Steven Hull

Man, Myth & Magic, 2017
7509 Girard Ave

23' 3" x 25' 10"
Alan and Marleigh Gleicher - Wall Sponsors

Steven Hull’s mural, Man, Myth & Magic, is part of a series of artworks inspired by circus imagery and its interaction with landscape. In 1987, Hull visited the artist made carnival exhibition Luna Luna Park curated by Andre Heller and has been intrigued by themes of the circus ever since. Man, Myth & Magic mixes bright, graphic color with whimsical notions as landscape is transformed into abstract figuration amidst checkered blue sky and pink clouds. Hard lines are aptly broken up by soft pools of bleeding watercolor. The viewer is transported into Hull’s visual fantasy that straddles between reference and abstraction into the mysterious world we associate with the carnival. 

Steven Hull is well known as a multi-media artist with an equally prolific curatorial practice. Hull was born in 1967 in Lakewood, California. Hull received both his BFA and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. He co-founded the artist-run gallery and creative space, Las Cienegas Projects, located in Los Angeles. He creates visual fantasies that straddle between reference and abstraction fabricating mysterious world often associated with themes of the carnival and circus, both of which have fascinated him since the 80s. Hull creates immersive installations that combine his whimsical, colorful paintings and drawings with complementary sculpture and sound media where all facets seek to inform one another.

He has worked collaboratively with many artists, writers, and musicians to create original publications and albums, in which artists of different media respond to one another through music, writing, and visual works of art. He is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painting and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. His work has been featured in numerous institutions including the San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego; The Neues Museum, Berlin, Germany; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Hull lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Photos by Philipp Scholz Rittermann