Hammer Student Association to host ‘Arts Party: Transferal’

For Iris Colburn, the president of the Hammer Student Association, the theme of transferal relates to the conversion of three-dimensional objects into works on paper and conversion of forms into grids – both current exhibitions at the Hammer Museum.

The Hammer Student Association, a UCLA student group affiliated with the Hammer Museum, will host this year’s “Arts Party: Transferal” on Tuesday, built around projects by UCLA- and Los Angeles-based artists.

“It’s about introducing people to contemporary, young artists who are in Los Angeles or at UCLA right now and bringing them into the museum,” said Colburn, a third-year art history student.

Colburn said the main theme of the night is “Transferal,” and in keeping with that theme, some of the projects are forms of art that attendees make at the event and take with them. Seven workshop spaces form the core of the party and aim to give students an experience close to working in an art lab.

Current students will be an important part of the evening, Colburn said. Theo Triantafyllidis, a Design | Media Arts graduate student, will feature a three-pronged exhibit, using the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset to place partygoers in a painting studio, and allowing students to draw designs in the virtual space. They’ll also be able to make unusually shaped balloons out of rubber materials.

Third-year fine arts student Julienne Fusello, part of the the Hammer Student Association’s events committee, said the group wants to keep the feeling of being in concert with the artists.

Fusello said it’s about keeping the artist’s practice and sharing it with a large group of people, meaning making a demo or use of the same materials that they use.

Longtime collaborators, architecture graduate student Jia Gu and project director and core faculty in the Urban Humanities Initiative Jonathan Crisman, will bring the framework for a paper model of a “Probable City” in the center of the Hammer courtyard. Participants will collaborate to create a map of an imagined flat city, following procedural rules but creating something new. Since the map is directly below the bridge on the Hammer’s second floor, it can be viewed from above.

“(We wanted to) draw on that history … of Los Angeles, and do it in a participatory way,” Crisman said.

Other groups will bring other projects, like miniature fingernail art. Musical entertainment will include Iconic Splendor, a band fronted by Nathan Ward, who plays a character obsessed with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art lights. Subtrança, a glitchy, industrial group, will provide the audiovisuals.

Colburn said student educators will give tours of the Hammer Museum’s current exhibits that tie into the event’s themes. The Hammer currently exhibits the architectural work of Britain’s Heatherwick Studio; an exhibit of 20th century rubbings; the grid-based, mathematically styled art of Charles Gaines; and pre-20th century paintings including a Rembrandt, a Titian and a Rubens.

The event ties into those themes but will try to work them in in a collaborative manner, Colburn said.

Second-year art student and member of the Hammer Student Association Oscar Peña said the event is targeted toward students who haven’t necessarily been to the Hammer Museum before.

“A lot of people say that they have the Hammer Museum on their UCLA ‘Bucket List,’ and they never go here,” Pena said. “We want to give people a reason to come down.”