Karl Haendel: Less Bad
Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, May 17–July 27, 2025
Less Bad is Karl Haendel’s first solo museum exhibition in Los Angeles in nearly two decades. The exhibition features recent large-scale drawings that examine masculinity, intimacy, friendship, fatherhood, and loss. With a blend of technical precision and dry, self-aware humor, Haendel invites viewers to slow down and reflect on the contradictions of contemporary life.
Working primarily in graphite on paper, Haendel embraces analogue mark-making as both method and metaphor. His text-based drawings pair confessional, first-person reflections with the labor of drawing, surfacing relatable experiences of love, insecurity, grief, and Jewish identity. These works, alongside a selection of intimate figurative drawings, explore vulnerability and emotional honesty as essential counterpoints to stereotypical expectations of masculinity.
Organized in collaboration with the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah, Karl Haendel: Less Bad is co-curated by Aldy Milliken and Andrea Gyorody, and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Skira, anticipated in fall 2025. This exhibition is supported by a generous grant from the Pasadena Art Alliance.
Photos: Joshua Schaedel
