L.A. artist brings “The Adopted” to Brandstater Gallery

“I've been looking specifically at films in which white characters attempt integration with American Indian tribes or simply white actors are playing the rolls of Native North American characters,” said Hagler. “There’s something simultaneously problematic and cliché in these depictions, but it also reveals what I think of as a very real American ambivalence present in a post-industrial, post-colonial society like ours.”

This week Hagler began exhibiting this most recent work in a show called “The Adopted” at La Sierra University’s Brandstater Gallery. The exhibit consists of five or six large paintings, the largest of which is 8-feet-by-12-feet, and two or three smaller works, as well as a 12-minute video installation titled “Between Winds” which re-contextualizes moments from the films. An artist’s talk and reception will be held Sun., Nov. 8 at 6 p.m. The exhibit will be on display through Dec. 3.

Hagler arrived in Los Angeles a year-and-a-half ago and previously lived 12 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The Adopted” is Hagler’s first solo show in Southern California. In January the exhibit will travel from La Sierra to JAUS Gallery in Santa Monica. Hagler’s paintings have been exhibited extensively throughout North America, Europe and Australia, including group shows this year in Los Angeles, Vienna, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Basel. Hagler’s work has also captured the attention of such prominent media as The New York Times, Art Ltd., Juxtapoz, Fabrik Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The Adopted” evolves from work Hagler exhibited in San Francisco and Houston. The mixed-media paintings are created on surfaces that range from canvas to wood panels to polyester film.

The works isolate moments in the films and derive readings outside of the filmmakers’ original intent, with quotes and situations determining the manner in which the paintings are made. For instance, the film “Little Big Man” features Dustin Hoffman as an adopted Cheyenne warrior who in a fight with a calvary man shouts, “Do I have to cut your throat for you to see that I am white? Now give me something to wipe this paint off with.” In reference to this line, Hagler begins his studio sessions with a palette knife, scraping away at the surface of previous paintings to remove half-dried paint and uncover hidden layers. 

In his creative work Hagler aligns himself with the archetype of the colonist or settler. “I'm looking at imagery that reveals some kind of paradoxical coexistence of amnesia and redemptive impulses, and making the paintings in such a way that suggests digging into the surface, scratching away at it with a pallette knife,” he said. “The viewer could read the process and the resulting colors and textures as a kind of search, a dig, erasure, or allowing for the mystery of uncertain memories or half-memories.”

“I’m conscious of my place in the world as a descendent of colonists and settlers, as part of the legacy of Westward Expansion,” said Hagler. “My great-great grandmother, a Cherokee, was purchased like property by my great-great grandfather, who was white. Even if we are sincere in our redemptive yearning, we misunderstand the imagery we're appropriating in order to alleviate ourselves from the burden of a cruel and deeply uncomfortable history.”

Last year Hagler and fellow artist Maja Ruznic published the collaborative art book DRIFT based on a three-month trek working with Syrian refugees and orphans in the Middle East and Europe, a life-changing venture. The deeply introspective work Hagler is currently displaying, while only indirectly related to his experience in 2013, would not have occurred without that experience, he said.

“The impact on my work was significant,” said Hagler. “There's something about witnessing the effects of violence on such a massive scale that leaves you feeling not just sad for the victims and their families, or frightened, or angry, but somehow ashamed of the relief you feel of your own survival."

"When you try to convey atrocity to people in a comfortable environment, you sense that you’ve violated some kind of prohibition or etiquette. This exists not just in the literal and immediate sense, but also in the abstract historical sense--we don't like our collective narratives disturbed, especially if it casts the culture we identify with in less flattering light--and you could say this explains a lot about the cultural amnesia we are sedated by here in the U.S.,” said Hagler.

Hagler also serves this fall quarter as an adjunct faculty member in La Sierra’s Art+Design department where he teaches painting. “I feel that if I can get them to a place where they understand painting, the act of it, better than they did before, and they have enough learned tools at their disposal to help them to better transcend previous limitations, then it's more likely they'll get invested in the types of discoveries to be made over the course of creating a painting,” he said. 

In the mean time, Hagler is excited about ideas for his next body of work and is “thinking more sculpturally now. I think now of the panel or canvas as a site for excavation physically and conceptually. I think this will lead me back into sculpture which I haven’t done for about three years now. I don’t know what the sculptures will look like, which is a very exciting mystery for me.”

Brandstater Gallery is open Mon. – Thurs., 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. For further information call 951-785-2170. La Sierra University is located at 4500 Riverwalk Parkway, Riverside. A campus map is available at https://lasierra.edu/campus-map/.