Broad’s Robert Therrien present is artist’s largest-ever solo exhibition

When somebody visits the Broad museum for the primary time, they normally ask one in every of three questions, says curator Ed Schad: The place is the Infinity Room, the place is the Balloon Canine or the place is the desk?

“The desk” is a reference to artist Robert Therrien’s 1994 sculpture, “Below the Desk,” which was the very first piece of artwork put in on the museum when it opened in 2015. It consists of a 20-foot-long wood desk with six matching chairs every practically 10 toes tall. Pictures of museumgoers standing and grinning beneath it litter social media.

“We wish that query to show right into a profound understanding of the person who made it,” Schad continues, referring to the largest-ever solo museum present of Therrien’s work — titled “Robert Therrien: This Is a Story” — scheduled to open Nov. 22 and run via April 5, 2026.

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Therrien is known for his large-scale sculptures — towering stacks of vertigo-inducing dishes, large beards, monumental folding chairs and outsized pots and pans in humongous cabinets — however each bit is a “entice door,” says Schad.

“You might suppose you’ve acquired it instantly after which the ground falls out,” he says.

Paul Cherwick and Dean Anes, who’re co-directors of the artist’s property and labored carefully with Therrien for years earlier than his loss of life in 2019, elaborate on Schad’s evaluation.

Large stacks of pots and pans created by Robert Therrien are on show at his downtown L.A. studio. “He didn’t discuss blowing issues up,” says one in every of Therrien’s property managers, Dean Anes. “He talked about creating an surroundings that you just had a response to.”

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Occasions)

“He didn’t discuss blowing issues up. He talked about creating an surroundings that you just had a response to,” Anes says throughout a latest tour of Therrien’s studio and condo close to downtown L.A. “A lot of it’s about his childhood recollections and experiences. And his curiosity, I really feel, was to have the ability to give viewers a possibility to set off their very own childhood recollections and emotions and experiences via the work.”

Standing beneath a Therrien desk does, certainly, produce imprecise — typically unsettling — recollections of being a small human in a not-yet-understood world of massive issues. If Therrien’s sculptures symbolize the unknown, he didn’t discuss it, says Cherwick. The artist saved his underlying intentions to himself.

Therrien’s legacy is finest examined via his relationship — and significance — with sculpture in L.A., says Schad.

“It sounds grandiose, however it’s true, Los Angeles is likely one of the finest locations to make sculpture on Earth,” he says, rattling off a who’s who of well-known L.A.-based sculptors, together with Robert Irwin, Helen Pashgian, Larry Bell and John McCracken, who was additionally Therrien’s pal.

The checklist of L.A. artists who’ve made “implausible contributions to the worldwide dialogue about sculpture goes on and on and on,” says Schad. “Robert Therrien was not solely part of that dialog, however was vitally current.”

A stack of large dishes subsequent to a blue oval within the upstairs gallery of Robert Therrien’s downtown L.A. studio. The dishes create a sense of vertigo when a viewer walks round them.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Occasions)

Therrien confirmed his work with famed artwork sellers Leo Castelli and Konrad Fischer, and was featured within the 1985 Whitney Biennial and the 1995 Carnegie Worldwide. He was additionally one of many artists that Eli and Edythe Broad collected most. There are 18 Therrien items of their assortment, spanning his whole profession. The Broads first met and befriended Therrien as a nervous younger artist who introduced a poodle for emotional help throughout their first assembly within the Nineteen Seventies.

The upcoming exhibition on the Broad will characteristic 120 items of labor, together with sculpture, pictures, portray, drawing and different ephemera, occupying the complete 10,000-square-foot floor flooring. It is going to embody an intimate collection of never-before-seen smoke alerts — cartoonish puffs of white smoke — fabricated on stretched automobile upholstery that Therrien made when he was dying of most cancers and will barely elevate a pen.

“If you take a look at his profession as a complete, it speaks in a really intimate approach to what Los Angeles is — and was — as a metropolis,” Schad says. Therrien was wild and experimental within the Nineteen Seventies, as a part of a feral group of artists who interacted and shared concepts with scientists at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This led to experimentation with the revolutionary strategies of fabrication that might later outline the scene.

“The town has a lot house as effectively,” says Anes. “Early on, in fact, rents had been cheaper. You could possibly get an industrial house and you might be left alone. Bob carved this house out — created it himself — and he didn’t have neighbors. He was right here by himself, growing concepts and dealing on issues.”

Robert Therrien’s paintbrushes grasp in his studio. The solitary artist created artwork in any respect hours of the day and evening.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Occasions)

The artist Cherwick and Anes describe was a quiet, reserved man with a wonderful humorousness. A solitary determine who most popular working alone and wanted massive doses of St. John’s wort to get via days when his studio buzzed with folks. He was 6 toes, 2 inches, wore a dimension 12 shoe and sported a go well with jacket that was barely too large. He was a ruminative thinker, and sometimes introduced a ebook as a present when he visited somebody.

“He had a kind of Fred Gwynne high quality to him,” says Cherwick, referring to the actor who performed Herman Munster within the ’60s sitcom “The Munsters.”

“He was very candy,” provides Anes. “I form of consult with him as your favourite odd uncle.”

Above all, they are saying, Therrien was a consummate employee.

“That’s all he lived to do,” says Cherwick, trying across the studio. “He was in right here working on a regular basis — always. He made his entire life and existence about simply being right here.”

Therrien’s studio was in-built 1990 however designed to resemble an industrial, institution-like house from the ’30s or ’40s. The outside partitions are his signature salmon pink and the bogs are virtually a century outdated. The bottom flooring was his artistic playground, stuffed with provides, instruments and enormous items of artwork, together with a large beard that greets company upon arrival.

Robert Therrien would host lengthy lunches at his kitchen after excursions, typically serving salad out of a large bowl.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Occasions)

There’s a Shaker-inspired gallery upstairs with ceilings which might be virtually 16 toes tall. Therrien by no means opened the gallery to the general public however typically hosted museum teams and curators, taking them to his adjoining condo afterward and lingering over an extended lunch of salad served from a large bowl.

Because the studio was constructed earlier than live-work areas had been widespread, Therrien needed to design his modest condo as a “watchman’s quarters” with a purpose to adhere to constructing code. It encompasses a classic kitchen with pink-and-white tiling, drab olive partitions and industrial brown flooring.

The “heroes” that impressed his large dishes relaxation on the counter and the affect for “Below the Desk” is his precise eating desk. Polaroids, knick knacks and mementos are fastidiously organized in numerous tableaus — a lot as he left them. A closet-sized house throughout from the toilet homes cabinets of vinyl data, tapes and DVDs. Stereolab, Duke Ellington, “Sounds of Halloween” and a mixtape labeled “Bob Foo Younger” are among the many eclectic auditory choice. Therrien liked music and had the studio wired with audio system. Earlier than that, he put a tape deck on a rolling cart.

Although Robert Therrien was 6 toes 2 and wore a dimension 12 shoe, he most popular a mattress that didn’t match him in scale.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Occasions)

His bed room all the time surprises company, says Cherwick, getting into the small, windowless rectangular house. It options solely a single twin mattress lined with a easy quilt on a severe-looking iron body. A small crucifix is affixed to the wall above, and a rolling, pink-topped hospital desk sits on the far facet of the room.

“That is the very last thing everyone sees,” says Anes. “The final assertion.”

“He was a giant man … that was not sufficient mattress for him,” provides Cherwick. “He grew to become out of scale along with his personal existence.”