Anyone deeply schooled in American concrete poetry from the 1960s has likely come across the impoverished-looking but insight-rich work of Aram Saroyan, son of William Saroyan, and creator of the one-word poems “lighght” and “eyeye”. In a rave New York Times review, Richard Hell basically calls it some of the most radical stoner poetry of the day.
What early fans might not realise is that this born-and-bred New Yorker has been living in the Los Angeles area since 1987, writing in many genres and teaching at the University of Southern California. And he has just written a new super-minimal poem for the Hammer Museum, made out of the soft tissue of language, like conjunctions and articles. It will serve as the subtitle for the institution’s biennial of local artists: “Made in LA 2016: a, the, though, only.”
The Hammer’s Aram Moshayedi, who is co-organising the exhibition alongside Hamza Walker of Chicago’s Renaissance Society, said they invited Saroyan to “use the space of the title” as his contribution to the show. “His presence in the exhibition won’t have a physical manifestation—the piece doesn’t have any physical weight,” explained Moshayedi. “We think of this piece as being wide in its reach but ephemeral.”
The last edition of Made in LA featured only 35 artists—a small group by most biennial standards. And for next year? “All I can say at this point is that we’re really trying to focus on individual artists and consider them in their singularity, so we are thinking about larger, more substantial, in-depth presentations,” Moshayedi said, adding that the names would be announced towards the end of January. The exhibition will run 12 June to 28 August 2016.