Karl Haendel’s large-scale, photorealist pencil and ink drawings function as complex installations investigating the relationship between photography, representation, and truth. This exhibition of the LA artist’s work comprise a salon-style hanging of works on paper joined by a grouping of Haendel’s 8 x 12-foot studio walls, removed from his studio and reinstalled in the center of a gallery. The generally mass-media derived images enlarged and reproduced photos from newspapers, magazines, advertisements, textbooks, and family albums, with subjects ranging from a penny to a Cadillac SUV.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.
Begun in 1992, the original Focus Series (1992–1998) was dedicated to presentations of distinct bodies of work by artists working in all media and featured a roster of distinguished local and international artists.
The Focus Series quickly became core to the museum's mission and identity as the artist's museum. Over a subsequent three-year period in the mid-2000s, the series was revived briefly but powerfully, featuring primarily LA-based artists and representing the first LA museum exhibition for artists including Eric Wesley (2006), Lecia Dole-Recio (2006), Alexandra Grant (2007), and Sterling Ruby (2008).
MOCA Focus: Karl Haendel was organized by Gabriel Ritter and Gloria Sutton, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.