LEARNING CURVE
Alexa Almany, Karl Haendel, Pamela Ramos
August 9 - September 6, 2025
Timeshare is pleased to present Learning Curve, a three-person exhibition including
work by Alexa Almany, Karl Haendel, and Pamela Ramos. The term “learning curve” was introduced in the early 20th century by T.P. Wright, illustrating progress as a steady rise in skill over time. Simultaneously, Jean Piaget was writing about learning as a series of punctuated shifts rather than a smooth ascent. Children don’t simply accumulate knowledge along a clean trajectory - they alternate between assimilation and accommodation. These phases often include regressions and contradictions, where previous understandings break down before new ones emerge. This discontinuous, recursive structure complicates the understanding of a “learning curve” as steady or incremental progress. Instead, development appears as a jagged, looping path. Alexa Almany’s Love, alexa is a series of wall drawings composed of the artist’s childhood diary entries between 2000 and 2003. In these works, Almany meticulously mimics her early penmanship, staying true to the immature dexterity in the original entries while scaling them up to span from floor-to-ceiling. The text itself is simultaneously sincere and humorous - reflecting on awkward childhood encounters with adult rules and categories. Karl Haendel’s drawing, A Sunday Afternoon on the Eastside of Los Angeles (2023), reinterprets Seurat’s historic pointillist composition A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-86). Haendel meticulously renders the landscape of the
composition in graphite, while his daughter populates the scene with figures using ink. Her improvisational marks disrupt the compositional precision of Haendel’s dutiful interpretation of the original, infusing the work with a sense of spontaneity, curiosity, and intergenerational collaboration. Pamela Ramos includes a group of small-scale sculptures built from found toys between 2018 and 2025. The head of Bart Simpson, Spider-Man, Smurfette, and Minnie Mouse are attached to fuzzy limbs and placed on plastic tricycles with battery packs and wire wrapped around their bodies. While their scale and material evoke toys of early childhood, their assembly produces an uncanniness. When activated, the sculptures chaotically cycle around the room or in circles until their batteries die, playfully placing themselves within the installation.
WORKS LIST
A Sunday Afternoon on the Eastside of Los Angeles
Karl Haendel
2023
Pencil and ink on paper
51.25 x 76.25 inches
Tues, Jan 8, 2002
Alexa Almany
2025
Dimensions variable
3-17, and 19-03
Alexa Almany
2018
Dimensions variable
100th day, 2001
Alexa Almany
2025
Dimensions Variable
Jan, 24, 2002
Alexa Almany
2025
Dimensions Variable
good night and day, 2002 Alexa Almany
2025
Dimensions variable
Bart
Pamela Ramos
2018
Found toy, motors, alligator clips, alkaline battery, rubber bands,
epoxy putty, acrylic paint
5 x 7 x 5.5 inches
Spiderman
Pamela Ramos
2018
Found toy, motors, alligator clips, alkaline battery, rubber bands,
epoxy putty, acrylic paint
5 x 7 x 5.5 inches
Minnie
Pamela Ramos
2018
Found toy, motors, alligator clips, alkaline battery, rubber bands,
epoxy putty, acrylic paint
5 x 7 x 5.5 inches
Speedy Gonzales
Pamela Ramos
2025
Found toy, motors, alligator clips, alkaline battery, rubber bands,
epoxy putty, acrylic paint
5 x 7 x 5.5 inches
Sylvester
Pamela Ramos
2025
Found toy, motors, alligator clips, alkaline battery, rubber bands,
epoxy putty, acrylic paint
5 x 7 x 5.5 inches
Wile E.
Pamela Ramos
2025
Found toy, motors, alligator clips, alkaline battery, rubber bands,
epoxy putty, acrylic paint
5 x 7 x 5.5 inches
Smurfette (for Sam)
Pamela Ramos
2025
Found toy, motors, alligator clips, alkaline battery, rubber bands,
epoxy putty, acrylic paint
5 x 7 x 5.5 inches
ARTIST BIOS
ALEXA ALMANY
Alexa Almany (b. 1993, Los Angeles, CA) is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from ArtCenter College of Art and Design (Pasadena, CA, 2019) and her undergraduate degree from Hampshire College (Amherst, MA, 2016). Recent exhibitions have included: CHIMERA’D (Phase Gallery, 2025); The Warmth of the Day Leaves Shadows on the Ground (Gattopardo 2024); A Room of One’s Own? (QuorumQuorum, 2023); Air Kiss (Gattopardo, 2022); The All Else (QuorumQuorum for OPAF, 2021); Everything I want to say to the world right now (Meridian Exhibitions, 2020); The Day That Dawns for You, Will Also Dawn for Me (Jessica Dillon x Scranch, 2020); Tin Flats Experimental Flea (Tin Flats, 2019); Going Clear (ArtCenter DTLA, 2019); Good for the Jews (ArtCenter College of Art and Design, 2019), Mediated Translations (ArtCenter, 2018). She has published two artist books, a pocket watch with a floral back piece (2021) and Unattributable Nods (2021).
KARL HAENDEL
Karl Haendel is an artist who makes drawings, installations, films, and public projects. He received a BA from Brown University in 1998 and a MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003. He also studied at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His recent solo museum exhibition, Less Bad, originated at the Kimball Art Center, Park City, in 2024, and traveled to the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University, Malibu, earlier this year. Articles and reviews on his work have been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian, as well as in magazines including The New Yorker, Artforum, Frieze, Art and America and Modern Painters. He has been included in the Biennial of the Americas (2015), the Whitney Biennial (2014), Biennale de Lyon (2013), Prospect (2011), and the California Biennial (2004, 2008). His work is in the collection of
The Museum of Modern Art, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The
Guggenheim Museum, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, MA, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway. He has been the recipient of grants from the Pollock Krasner Foundation and the California Community Foundation. He is represented by Vielmetter, Los Angeles, and Wentrup, Berlin. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
PAMELA RAMOS
Pamela Ramos (b. 1995, Oaxaca, México) lives and works in Los Angeles.
Exhibition curated by Colleen Hargaden and Andy Bennett