Elliott Hundley
Book of Sand
September 16–October 24, 2026
Artist led walkthrough: Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 11 am
Opening reception: Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 6–8 pm
Regen Projects is pleased to present Book of Sand, an exhibition of new paintings, sculptures, and a tapestry by Elliott Hundley. Marking the artist’s seventh solo exhibition with the gallery, the presentation furthers Hundley’s rich, multifaceted approach to materiality through an expanded lens of metacognition and philosophically grounded play. Whereas previous exhibitions have drawn from the subject matter and esprit of Euripidean tragedies, Rilke’s sonnets, and plays by Artaud and Genet, Book of Sand focuses on Hundley’s own exuberant internal universe.
With each work in the show, Hundley follows a path of automatism: compiling paint, paper cut-outs, string, encaustic, and other found materials without a predetermined narrative or aim. Hundley’s characteristic use of pins and accumulation as both method and content surfaces throughout the exhibition as an important symbol for the conscious and unconscious act of becoming. “The pin, collecting, assembling, is simultaneously the desire to remember, to track, to understand—and also to lose track, to lose oneself in the fantasy of one’s objects of desire, one’s attachments, becoming plural, multitudinous, and overwhelmingly so. A self forgotten in its manifold projections, collections, memories, and possibilities.” (Jonathan Alexander, Los Angeles Review of Books, 2023)
The exhibition engages Jungian sandplay therapy, a method which enables unconscious elements of the psyche to become visible and processed by playing with miniature figurines in a tray of sand. Often used for children and adults who struggle with trauma, the sand tray provides another modality for expressing intense emotions beyond language. Certain paintings in the presentation are bordered by a pronounced frame echoing the boundary of a sand tray, while the gallery space becomes a psychic arena in which the artworks are arranged as figurines.
The sculptures are constructed around objects that hold personal resonance for Hundley, who then embellishes them through accumulation. With Palette (2024)—a vertically-oriented amalgam of concrete, steel, plastic, rope, wood, yarn, cable, leather, bone, rattan, paper, encaustic, wire and feathers—the artist free associates objects he has collected in his studio into a totem-like offering. The large tapestry on view integrates pieces of the veil his mother wore on her wedding day as a gesture collapsing memory, familial heritage, identification, and maternal attachment into a monumental tableaux. Hundley’s exhibit is titled after Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Book of Sand, wherein a mysterious, diabolical bible embodies the concept of infinite mutability. Echoing Borges’ metaphor Hundley’s works, like “neither the book nor the sand has any beginning or end.”
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Elliott Hundley (b. 1975 Greensboro, North Carolina) received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence in 1997 and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2005. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Recent solo exhibitions include Proscenium: Elliott Hundley, Santa Barbara Museum of Art (2025); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2011); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2012); and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2006). Selected group exhibitions include Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2024); the 5th Prospect New Orleans triennial (2021); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2021); The Broad, Los Angeles (2018, 2023); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017; 2016; 2011; 2010); 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2015; 2013; 2010; 2009; 2007); Istanbul Museum of Modern Art (2015); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2011); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010; 2007); and Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010; 2007).
Hundley has curated exhibitions such as By Achilles’ Tomb: Elliott Hundley (2025–26), an intervention by the artist contrasting and complementing his own works with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s collection of antiquities, and the inaugural edition of Open House at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2019). He received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019.
Work by the artist is held in prominent collections including Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive; Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection, Paris; The Broad, Los Angeles; DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Istanbul Museum of Modern Art; The Kavli Foundation, Oxnard; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Arts San Diego; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Sishang Museum, Beijing; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa; Vancouver Art Gallery; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Weatherspoon Art Museum; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; among others.
