Robert Therrien @ The Broad, Los Angeles - "Robert Therrien: This is a Story" - The largest museum exhibition of the artist’s work to date

Robert Therrien: This is a Story

The Broad, Los Angeles

November 22, 2025 – April 5, 2026

Robert Therrien

No title (folding table and chairs, dark brown), 2007

Painted steel and aluminum, fabric, and plastic 

Courtesy of Glenstone Museum 

Photo by Joshua White/JWPictures.com

The Broad presents Robert Therrien: This is a Story, the largest museum exhibition of the late artist’s widely-adored work to date. Therrien’s meditations on scale and material are a deeply influential and well-known approach within the field of contemporary sculpture, significant to The Broad’s own identity as a museum, and long admired by visitors of all ages. The installation will showcase Therrien’s personal vocabulary of images and symbols—from enormous tables, chairs, and dishes, to intimate drawings of snowmen, birds, and chapels—as they become a language of continuous creation and transformation for the artist over time. Featuring more than 120 works spanning five decades, the exhibition offers unprecedented access to the artist’s exploration of scale, memory, and perception, just miles from the downtown Los Angeles home and studio space he operated out of for close to thirty years beginning in 1990. Many of the works on view, including those created just before Robert Therrien’s untimely death in 2019, have never been featured in museum exhibitions and will offer new avenues of understanding his practice.

“Robert Therrien has longstanding ties to The Broad and was one of the very first L.A.-based artists to enter the Broad collection decades ago, in its first, formative years. His massive sculpture Under the Table has captivated visitors to our museum’s galleries since the day The Broad opened in 2015, as a surreally enlarged wooden table offering layers of the artist’s intellectual and art historical inquiry within an aura of domestic familiarity,” said Joanne Heyler, Founding Director and President of The Broad. She added, “For our visitors who know and love Under the Table, this ambitious show will reveal a deeper and wide-lens look into the completely unique world Therrien created–a Los-Angeles-based body of work that reshaped contemporary sculpture.”

Robert Therrien

No title (bent cone relief), 1983 

Lacquer and wax on wood 

Courtesy of The Broad Art Foundation

Photo by Joshua White/JWPictures.com

Robert Therrien

No title (black witch hat), 2018 

Carved Delrin plastic

Courtesy of Robert Therrien Estate.

Photo by Joshua White/JWPictures.com

Robert Therrien (1947–2019) was born in Chicago and relocated to Los Angeles in the 1970s to complete an MFA at the University of Southern California. Despite the prominence of conceptual and minimalist practices at the time, he developed his own adjacent artistic vernacular that saw the infinite potential of ordinary objects across basic forms and their three-dimensional counterparts, varying in size, color, and detail. A single Robert Therrien gesture can expand, contract, change materially, or seamlessly transform into other images entirely. A chapel will become an oil can; the oil can will become a pitcher; the pitcher, a cone, then morphing into a witch hat. At the heart of Therrien’s practice is a sense of artistic animation, by turns fun, playful, and serious.

“Los Angeles has been and remains a historically important place to make sculpture and Robert Therrien is vital to that story” said Ed Schad, Curator and Publications Manager at The Broad. “From his handmade and intimate responses to Minimalism in the 1970s, to his early involvement in what would become a golden age of L.A. fabrication, Therrien made important contributions to many of sculpture’s central conversations for over forty years. However, the most important thing to know about Therrien is that he can evoke a sense of wonder. What starts in Therrien’s personal and closely guarded memories and passions, becomes a mysterious place in which a viewer can think about and dwell in one’s own.”

Visitors will be able to walk under and around large tables and chairs, approach enormous hanging beards, and navigate around large, stacked dishes designed to appear to be in motion and alter one’s sense of balance. In addition, a special collaboration with the artist’s estate will expose visitors to partial reconstructions of Therrien’s studio environment, including his project tables, drawings, and tools, to full-sized rooms full of surprises and encounters that are a hallmark of the artist’s practice. Therrien’s living and working space in Downtown L.A. remains pivotal to his understanding of space and size.

In addition to being the largest solo museum presentation of his work to date, Robert Therrien: This is a Story places his legacy within the broader arc of contemporary sculpture in Los Angeles and beyond. An exhibition catalog published by DelMonico Books will develop these connections further, edited by curator Ed Schad and featuring texts by Kathryn Scanlon, Richard Armstrong, and Darby English, as well as reflections from Vija Celmins, Vicky Arnold, Jacob Samuel, Christina Forrer and more.

