> is brought to you as part of the ‘HYUNDAI Meets’ project, which has captured all exhibitions presented through Hyundai Motor’s partnerships through a series of films, was established to share diverse works of art, exhibitions and insight of leading figures in the art scene with the audience across the globe.

In this fourth episode of the HYUNDAI Meets series, we introduce you to the first exhibitions presented as ‘The Hyundai Project: Art + Technology at LACMA’ - <Rain Room> by Random International and <The Sympathetic Imagination> by Diana Thater. Please join the incredible art and technology journey offered by the pioneering artists.

Video artist Diana Thater exhibited at LACMA as part of the Art + Technology initiative supported by Hyundai Motor's 10-year partnership with the museum. Los Angeles-based artist Diana Thater has created influential video and installation works that have been innovative as they have been challenging of established norms.

Her works touch upon a wide variety of sources, including literature, animal behavior, mathematics, chess, and sociology. Her primary interest is to explore the relationship between humans and nature, and the distinctions between nature that can and cannot be manipulated. The layered imagery of her project evokes the complex relationship between time and space. Over the past decade, Thater has presented numerous solo exhibitions at prominent institutions including the Kunsthalle Bremen in Germany, the Natural History Museum in London, and the Dia Center for the Arts in New York. Her works are also part of prominent museum collections worldwide, including LACMA, Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, a testimony to the concordant recognition her works receive around the globe.

<Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination> introduced by LACMA and Hyundai provided a rare opportunity to view 25 years of work by Diana Thater, one of the most important artists to emerge during the 1990s.

Presenting 22 influential works of art in film, video and physical installation including her most widely recognized <Delphine>(1999) and <knots + surfaces>(2001), the exhibition occupied approximately 20,000 square-feet, being LACMA’s largest monographic exhibition dedicated to a female artist to date. In addition, her most recent work <Life Is a Time-Based Medium>(2015) which questions distinctions between the tame and wild through focusing on the behavior of monkeys at the Galtaji Temple in India was also on view. The exhibition which opened on November 22, 2015, ended on April 17, 2016 in great success.