For his debut solo exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, New York-based artist Daniel Turner will present works created by salvaging, transforming and recontextualizing materials extracted from the Mandalay Generating Station, a decommissioned power plant located 60 miles northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Established in the mid-20th century, the Southern California Edison-operated facility supplied the region’s electricity needs through natural gas-powered thermoelectric generation until its closure in 2017. Turner’s transformation of remnants from the electrical plant into a series of paintings, drawings, sculptures and film echoes a calibrated process of material distillation and site-responsive reflection.
Turner’s practice is driven by the conviction that physical objects are inherently imbued with the emotional, psychological and historical contexts from which they were employed. His examination of the properties of alloys has led to large-scale paintings and works on paper that utilize copper elements extracted from the Oxnard site. Once removed, these components were spliced through an intricate milling process into refined copper wools. Subsequently, these wools were methodically burnished into the surfaces of canvases, resulting in achromatic veils within his picture planes.
In the sculpture ‘Channel Conduit’ (2024), a coiled arrangement of materials stripped from the plant’s infrastructure—that once facilitated the induction of seawater for temperature regulation—are now positioned as conduits for perceptual consideration. Surface textures illuminate the merits of metallurgical compositions once vital to the power plant’s operational systems. Isolated and recomposed, these objects invite reflection between technology, temporality and the invisible elements that environ our immediate consciousness.
A series of vitrines containing schematics, found archival materials and small-scale sculptures provide a traceable lineage of data collection, system processes and procedures fundamental to the functionality of the decommissioned site.
Turner’s latest film Oxnard Harbor (2024) features aerial footage captured via drone orbiting the vacated generating station. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, the vast architecture points to the facility’s once substantial production of electricity for the greater Los Angeles region.
Will you be checking this one out?
