The Hammer Museum's sixth biennial survey, offering hugely diverse work made by the show’s 39 artists, is marked by the pandemic catastrophe and materiality.
THE DISTANCE from the Knox-Less service station in Oklahoma City to Bob’s Seaside Service, not so far from the Santa Monica Pier at the terminus of Route 66 both pictured in Ed Ruscha’s 1963 artist’s book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations was about 1,400 miles. It’s a drive Ruscha has taken many times since he traveled it with Mason Williams in Ruscha’s lowered 1950 four-door Ford, with throaty Smitty Glasspack dual muffler, following their graduation from Oklahoma City’s Classen High School in 1956.1The trail from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles via Route 66 holds a mythic place within the lore of the