Helmut Lang: What remains behind

MAK Center for Art and Architecture presents What remains behind by Helmut Lang in the artist’s first solo institutional exhibition in Los Angeles at the Schindler House. The historic house designed by fellow Austrian Rudolph Schindler provides the spare, proto-minimalist frame for a series of freestanding sculptures. Neither entirely figurative nor entirely abstract, they bring a fundamentally reductivist approach to material that is deeply impregnated with the burden of history. Sometimes this reads as a confrontation between the body and its past derelictions. At others the current is sexual, an accumulated tension that itself becomes a stand-in for human identity, vulnerability and desire. Always they occupy a liminal space where form is in a continual state of becoming.

Artist biography
Helmut Lang lives and works in New York City and on Long Island. He has exhibited since 1996 in Europe and the United States, among others, at the Florence Biennale, Florence (1996); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (1998); The Journal Gallery, New York (2007, 2019); kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (2008); The Fireplace Project, Long Island (2011); Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow (2011); Mark Fletcher, New York (2012); DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens (2013); Sperone Westwater, New York (2015, 2017); Dallas Contemporary, Dallas (2016); Sammlung Friedrichshof, Zurndorf (2017); Stadtraum, Vienna (2017); von ammon co, Washington DC (2019); MoCA Westport (2020); and Saint Laurent Rive Droite, Paris (2020) and Los Angeles (2021).

Curator biography
Neville Wakefield is a postmodern writer and curator interested in exploring the ways in which art behaves outside of institutional contexts. As senior curatorial advisor for PS1 MoMA and curator of Frieze Projects, he gained a reputation for challenging the conditions that shape art in both commercial and noncommercial contexts. Explorations of time and space have been a signature part of his practice. He has worked extensively with international institutions, including the Schaulager in Switzerland, where he curated the Matthew Barney retrospective Prayer Sheet with the Wound and the Nail, one of the first shows to juxtapose the work of a contemporary artist with that of half a millennium before. Space as it relates to landscape and land art led him to co-found Elevation1049, a site-specific biennial in Gstaad, Switzerland, while also shaping the recurring Desert X exhibitions in the Coachella Valley region of Southern California of which he is Founding Artistic Director. He has also been instrumental in the development and success of Desert X AlUla, taking place in AlUla northwest Saudi Arabia, home to the country’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hegra along with numerous other initiatives aimed at promoting art in the Gulf region.

About the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is a multidisciplinary, experimental center for art and architecture that operates from a constellation of historic architectural sites and contemporary exhibition spaces. Offering a year-round schedule of exhibitions and events, the MAK Center presents programming that challenges conventional notions of architectural space and relationships between the creative arts. It is headquartered in the landmark Schindler House (R.M. Schindler, 1922) in West Hollywood; operates a residency program and exhibition space at the Mackey Apartments (R.M. Schindler, 1939) and runs more intimate programming at the Fitzpatrick-Leland House (R.M. Schindler, 1936) in Los Angeles. The MAK Center encourages exploration of practical and theoretical ideas in art and architecture by engaging the center’s places, spaces, and histories. Its programming includes exhibitions, lectures, symposia, discussions, performances, music series, publication projects, salons, architecture tours, and new work commissions. 

The exhibition is presented with the support of Saint Laurent.