Matt Hope packs his extensive, daunting show at Ace Beverly Hills with all sorts of power -- of the hand, mind and machine. Some of it seduces with the allure of exquisite craft. Some of it unnerves by seeming not quite safely harnessed.
Born in London and living in Beijing, Hope is a resourceful, skilled maker in multiple media. He draws large, intricate scenes of industrial buildings in ruin and flame, as if factories in the business of producing collapse. He sculpts sleek tools out of solid stainless steel: hammer, knife, nail, wrench. Enshrined in clear, vault-like vitrines, they read as relics, homages to manual facility rendered untouchable and unusable.