Installation photo credit: Joshua Schaedel

Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Karl Haendel on the opening of his solo exhibition Less Bad at the Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA. The exhibition will be on view from May 17 to July 27, 2025. A public reception will be held on May 17th from 3-6pm with an artist conversation at 4pm.

Organized in collaboration with the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah, where it premiered in fall 2024, Less Bad features recent large-scale drawings that explore themes of masculinity, intimacy, friendship, fatherhood, and loss, while embracing the artist’s signature blend of technical virtuosity and dry, disarming humor.

Working primarily in graphite on paper, Haendel has long used the traditional tools of draftsmanship to create complex, often conceptually layered images that reflect the contradictions of contemporary life. In an age dominated by digital production, his commitment to slow, analogue mark-making is a deliberate invitation to pause, look closely, and engage deeply.

The exhibition takes its title from Haendel’s own aspirational mantra, a self-deprecating yet sincere call to do better. In recent works, he turns his critical lens inward, questioning what it means to be a good man, a present father, a supportive friend. His approach to masculinity is particularly personal and striking: rather than reinforcing cultural tropes of strength or stoicism, Haendel emphasizes tenderness, ambivalence, and emotional honesty.

Less Bad includes a selection of Haendel’s recent text-based drawings, each presenting a paragraph of confessional, first-person reflection. In their frankness, these works surface personal experiences of love, insecurity, fatherhood, and loss, while also probing the limits of Jewish identity, masculinity, and cultural belonging. Together with Haendel’s figurative drawings, they form a powerful meditation on the ethics of self-representation, emotional transparency, and the stakes of trying to be “less bad.”

Karl Haendel: Less Bad is co-organized by Aldy Milliken, executive director of the Kimball Art Center, and Andrea Gyorody, director of the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art.Produced in conjunction with the exhibition, a fully illustrated catalogue published by Skira features new writing by Aldy Milliken and Andrea Gyorody; reflections by Darren Bader, Ray Anthony Barrett, Karla Diaz, Hazel Haendel (the artist’s daughter and collaborator), and Michelle Jane Lee; and an interview between Karl Haendel and Analia Saban. The book is anticipated in early fall 2025.