You may know Doc Hammer for his work as co-creator of Adult Swim’s The Venture Bros. He’s also an accomplished New York based painter, influenced by 19th century classical art. At that time, Symbolism was popular in Europe as an intellectual style of painting with gothic components. Hammer’s “Saints” series, which shares a similar aesthetic, will exhibit August 2nd at Century Guild gallery in Culver City. It is his ongoing series of oil paintings that portrays modern, dark haired women with a streak of antiquity. There is an anger and sadness to his work, a visceral feeling, with careful studies of Caravaggio-like light on the sitter’s skin and bra. In his words, “Each painting expands on a very quiet theme. It is in this broad-based repetition that each painting’s unique characteristics become huge gestures of a “moment”. Ya see, they are all going to hang together in one room. Like a melancholic choir of tiny moments forever lost. Without having a rap like “This one is a tree, and this one is huge and mostly purple, etc.” The viewer is forced to deal with each face, each moment… I see all of these paintings as unique, little eternities of the human condition, and the feminine allure. And, yes, they have bras on.” A creative who embraces challenges, Hammer describes working on the show as a Herculean task. And although he approaches it with his well-known sense of humor, this is also the work of someone with a sensitive eye for the aspects of our existence.
This weekend,