Karl Haendel

Born 1976 in New York, NY
Lives and Works in Los Angeles, CA

Each of the labor-intensive pencil drawings Karl Haendel's Biennial installation represents a general theme, such as “Fruit,” “Weather,” or “President’s Day.” The artist finds his source material online, in commercial shopping areas, and in publications then turns the image into a 35mm slide and places it in his large personal archive under a thematic subject heading. From there he may collage the image with related pictures or otherwise digitally manipulate it; finally, it is projected on the wall for him to translate into a drawing. Haendel’s objective is to transform the stream of words, images, and brands that he encounters on a daily basis into a controlled visual system, or “Haendel language,” that he employs to explore timeless artistic themes through his own, twenty-first-century mode. While the scale of this work—reaching through Western visual culture as well as the glut of the contemporary moment—is notably dense, it nonetheless remains a personal, even hermetic, endeavor; Haendel spends copious amounts of time browsing through images, texts, and other forms of cultural production that possess meaning for him.

The titles of the project—the Theme Time Drawings—and of the individual drawings come from a satellite radio program that Bob Dylan hosted from 2006 until 2009 called Theme Time Radio Hour.

On View
Fourth Floor

Karl Haendel ’s work is on view in the Museum’s fourth floor galleries.

2014 Biennial: Karl Haendel

Works by Karl Haendel

Karl Haendel, Theme Time – Fruit, 2013. Tarpaper, matboard, and pencil on cut paper, 45 1/4 × 60 1/4 × 2 in. (114.9 × 153 × 5.1 cm) framed. Collection of the artist; courtesy Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. © Karl Haendel. Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer
Karl Haendel, Theme Time – Friends & Neighbors, 2013. Pencil and enamel on cut paper, 37 × 52 in. (93.98 × 132.08 cm) framed. Collection of the artist; courtesy Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. © Karl Haendel. Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer
Karl Haendel, Theme Time – Presidents Day, 2013. Two drawings: pencil on paper with shaped frames, 69 × 52 in. (175.3 × 132.1 cm) each framed. Collection of the artist; courtesy Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. © Karl Haendel. Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer
Karl Haendel, Theme Time – Weather, 2013, pencil on paper with shaped frame, 45 1/4 × 68 in. (114.9 × 172.7 cm) framed. Collection of the artist; courtesy Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. © Karl Haendel. Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer
Karl Haendel, Theme Time – Colors (version 2), 2013, pencil and enamel on cut paper, 71 × 52 in. (180.3 × 132.1 cm) framed. Collection of the artist; courtesy Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. © Karl Haendel. Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer
Karl Haendel, Theme Time – Blood, 2013. Pencil and enamel on cut paper, 104 × 73 1/2 × 2 in. (264.2 × 186.7 × 5.1 cm) framed. Collection of the artist; courtesy Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. © Karl Haendel. Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer
Karl Haendel, Theme Time – Danger, 2014. Pencil on cut paper with shaped frame, 36 × 52 × 2 in. (91.4 × 132.1 × 5.1 cm) framed. Collection of the artist; courtesy Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. © Karl Haendel. Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer