An Artful, Mythic Mess

Elliott Hundley’s Major New Exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, ‘Proscenium,’ Interacts with the Museum’s Antiquities-Filled Entryway and Showcases the L.A. Artist’s Unique Aesthetic

Work by Elliott Hundley at Santa Barbara Museum of Art | Photo: Josef Woodard

When in Berlin several years ago, I was making one of my pilgrimages to the stunning Philharmonie concert hall in the Tiergarten area. A youngish orchestral musician sat next to me, and upon learning I was from Santa Barbara, he drifted off into a dreamy-eyed reverie, talking about his love for the antiquities at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA). He said the word twice, as if savoring a memory of an ultra-fine dining experience he hopes to someday replicate: “antiquities.”

Outsiders may know better than we the virtuous population of celebrated antiquities in the Ludington Court entryway gallery of the SBMA, an enlightened space some of us long-timers may take for granted. The story shifts dramatically at present, thanks to the artful deconstructions and imaginative treatments of mid-career L.A. artist Elliott Hundley.

Deep inside the museum, in the Davidson Gallery, we find a sizable survey of Hundley’s art, called Proscenium. Up front by the State Street entrance, though, Hundley, long obsessed with the lessons and characters in Greco-Roman mythology, has directly addressed — and redressed — the very reality of our museum’s existing art and artifacts in Ludington Court, in ways both reverential and post-modernistically mischievous.

[Click to zoom] “By Achilles’ Tomb” by Elliott Hundley at Santa Barbara Museum of Art | Photo: Josef Woodard

Welcome to the site-specific installation he calls “By Achilles’s Tomb,” which forces us to reconsider the turf of the familiar, in a space we thought we knew. Traditionally, the Ludington Court vestibule gallery contrasts sharply with the programming and changeable ambience of rotating art in SBMA’s inner galleries. Via Hundley’s erudite and respectful hijinks, a strong contemporary/conceptual art air livens up the room. His artistic adornments pay respects to the antiquities while figuratively messing up the furniture, questioning the potentially elitist standards of conventional museum protocols.

“Lansdowne Hermes” with Elliott Hundley art at Santa Barbara Museum of Art | Photo: Josef Woodard

The famed nude sentry of the museum’s prized “Lansdowne Hermes” (Roman, first half of the 2nd century CE) is now surrounded by florid throw pillows and a translucent green vitrine housing an original leg calf fragment replaced in a 2016 Gerry restoration. Hundley manages to alert us to the very history of the towering, unclad hero.

Collection touches on the artist’s attention to minutiae and historical factoids, with its large collaged gathering of images of the Ludington Court’s art, and modern-day art handlers in the mix. Large and fluidly expressive semi-abstract paintings placed high on the walls of the high-ceilinged space also help to alter the very feel and historical patina of this typically more antiquated art gallery.

Looking up is also required — the domain of Hundley’s gangly, junk-art-flavored suspended sculptures, including “By Achilles’s Tomb,” reimagines the Greek hero’s final resting place in art-encrusted junkyard terms. The living artist more explicitly engages with the permanent collection antique art in the case of his crate-meets-hospital/asylum bed structure cradling the in-house “Satyr” (Roman, 2nd century CE).

On the back wall, home to a collection of precious ancient perfume bottles, Hundley flies in the crasser aromatherapy of perfume magazine ads for a perfume and a mosaic-like constellation of color.

“Satyr’” by Elliott Hundley at Santa Barbara Museum of Art | Photo: Josef Woodard

One recurring artistic method and material in Hundley’s art in the Proscenium portion of the show is the use of tiny image cutouts and items pinned to the art’s surface, often in a mind-boggling profusion suggesting a rippling texture rather than itemized details. It’s as if he is a cultural and archeological variant on the neurotic etymologist — obsessively collecting artifacts and cataloging them by pinning them to his art for posterity and creative stake-claiming.

(In an interesting coincidence, Hundley’s pin-reliant art is on view adjacent to the similar insect-like pinning process in Dario Robleto exhibition in the neighboring gallery).

“Proscenium” by Elliott Hundley at Santa Barbara Museum of Art | Photo: Josef Woodard

Hundley’s installation work bearing the exhibit title Proscenium packs a heap of data into a small passageway gallery. The installation, buzzing around several smaller specific works in a thicket of stimulus, consumes the walls and floor with splashes of multicolored debris and detritus. Just as the term “proscenium” is used for its reference to the buffer spaces around a stage separating actors and audience, the installation blurs the line between discrete art objects and their seemingly chaotic surroundings. On close inspection, though, meticulous miniaturizing work has gone into the mad blankets of visual input.

“The Plague” by Elliott Hundley at Santa Barbara Museum of Art | Photo: Josef Woodard

Things can go dark in Hundley’s artistic vision, to pulpy degrees. References to horror imagery and Antonin Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” sneak into works such as the epic, red-suffused “The Plague” — apocalyptic but playful — and the imploded satire of B-movie/slashers flick promotion in “Buried Alive.” “Tiered Sounds” is a nightmare on Hundley Street, in 2D and 3D. Here, the larger pins become implements of foreboding themselves rather than just means of affixing — like a bed of nails or a perilous pincushion effect.

“Tiered Sounds” by Elliott Hundley at Santa Barbara Museum of Art | Photo: Josef Woodard

This is art that can make a strong and even slightly turbulent psychic impression, but that feels no compunction to easily explain itself or its objectives. Dream logic rules here. A working dichotomy in Hundley’s distinct and personal approach to art-making allows its surface messiness and seeming festering chaos work alongside a fiendish attention to detail and underlying narrative contexts.

In short, you get a lot for your money with this show, and the show-within-a-show-within-an-antiquities-salon. A long, languorous and, most importantly, open-minded time allotment in the museum is advisable.

Proscenium: Elliott Hundley is on view at Santa Barbara Museum of Art (1130 State St.) through August 31. See sbma.net/exhibitions/proscenium-elliott-hundley.