THE BROAD

221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012

www.thebroad.org

Elmgreen & Dragset @ Pace Gallery, Los Angeles - "The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome" Exhibition

Elmgreen & Dragset

The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome

Pace Gallery, Los Angeles

September 13 – October 25, 2025

Pace presents The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, Elmgreen & Dragset’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles—and their fourth with the gallery. This immersive two-part presentation will occupy the main exhibition space and the adjacent south gallery, exploring themes of scale, perception, and psychological distortion through enactments of doubling and resizing. The show follows Elmgreen & Dragset’s recent solo presentations at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Seoul, and it coincides with the artists’ thirtieth anniversary of working as a duo and the twentieth anniversary of their famed "Prada Marfa" installation, which was unveiled in Texas in 2005.

Renowned for their subversive sculptural interventions, Berlin-based artists Elmgreen & Dragset often examine questions of identity and belonging in their collaborative practice, and they are particularly interested in radical recontextualizations of objects and new modes of representation in sculpture and large-scale installation.

In The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, the artists explore how scale influences our understanding of reality. For this presentation, the duo plays with the physical features of Pace’s Los Angeles gallery, using the architectural division of the gallery as a framework for doubling and resizing. Each artwork is presented in full scale in the main gallery, while exact half-size versions are shown in the adjoining space, which the artists have rescaled into a half-size replica of the main space. This spatial reduplication and resizing is inspired by the neurological condition called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, or Dysmetropsia, in which shifts in perception, often triggered by fatigue, alter one’s experiences of distance and scale.

The first work that visitors will encounter in the exhibition is a hyper realistic sculpture of a female gallery assistant slumped over the reception desk, seemingly asleep. The surreal presentation that follows in the exhibition spaces, where objects appear out of scale, could be a vision or dream playing out in her mind, in which visitors are the protagonists.

The main gallery space will feature new sculptural works and wall pieces—works from the duo’s Sky Target series—that probe the boundaries of the real and the reflected, the seen and the sensed. In their circular Sky Target paintings, fragments of clouds drifting across blue skies are rendered on mirror polished stainless steel disks. The skies are partially obscured by reflective surfaces, allowing viewers to glimpse themselves within illusory “heavens.” Each Sky Target is named after a specific location that the artists have visited. Two circular wall works, which the artists refer to as “stripe paintings,” will also be on view. In these works, vertical bands revealing airplanes and their contrails in the sky alternate with equally sized bands of mirrored strips, creating a rhythm of image and reflection. The tension between transparency and opacity, and representation and self-awareness, is heightened by the viewer’s shifting position within the space.

Two figurative sculptures carved in marble will be presented on the floor of both the main and adjacent galleries. One of these works depicts two young men, both wearing VR goggles, embracing—physically close but mentally elsewhere. The other shows a young man seated with headphones, absorbed in his own auditory reality. These figures embody the contemporary condition of disconnection, amplified by digital mediation. The immateriality of the digital experiences represented in both works is contrasted with their medium, marble, a historically significant and physically durable material that is deeply rooted in the tradition of sculpture.

The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome invites visitors into a mise en abyme of visual and spatial contradictions. While much of our reality has been compressed into the format of an iPhone screen, Elmgreen & Dragset continue their investigations into how physical environments shape our sense of self and how bodily presence still plays an important role in the way we interact with our surroundings.

ARTIST DUO ELMGREEN & DRAGSET

Elmgreen & Dragset (Michael Elmgreen, b. 1961, Copenhagen, Denmark; Ingar Dragset, b. 1969, Trondheim, Norway) pursue questions of identity and belonging and investigate social, cultural, and political structures in their artistic practice. They are interested in the discourse that can ensue when objects are radically re-contextualized and traditional modes for the representation of art are altered. Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset are based in Berlin and have worked together as an artist duo since 1995. They have presented numerous solo exhibitions at prominent institutions worldwide including Kunsthalle Zürich (2001); Tate Modern, London (2004); Serpentine Gallery, London (2006); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2009); ZKM - Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany (2010); Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2011); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2013–14); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2015); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2016); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2016); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2018–19); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (2019–2020); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2022); and Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2023–24). In 2009, they represented both the Nordic and the Danish Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale. They are renowned for large-scale public installations including Short Cut (2003), an installation comprising a Fiat Uno and a camper trailer, which appear to emerge from the ground; Prada Marfa (2005), a full-scale replica of a Prada boutique installed along U.S. Route 90 in Valentine, Texas; and Van Gogh’s Ear (2016), a gigantic vertical swimming pool placed in front of Rockefeller Center in New York City.

