Time and Material Feel Alive in Hammer’s ‘Several Eternities in a Day’
There is something primal, almost amniotic, about entering the dim space that makes up the first gallery of “Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials” at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Here, the walls thrum with a muffled sound reminiscent of waves crashing or a creature breathing. The air is heavy with petrichor. In this cave-like space, the past feels briefly palpable in the present. That soundscape is one of three compositions created for the exhibition by Raven Chacon. With speakers embedded into one wall, Study for Vertical Earth (2026) amplifies the otherwise sub-audible frequencies emanating beneath the earth’s surface. We register the raspy, low decibel recording as a vibration coursing through the room, through the body. Round the corner and the source of that perfumed scent comes courtesy mounds of loamy soil that line the perimeter and form a pathway from the mouth of the show into its depth. To this seemingly ancient installation titled Ch’ablin nu rayb’el Chua taj ab’ej (2026), Edgar Calel has added banded boulders …

