Image: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
The Hammer Museum is presenting ‘Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials’, an exhibition that includes Carmen Argote and 21 other artists working with materials that are described by the museum as active, unstable and changeable. The exhibition is on view at the Hammer in Los Angeles through August 23, 2026.
According to the museum, the project brings together 22 artists from North, Central and South America who embrace the unpredictable nature of living materials. The exhibition uses avocado, cacao, achiote, cochineal, stone, clay and natural dyes among its material references, with works ranging from large-scale installations and paintings to works on paper and mixed-media sculpture. The museum says these materials “evolve, decay, drip, crumble, and evaporate.”
Hammer’s exhibition page says the project was organized by Pablo José Ramírez, curator, with Jessi DiTillio, curatorial assistant. The page also notes lead support from Teiger Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, along with major support from Alicia Miñana and Robert Lovelace. Additional support is listed from Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild, Betty Duker, Beth and Kenneth Karmin, and Tracy O'Brien and Thaddeus Stauber, with media sponsorship by KCRW 89.9FM.
Argote is one of the artists featured in the show, and the museum’s Hammer Channel has also released a video profile devoted to her practice. In the video, Argote says, “Painting with avocado became almost like an affirmation that I was here.” The profile describes her work as closely tied to her experiences as a member of the Mexican American community in Los Angeles and notes that her practice spans performance, painting, drawing and large-scale installations.
The Hammer Channel profile offers a glimpse into the methods behind the exhibition. For the paintings included in ‘Several Eternities in a Day’, the museum says Argote treated oil paper with cochineal and lemon to create an unpredictable chemical reaction that produced a textured, vivid red surface. She then painted from a moveable platform hovering above the paper, using mashed avocado without a brush and working with her hands, fingers, arms, feet and legs in fluid movements.
The museum’s video also presents Argote’s process as one of attunement. In the profile, she describes it as “like a radio station that I like tune into, like a frequency.” The exhibition as a whole reflects that emphasis on material transformation, bringing together artists whose works are grounded, in the museum’s words, in “the spirit, memory, and knowledge of Brown and Indigenous worlds.”
‘Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials’ opened April 5, 2026, and continues through August 23, 2026 at the Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles.