Their work is held in public collections worldwide, including ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj, Denmark; Art Production Fund, New York; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Hamburger Bahnhof, Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin; Kistefos Museet, Jevnaker, Norway; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others.

PACE LOS ANGELES

1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles

www.pacegallery.com

Leonor Antunes @ Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles - "discrepancies with E.S. (extended)" + "discrepancies with E.S. (in company)" @ Neutra VDL Studio and Residences, Los Angeles

Leonor Antunes

discrepancies with E.S. (extended)

Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles

6 September – 18 October 2025

Leonor Antunes 

I stand like a mirror before you (2015) 

Plexiglass, brass plates, brass screws

© Leonor Antunes, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery

Marian Goodman Gallery presents discrepancies with E.S. (extended), an exhibition of new works by LEONOR ANTUNES. This exhibition marks Antunes’s second solo show with the gallery. Notably, discrepancies with E.S. (extended) was developed in conjunction with discrepancies with E.S. (in company), a complementary and off-site exhibition curated by Douglas Fogle at the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences in Los Angeles.

Leonor Antunes takes an immersive approach to her subjects, transposing historical forms and precise measures based on deep archival research on artists and modernist histories—often of female protagonists, in order to create sculptures and site-specific interventions. Her work draws on a wide range of sources, lexicons and materials – whether drawing in space with lines and form, exploring the choreographies of volume and movement, the potential of craft or the grid, or the gravity and torsion of objects in space. In celebration of admired and often marginalized stories of people and of time, Antunes embraces participation—fusing her own work with lost histories as a way to reimagine the present and honor the past.

Here, Antunes’s work explores the legacy of an influential twentieth-century female pioneer whose innovations contributed significantly to modernist art, design, and architecture, but were overlooked because these fields have historically been male-dominated. Leonor Antunes studied Elizabeth (née Scheu) Close (1912-2011), a modern architect who was born in Vienna and raised in a home designed by Adolf Loos, where her family hosted prominent artists, architects and designers, including members of the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) and family friend Richard Neutra. Close went on to receive her graduate degree in architecture at MIT and spent the majority of her career designing hundreds of homes and public buildings in Minneapolis while serving as head architect to the University of Minnesota. Antunes was drawn to Close’s relationship to Viennese modernism as well as her pragmatic, unadorned approach to design, and found an affinity to her frequent use of locally sourced, natural materials.

Presented throughout the Main Gallery, the works in this exhibition embrace applied arts and traditional craft practices from around the world that highlight natural materials such as rope, leather, and glass. The back wall of the gallery showcases an 80-foot-long span of two separate bodies of work made from brass and beads. These works are based on historical textile and loom-based patterns that the artist sourced from the archives of the Wiener Werkstätte, Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (MAK), and the Vienna School for Arts and Crafts. Antunes uses these as templates to determine the structure of her works, which at once correspond directly to their original source and yet, when hung vertically with the pull of gravity turning the sculpture into a different shape each time it is installed, become autonomous, fluctuating forms unto themselves.

Creating a dialogue with the architecture of the space, a commanding installation of ropes, coupled with hanging works in leather, adjoin the space between the floor and rafters. The use of rope, initially inspired by a staircase of architect Ernö Goldfinger, becomes an expanded “screen” in this intervention that determines how the viewer navigates and views the space. A surrounding series of floor lamps configured to the various heights of the staff at the gallery, subsequently merging into abstract figures, are extrapolated from a table lamp design originally produced by the Wiener Werkstätte. Through a proposition that reimagines rational, modern design into sculpture, Antunes’s practice embeds the history of a recovered past with radical social and political determinations into objects of both study and poetry in the new century.

The complementary exhibition, discrepancies with E.S. (in company), will open at the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences on Friday, 5 September from 5-7pm and will remain on view through 13 December 2025. A special performance by Franco-American composer and clarinetist Carol Robinson, titled Music for Changing Light, featuring her own music as well as OCCAM III by Éliane Radigue, will be presented on opening night at 6pm. Please note that the Neutra VDL is open to the public on Saturdays from 11 am -3 pm and is located at 2300 Silver Lake Blvd in Los Angeles. 

LEONOR ANTUNES was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1972, and currently lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal (2025); Fruitmarket, Scotland (2023); Serralves Foundation, Portugal (2022); MUDAM, Luxembourg (2020); MASP, São Paulo Museum of Art, Brazil (2019); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2018); Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2016); CAPC Bordeaux, France (2015); New Museum, New York, NY (2015); Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2013); and the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, (2011). Antunes represented the Portuguese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019 and has participated in the 58th and 57th Venice Biennale (2019 and 2017); the 12th Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2015); and the 8th Berlin Biennale (2014).

