Sanford Biggers' Chimera Series in Los Angeles
Clare Kunny, President and Founder of Art Muse LA
Two monumental sculptures by Los Angeles-born/New York-based artist Sanford Biggers are now installed in greater LA to celebrate the museums where they preside. At the newly opened Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) in Costa Mesa, a reclining figure shimmers on the rooftop terrace of Thomas Mayne’s building that opened in October 2022. And now further up the coast in Westwood, the Hammer Museum salutes their expanded galleries that reopened in April, with an industrial-sized bronze figure by Biggers seated outdoors at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Glendon Avenue.
The piece at OCMA— titled Of Many Waters… (2022)— is a 24-foot-wide-by-16-foot-tall multimedia (aluminum covered with stainless steel sequins) sculpture and Oracle (2021) at the Hammer is a 7.64 ton, 25-foot-tall bronze sculpture. Both sculptures are part of Biggers’ “chimera” series. When encountering these sculptures close-up, one notices the figures are a strange mix of human anatomy with distorted heads with masks.
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