Artists both document and produce history. They simultaneously exist in its stream while forging their own artistic pathways. Printed images have always been a source of historical knowledge for artists, and printmaking in turn, is a means of making their own histories visible to us now.

LA Magic Hour compliments Tacita Dean’s previous lithographic project with Gemini G.E.L., LA Exuberance (2016) (also on view), which depicted white clouds contrasted with the bright cerulean blues of a typical Los Angeles sky. This time, the artist has focused on the sunsets of Los Angeles, for which the city is famous. Dean began by working from the many spray chalk drawings she created for LA Exuberance, narrowing the selection down to fifteen. The images were then inverted and rotated to find the desired compositions.

Ann Hamilton is well known for her large-scale installations and collaborations with diverse groups of visual artists, poets, and performers. The five new lithographs on view now are a continuation of a previously published series of eight screen prints related to the artist’s 2015 exhibition the common SENSE, commissioned by the Henry Art Gallery. As a Visiting Fellow at the University of Washington, Hamilton was given unfettered access to the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, where she was seduced by the extensive collection of mammal, bird, and amphibian specimens.