MARIAN GOODMAN LOS ANGELES

1120 Seward St, Los Angeles, CA 90038

www.mariangoodman.com

NEUTRA VDL STUDIO & RESIDENCES

2300 Silver Lake Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90039

neutra-vdl.org

"Surface Streets" Group Exhibition Curated by Russell Ferguson @ Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles

Surface Streets

Curated by Russell Ferguson

Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles

6 September – 18 October 2025

Wilhelm Sasnal 

Berkeley Street, 2024 

Oil on canvas

© Wilhelm Sasnal, courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery

Marian Goodman Gallery presents Surface Streets, curated by Russell Ferguson, a group exhibition of recent paintings made in Los Angeles. The title of the exhibition, a term that contextually denotes Los Angeles streets (but not freeways), is intended to evoke both the specificity of the local environment and the tactility that is integral to painting. The intergenerational group of artists chosen by Ferguson for this exhibition traces a variety of aesthetics, strategies, and traditions, yet at the same time pays close attention to the physicality of the painted surface which unites them. While many works in Surface Streets depict familiar scenes of everyday urban life, others reach beyond, to a movie set, to an ancient fossil, or even into spaces of fiction and fantasy. 

Surface Streets includes works by Hye-Shin Chun, Kirsten Everberg, Owen Fu, Anna Glantz, Robert Gunderman, James Iveson, Becky Kolsrud, Tidawhitney Lek, Manuel López, Nihura Montiel, Paige Jiyoung Moon, Paul Sietsema, Wilhelm Sasnal, Henry Taylor, and Tristan Unrau.

Hye-Shin Chun (b. 1983, Libreville, Gabon) graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2015). Her work has been exhibited at numerous group shows, including Elsewhere, Ivory Gate Gallery, Shanghai, China (2025); Now You Don’t, Five Churches, Los Angeles (2025); 12 Hour Day - 12 Hour, Helen J Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); and Smoke The Moon Gallery, Santa Fe, NM (2023, 2024). 

Kirsten Everberg (b. 1965, Los Angeles) received an MFA from UCLA in 2004. That same year, Everberg held her first solo exhibition at 1301PE and was included in Russell Ferguson's group exhibition, The Undiscovered Country at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. She has exhibited widely, including at the Scottsdale Museum of Art (2011); Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA (2013); and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims; Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2009); amongst others.

Owen Fu (b. 1988, Guilin, China) received a bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 2018, completed his MFA at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. Recent solo exhibitions include Balice Hertling, Paris (2021, 2023); and Mine Project, Hong Kong (2020). His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023); Beijing Biennale, China (2022); Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China (2022); and Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles (2021).

Anna Glantz (b. 1989, Concord, MA) has exhibited her work in solo shows internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Knowing what you know, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles (2025); Lichens, The Approach, London (2023); Cement Answers, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); and Baby Grand, The Approach, London (2020). Group exhibitions include Untitled (for Jenni), Gordon Robichaux, New York, NY (2025); Trespass sweetly urged, Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2024); A Minor Constellation, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Therein / Thereof /Thereto, Standard (OSLO), Oslo, Norway (2021); and A Love Letter to a Nightmare, Petzel Gallery, New York, NY (2020).

Robert Gunderman (b. 1963, Los Angeles) attended the Otis Parsons School of Art Los Angeles (1989). Recent solo exhibitions include Place Like You, Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); The Quiet Beliefs, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); and Never Let Us Go, Desert Center, Los Angeles (2019). Group exhibitions include Ripe, Harper’s, Los Angeles (2023); LA ON FIREcurated by Michael Slenske, Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); and Between Worlds, Edward Cella, Los Angeles (2021).

James Iveson (b. 1983, England) holds an MFA from University of California, Los Angeles (2016) and a BA from Goldsmiths University of London (2006). Selected solo exhibitions have taken place at South Willard, Los Angeles (2022); Norwich Outpost, Norwich, UK (2012); and Dicksmith Gallery, London (2010). Selected group exhibitions include Taking Care, Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles (2025); 4 X 4, Karma, New York, NY (2024); South Willard, Gordon Robichaux, New York, NY (2023); 356 Mission Road, Los Angeles (2014); The Tetley, Leeds, UK (2014); and Kettles Yard, Cambridge, UK (2013).

