Cruise Control Contemporary presents:

Steve Hanson – RECONSTITUTIONS

September 6th-October3rd

In RECONSTITUTIONS, Steve Hanson returns to his California art origins, tracing a line back to his formative years at CalArts in the late 1980s while rooting firmly in the present-day landscape of Santa Barbara’s coastal ecology. Known locally as a surfer, community gardener, and meticulous re-shaper of land, Hanson transforms the detritus of his landscaping practice—organic matter, discarded wood, sun-bleached remnants of earthwork—into sculptural gestures that oscillate between shrine and artifact.

By relocating these materials from their outdoor contexts into the gallery space, Hanson stages an intimate re-reading of Land Art traditions. Rather than monumental interventions upon vast terrains, RECONSTITUTIONS embraces a humble, human scale, creating indoor micro-landscapes where decay, fragmentation, and renewal become subjects of quiet veneration.

The works resist permanence. Weathered branches, uprooted flora, and raw textures are assembled with a reverence for their transience, inviting viewers to consider entropy not as loss but as transformation. Through acts of salvage and decontextualization, Hanson subverts assumptions of what constitutes waste, proposing instead a poetics of care—small altars to what has been shed, what has survived, and what could germinate anew.

This exhibition marks a return and a continuation: a full-circle moment where Hanson’s early conceptual training converges with decades of hands-in-the-soil experience, creating a practice that is both ecological and devotional, sculptural and horticultural.

Join us for a show that celebrates cycles of tending, discarding, and rediscovery—where art is not only made from the land but made with it.