Los Angeles nonprofit Materials & Applications (M&A) curates exhibitions and commissions work by architects, designers, and artists to provide a platform for experimental architecture. Its newest exhibition, Why Not Things? PUUUULP on display, foregrounds the personal protective equipment (PPE) and other basic supplies that became critical survival tools during the pandemic. “This project is really interesting in that it is a portion of a larger, ongoing conversation at M&A about mutual aid,” said Jesse Hammer, the designer of the exhibition and the person who runs PUUUULP, a Los Angeles–based studio practice whose work explores the intersection between art history and architecture. “These objects can be positioned as something of care and love instead of something that we throw away and take for granted.” Hammer’s installation occupies M&A’s storefront space on Sunset Boulevard. “We used the storefront as a storage system for water and recast [it] into an exhibition space for our heat-aid project of distributing water and PPE,” Hammer said. “The storefront itself became an information system and a storage system on how to get involved in the project.”
Keren Dillard