Becky Kolsrud (b. 1984, Los Angeles) received an MFA from University of California, Los Angeles (2012) and a BA from New York University (2006). Important solo exhibitions include Elegies, JTT, New York, NY (2021); As Above, So Below, Make Room, Los Angeles (2020); and Yackety Yack Girls, Karma, New York, NY (2011). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon (2022); Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2020); Magenta Plains, New York, NY (2018); Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); and Fredericks & Freiser, New York, NY (2019). Kolsrud’s work is in the permanent collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Tidawhitney Lek (b. 1992, Long Beach) completed her BFA at California State University, Long Beach in 2017. Solo exhibitions include Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA (2023); Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles (2022); and Taymour Grahne Projects, London (2021). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA (2024); Cantor Arts Center Stanford University, Stanford, CA (2024); ICA Miami, Miami, FL (2022); Anat Ebgi, New York, NY (2024); and Ben and Brown Fine Arts, London (2022). Institutional collections include the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; and Pérez Art Museum, Miami.

Manuel López (b.1983, East Los Angeles) attended East Los Angeles College and transferred to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where he earned his BFA in painting and drawing in 2010. He has exhibited in institutions, galleries, and museums internationally and nationwide including Atkinson Gallery at Santa Barbara City College, Santa Barbara, CA (2022); Baik Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2023); Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park, CA (2018); Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles (2023, 2022); and Self-Help Graphics, Boyle Heights, CA (2017); among others.

Nihura Montiel (b. 1988, Tijuana, Mexico) received her BFA from Roski School of Fine Arts, University of Southern California in Los Angeles (2023). Selected solo exhibitions include A Dog Named Masterpiece, Sebastian Gladstone Gallery, Los Angeles (2024); and The Object of My Object, In Lieu, Los Angeles (2022). She has exhibited at Mrs. Gallery, Maspeth, NY (2022); Carlye Packer, Los Angeles (2023); Ochi Projects, Dallas, TX (2023); Château du Marais, Le Marais, France (2021); and Amor Services, Los Angeles (2020). 

Paige Jiyoung Moon (b. 1984, Seoul, South Korea) received a BFA from ArtCenter College of Design in 2012 and graduated from the Seoul National University of Technology in 2007. Her work has been exhibited in solo presentations at Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2024, 2020, 2019), and Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston (2017). Select group exhibitions include Kiaf Seoul, Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2024); Made in L.A. 2023:Acts of Living, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023); and Ogdoad, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles (2018).

Paul Sietsema (b. 1968, Los Angeles) graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (1999) and the University of California, Berkeley (1992). Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver, CO (2014); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2013); Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2012); the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2009); the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2009); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA (2009); and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2003). Sietsema’s work has been exhibited extensively in biennials including Carnegie International (2008), Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, Germany (2008), and Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2019).

Wilhelm Sasnal (b. 1972, Tarnów, Poland) studied architecture at the Kraków University of Technology (1992–1994) and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (1994– 1999). His works have been featured in major exhibitions worldwide, including solo presentations at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2024); and Longlati Foundation, Shanghai, China (2023). Institutional collections include The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, NY, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, among others.

Henry Taylor (b. 1958, Ventura) graduated with a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (1995). A major survey exhibition dedicated to the artist, Henry Taylor: B Side, his largest to date, was exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and was then on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2024). Other select solo exhibitions include Henry Taylor. no title, Hauser & Wirth, New York, NY (2024); Jill Mulleady & Henry Taylor: You Me, Berlin (2024); and Here and There, Tokyo, Japan (2018). In 2018, Taylor was the recipient of The Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize in 2018 for his outstanding achievements in painting. Taylor’s work was presented at the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2017 and the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019.

Tristan Unrau (b. 1989, Brampton, Canada) holds an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles and a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sebastian Gladstone, Los Angeles (2023); 56 Henry, New York, NY (2022); Unit 17, Vancouver, Canada (2021, 2018); and Towards, Toronto, Canada (2020), among others. Recent group exhibitions include 50 Paintings, Milwaukee Art Museum, WI (2023); Drawings, Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto, Canada (2018); and Cynthia Daignault: There is nothing I could say that I haven’t thought before, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2017), among others. 

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Russell Ferguson has lived and worked in Los Angeles for many years. He joined the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 1991, and later became the Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs, and Chief Curator of the Hammer Museum from 2001-2007. Ferguson also served as a professor of the Department of Art at the University of California Los Angeles from 2007-2013. An established scholar and critic of contemporary art, his numerous writings have been published internationally.

