“Julie Becker: I must create a Master Piece to pay the Rent”

Born in Los Angeles, artist Julie Becker (1972–2016) employed photography, video and architectural installation to explore the psychic landscape her hometown and the many dichotomous tensions (between stardom and broken dreams, fantasy and reality, glamour and blandness) that characterizes life there. Pieces like her ambitious Researchers, Residents, A Place to Rest (1993–96—a warren of office-like spaces including one that contained a scale-model of the haunted Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining—plumbed the intersection where the generic and the marginal collide. Becker’s career became largely overlooked after what seemed like a promising start: She made an appearance at the 1996 Bienal de São Paulo fresh out of grad school at CalArts, and subsequently exhibited at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among other high-profile venues. But the artist’s struggles with drugs and depression, which led to her suicide in 2016 at age 44, may have contributed to under-appreciated status of her work. Nevertheless, this show, originally mounted by London’s ICA, should go a long way to renewing interest in Becker’s dark vision of La-La Land.