The Hood Gallery
2002-2003
On the streets and freeways of Los Angeles County
Considering the car culture of California it seems slightly contrived to drive your car to a white cube to see art. The Hood Gallery offered a remedy to this by letting the outside of a 1990 Chevy Camaro become the gallery space. For almost two years The Hood Gallery offered the drivers in LA the possibility to enjoy art where it should be seen - or the streets.
Current Contact Info:
Per Hüttner
curatorial_mutiny@yahoo.co.nz
How The Project Started:
When I first moved to Los Angeles (Autumn 2000) I bought the car and the paint on the hood/bonnet was a bit dodgy. So I had the idea of using it as a mobile gallery. It felt totally natural to have gallery that could mostly be seen on the freeways of LA. Due to a lot of personal problems I was not able to realize the project. But I sold the car to a friend and when I returned to LA in April 2002 he agreed to sell the car back to me and I knew that I had to start The Hood gallery. Jane Polkinghorne who worked on this project with me, is in the process of starting her version of the hood gallery in Sydney . I am also looking into the possibility to get corporate sponsorship for doing a global version of the hood gallery where an identical version of a car with an artist's project would be driving for a few months in three cities in three separate continents. This would require sponsorship from both a car-maker and a digital sign-maker.
Artists, Curators, Collaborators, Conspirators:
I ran a gallery with three other artists in Stockholm 1995 - 2001 called Konstakuten. I had also curated a lot of shows around the world as an independent curator. I thus looked up people whose work connected to automobile culture in one way or another or contacted people that I had wanted to work with, but never found the right venue for it. Gradually Jane shared more and more the responsibility for selecting the artists for the project.
Audience, Reactions, Anecdotes, Stories:
The primary audience was other people in cars. In my experience the real hood gallery audience was people on busses and trucks who sat high enough to get a good view of the gallery while we were waiting for a red light at the same time. A quite unexpected audience was also kids in the back seat in the car in front of me who would often have a really good view of the show. They would often signal and try to get my attention in different ways. They loved it!
We also had the private views in conjunction with other gallery openings and the car would be parked outside of the gallery in question. This was a lot of fun - but hardly the purpose of the gallery. A particularly funny story was when I did the Tom Texas Holmes show. We had found a brilliant empty lot next to an old factory building that we were going to use for the opening since Tom didn't want it in art context. It was close to where I lived (between downtown and Silverlake towards Glendale next to the 5 freeway) and the lot was always empty. We send out an e-mail invite to thousands of people with the address of the empty lot... When Tom and I were on our way to buy beer and ice for the opening we went past the empty lot and noticed that a local car-seller had a special sale there. It was full of cars and banners and stuff. We felt totally depressed and didn't know what to do but to buy the beer at the local Costco. Tom comes from a really conservative and religious family but he has severed all contact due to this fact and hates religion with a passion. When we were finished with the shopping Tom prayed to god (for the first and only time in 20 years and in the Costco parking lot) that the cars and sale signs would be gone when we went back. I do not know whether it was god who answered his prayers, but when we went past the lot it was empty again and we could have a really great opening!Other:
The only writing about the project that we did was in the form of a press-release. I think that these, in their own right, constituted works of art. I always sent out the invites to my extensive international e-mail list and we had an amazing following of people who absolutely loved the project all over the world. The e-mail aspect of The Hood Gallery was extremely important.
View All Other:
Vehicle
Jane Polkinghorne Hood
Jane Polkinghorne Hood Detail
Tod Feldman Hood
Twilight Girls Hood (Fur Girl)
Twilight Girls Hood (Fly Girl)