MARIAN GOODMAN GALLERY LOS ANGELES

1120 Seward Street, Los Angeles, CA 90038

www.mariangoodman.com

Paul Jasmin & Todd Weaver @ Fahey / Klein Gallery, Los Angeles - "Fade to West" Exhibition

Fade to West

Paul Jasmin & Todd Weaver

Fahey / Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Through September 13, 2025

Fade to West is a photographic exhibition that brings together the visionary work of Paul Jasmin and Todd Weaver—two artists who have made tangible the fleetingness of Los Angeles’s beauty and sunsets.

Though neither artist was born in California, both were drawn to a city as radiant and restless as them. Now deeply rooted in its culture, they embody its essence—capturing not only its landscapes and people, but its elusive atmosphere. The exhibition pairs Jasmin’s evocative portraits and cinematic vignettes with Weaver’s ethereal scenes of nature, offering a dual portrait of a place defined by light, youth, and transience.

Paul Jasmin helped define the visual language of Los Angeles, staging moments of youth and intimacy against the soft glow of the city’s ambient warmth. His photographs are imbued with compassion and quiet curiosity, revealing a version of the city that feels personal, suspended, and tenderly observed.

Todd Weaver, meanwhile, explores the edges of California—its windswept dunes, sunlit surf, and shifting horizons. Through analog processes and in-camera experimentation, his work transforms familiar vistas into one-of-a-kind impressions—each frame a meditation on movement, time, and atmosphere.

Together, Paul Jasmin and Todd Weaver render California not as an ideal or illusion, but as a living, breathing place—one that glows brightest in moments that never last.

Fade to West was developed in collaboration with Paul Jasmin prior to his death, and we are honored to present it as intended—celebrating his artistry and his enduring love for the city of Los Angeles.

PAUL JASMIN (1935–2025) was an American photographer, illustrator, and educator whose work distilled a precise and evocative vision of beauty. Born in Helena, Montana, Jasmin began his career as a painter and actor before turning to photography in the 1970s, encouraged by his friend Bruce Weber. Drawn to themes of youth, innocence, and sexuality, Jasmin created dreamlike tableaux that transport viewers into a world of seductive beauty and languid allure. Set largely in and around Los Angeles, his images explored the tension between aspiration and reality, reflecting a lifelong fascination with glamour, the American dream, and fleeting moments of becoming. His editorial and commercial work appeared in Vogue, GQ, W, Interview, V Man, Teen Vogue, Vogue Hommes, and in campaigns for APC, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks, Nordstrom, and others. He published three monographs: Hollywood Cowboy (2002), Lost Angeles (2004), and California Dreaming (2010, Steidl/7L).

Paul Jasmin was also a dedicated teacher at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, where he mentored generations of emerging artists with a quiet rigor and an unshakable belief in the power of imagination. Known affectionately as “Jazz” by his friends and students, he brought the same sensitivity and elegance to his teaching as he did to his images. Paul Jasmin passed away peacefully at his home in Los Angeles on May 24, 2025, at the age of 90.

TODD WEAVER (b. 1970) is an American photographer recognized for his expressive use of color and intimate portraits of artists and musicians. His work is distinguished by a bold and exploratory approach to color, which brings emotional depth and vibrancy to his images. Todd Weaver began his career under the mentorship of established photographers including William Claxton, Ellen von Unwerth, Herb Ritts, Steven Klein, and Randee St. Nicholas. Developing his own distinctive style, he has created portraits of figures such as André 3000, Lita Albuquerque, Paz Lenchantin, Devendra Banhart, and Father John Misty, and collaborated with brands including Nike, Veuve Clicquot, and Cadillac. His first monograph, 36 (2018), features portraits taken with a vintage half-frame camera, emphasizing spontaneity and intimate moments.

More recently, Todd Weaver has focused on Southern California’s surf culture, creating atmospheric, analog portraits that explore the relationship between surfer and wave. Combining experimental film techniques with a strong compositional sensibility, Todd Weaver has participated in several group exhibitions and has been selected multiple times for the American Photography Annual. His work has also been included in two recent publications by Taschen.

FAHEY / KLEIN GALLERY

148 North La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90036

www.faheykleingallery.com

Upcoming Exhibition @ Fahey/Klein:

Matthew Rolston - Vanitas: The Palermo Portraits

September 25 - November 8, 2025

Fade to West: Paul Jasmin & Todd Weaver

Fahey / Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, July 10 – September 13, 2025

Matthew Rolston - Vanitas: The Palermo Portraits @ Fahey / Klein Gallery, Los Angeles + Other Venues in LA + Special limited-edition monograph on Nazraeli Press

Matthew Rolston

Vanitas: The Palermo Portraits

Fahey / Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

September 25 - November 8, 2025

Photographer and artist MATTHEW ROLSTON, in partnership with Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, ArtCenter College of Design, Daido Moriyama Museum / Daido Star Space, and Leica Gallery, present a multi-venue Los Angeles exhibition of his latest series Vanitas: The Palermo Portraits, alongside the release of a special limited-edition monograph on Nazraeli Press.

