LA-based Claude Collins-Stracensky takes as his subject the fundamental aspects of the natural world—light, energy, and time—in a practice that embraces a range of mediums. The exhibition will present a group of new sculptures and two new large photographic lightbox wall reliefs, alongside a selection of photographs taken since 2001. From the face of a boulder rendered a glowing silver by the sun to a dramatically collapsed pavilion near the Santa Monica airport after a wind storm, Collins-Stracensky’s images capture moments that heighten our awareness of the constant interactions and changes occurring in our environment between systems, materials, and forms. Our desire to contain nature and our mediated experience of the natural world is explored in several recently completed sculptures, which consist of 2-way mirror tinted and perforated glass and colored Plexiglas vitrines containing objects such as painted palm fronds and sea shells placed atop precisely rendered steel bases. The filtering of visual information and the need to view the sculptures from multiple vantage points will be mirrored by Collins-Stracensky’s interventions into the space for which he will make perforations in the walls and install colored film onto the windows.

Hammer Museum