Frances Stark’s “Why should you not be able to assemble yourself and write?” is on display at the Hammer Museum. (photo courtesy of the Hammer Museum)

The Hammer Museum presents an exhibit titled “UH-OH: Frances Stark 1991-2015” running through Sunday, Jan. 24.

The exhibit is the most comprehensive mid-career survey of the work of the Los Angeles-based artist and writer to date. It includes 125 drawings, collages, paintings and video installations.

Stark is a key figure in the Los Angeles art community who has shown her work throughout the United States and Europe. For more than two decades, she has made poetic and poignant compositions combining text and imagery and exploring subjects, such as writing, procrastination, the banality of life, failure, success, pride, self-doubt, motherhood, pedagogy, institutional critique, class, music, literature, poetry, philosophy, art, sadness and relationships.

The exhibition tracks her 25-year career from early carbon drawings to intricate collages, and mixed-media paintings to more recent work including PowerPoint slide shows, video, performance and Instagram photographs.

Words and images are at the heart of Stark’s art, and like a lyricist, she employs both to create provocative and self-reflexive works that pose universal questions.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue of newly commissioned essays by Ali Subotnick and Howard Singerman as well as contributions from artists, writers and critics addressing an existing dialogue that Stark’s work has generated over the years.

The Hammer Museum is located at 10899 Wilshire Blvd. For information, visit www.hammer.ucla.edu.