Four individual works will be on view in a solo exhibition at Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, which will display the most extensive presentation of the Vanitas series, including the monograph’s cover photograph. 

At ArtCenter College of Design, Rolston will further present a triptych of the Vanitas work as a wall-sized installation at the College’s South Campus, curated by Julie Joyce, Director, ArtCenter Galleries and Vice President, Exhibitions. This presentation will be the only triptych on exhibition; the central panel appears on the clamshell cover of the forthcoming Vanitas monograph, a signature of the series. These three works, hung in ArtCenter’s Mullin Transportation Design Center, comprise two images of mummified children flanking one of an elderly adult, brought together in the style of an altarpiece, where the sacred and mundane, youth and elder age, collide. 

A single work will be shown at a solo exhibition that will open with a book launch and artist signing at Daido Star Space in downtown Los Angeles on September 30, 2025. Organized in collaboration with the Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation in Tokyo, the presentation echoes the institution’s interest in cross-cultural approaches to photography. 

Leica Gallery, Los Angeles, will present another solo exhibition of an additional single work from Vanitas, accompanied by a public artist talk and book signing. At a venue rooted in the technical and material traditions of photography, this presentation will highlight the painterly, craft-driven aspects of Rolston’s Vanitas project. 

Together, these four distinct presentations introduce Vanitas as a ‘mostra diffusa’, an exhibition intentionally distributed among multiple venues. This multi-venue presentation across Los Angeles reflects a conscious departure from the contemporary conventions of exhibition production, recalling art historical traditions in which singular works were presented in isolation. 

All works, regardless of exhibition venue, will be available exclusively through Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, which will also offer an artist-signed edition of the exhibition’s accompanying monograph. 

MATTHEW ROLSTON 

Vanitas: The Palermo Portraits

Nazraeli Press, Mid-September 2025

A special edition of 500 copies 

presented in a custom clamshell case

Hardcover: 12.5 x 18 x 1.5 inches, 

118 pages, 50 four-color plates

ISBN: 978-1-59005-588-5 - $225.00

Book Cover Courtesy of Nazraely Press

FAHEY / KLEIN GALLERY

148 North La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90036

www.faheykleingallery.com

Josh Smith @ David Zwirner, Los Angeles - "Destiny" Exhibition of new paintings

Josh Smith: Destiny

David Zwirner, Los Angeles

September 13 – November 1, 2025

Josh Smith

Find Me, 2025

© Josh Smith. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner

David Zwirner presents Destiny, an exhibition of new paintings by JOSH SMITH, on view at the gallery’s 606 N Western Avenue location in Los Angeles. This is Josh Smith’s first solo presentation in Los Angeles.

For Destiny, Josh Smith has made a series of paintings that continue his long-running dialogue with the grim reaper, a figure that has appeared in his work for years in countless guises. In these new canvases, the reaper is set loose in New York City, riding a bicycle through familiar streets, cutting past landmarks like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. The once faceless symbol of death now has eyes and stares back at you, tangled in the swirl of the city. It is funny, unsettling, and alive.

Smith’s paintings are built out of seemingly contradictory parts: loose but controlled, casual but deliberate, improvised yet tightly bound. He uses the bikes almost like scaffolding. Wheels, frames, and spokes break up the surface and give him an excuse to push color and shape across the support. The reapers wear cloaks made from bold strokes of black, but also from sharp hits of high-tone green, violet, or electric orange. Each canvas is a balancing act where lines threaten to collapse but never do.

There is a real sense of watching a painter solve problems in real time. Josh Smith allows the work to remain in a state of flux. Marks overlap, collide, and seem to rearrange themselves. It is this willingness to keep things open and unsettled that gives the paintings their energy. Even as they embrace a sense of improvisation, the paintings are held together by a deep understanding of how images work and how paint moves.

In these works, the grim reaper is not just a joke or a dark emblem. He becomes a vehicle for Josh Smith to explore the formal and conceptual terrain that drives him as a painter: tension and release, composition and collapse, figure and ground. The humor of portraying death speeding through Manhattan traffic does not diminish the force of the paintings. It sharpens it. The works are graphic and immediate, but also dense, layered, and full of small surprises—lines veer off and double back; colors press against each other in unexpected ways; forms fracture and then reassemble.

Made with this show in mind, the paintings in Destiny are clear about their own pleasures: color, form, and a bit of absurdity, pushed right up to the surface without fear.

The result is a series that feels both pointed and off-the-cuff, tough but playful. These are paintings that believe in themselves even as they undercut their own seriousness. They channel the spirit of the New York School—not as a style but as a way of working that values conviction, quick thinking, and the thrill of watching it all come together on the canvas.

Artist Josh Smith

Josh Smith was born in 1976 in Okinawa, Japan, and grew up primarily in East Tennessee. His work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions at museums and arts institutions in the United States and abroad. In 2024, a solo presentation of Smith’s work, Life Drawing, was shown at The Drawing Center, New York. Other recent solo shows include those held at the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany (2016); Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Rome (2015); Zabludowicz Collection, London (2013); The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2011); Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva (2009); De Hallen Haarlem, The Netherlands (2009–2010); Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2008); and SculptureCenter, New York (2004).

Josh Smith’s work has also been included in important group exhibitions, such as Forever Young – 10 Years Museum Brandhorst, Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2019–2020); Trouble in Paradise: Collection Rattan Chadha, Kunsthal Rotterdam (2019); Publishing as an Artistic Toolbox: 1989–2017, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2017–2018); Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2015–2016), and Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2016); The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014–2015); The Painting Factory: Abstraction After Warhol, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2012); ILLUMInations, 54th Venice Biennale (2011); and The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2009).

The artist has been represented by David Zwirner since 2017, and his first exhibition, Emo Jungle, took place at the gallery’s 519, 525, and 533 West 19th Street locations in New York in 2019. David Zwirner Online presented High As Fuck, the artist’s second solo show with David Zwirner in 2020. Also in 2020, a solo exhibition of new paintings was presented concurrently at the gallery’s locations in London and 69th Street in New York. In 2023, a solo presentation of the artist's work was on view at David Zwirner, Paris.

Josh Smith’s work is held in numerous international public collections including The Broad, Los Angeles; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

DAVID ZWIRNER LOS ANGELES

606 N Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90004 

www.davidzwirner.com

Mary Corse @ Pace Gallery, Los Angeles

Mary Corse

Pace Gallery, Los Angeles

June 21 – August 16, 2025

MARY CORSE

Untitled (White Diamond with Black 

Reflective Inner Band), 2024 

© Mary Corse, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace presents an exhibition of new works by Mary Corse at its Los Angeles gallery. This presentation marks the artist’s first gallery show in LA since 2017 and her first solo exhibition in the city since her 2019 survey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Corse’s show at Pace in Los Angeles features new paintings and her 'Halo Room', a new architectural installation that she has been developing over the past few years. Holistically, the exhibition will trace her latest experimentations in painting, shedding light on her radical inquiries into the phenomenological dimensions of art and her role as a key figure in the LA arts community for more than six decades.

Throughout her storied career, Mary Corse—who has lived and worked in Los Angeles since she was a student at the city’s Chouinard Art Institute in the 1960s—has explored light, space, and perception in sublime, scientifically rigorous, and boundary-crossing abstractions across mediums. She is often associated with the California Light and Space movement and has always been committed to the possibilities of painting as her primary concern. As part of her empirical and highly tactile approach to art making, she has continually investigated the ways in which light can be both subject and material.

A sunset drive along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu in the late 1960s changed the course of her practice. Searching for a way to embed light inside her paintings, Mary Corse investigated the industrial materials in the illuminated road markings along PCH and discovered glass microspheres. Soon after this revelatory event, she began applying these refractive microspheres onto the surfaces of her White Light paintings, endowing her works with a sense of illumination projected from within the picture plane itself that changes with the viewer’s position.

The artist’s presentation at Pace’s Los Angeles gallery centers on her new body of Diamond paintings—a continuation of the first diamond-shaped canvases she made in 1965—and includes several never-before- exhibited works produced this year. With her latest Diamond paintings, Mary Corse delves deeper into the fundamental concepts that have defined her practice from its outset. She expands the scope of her inquiry into the metaphysical dimensions of her oeuvre through new iterations of ideas that have long been essential to her work. In addition to Corse’s Diamond paintings, the show features one of her iconic, glowing light boxes. Early in her practice, the artist’s efforts to free her artworks from the wall led her to quantum physics, and she subsequently created a series of highly engineered light boxes, which she referred to as “light paintings.” Suspended using monofilaments, the light boxes are powered wirelessly by Tesla coils—high-frequency generators that transmit electromagnetic fields through walls, producing uncanny, spectral effects.

The exhibition also showcases Corse’s new 'Halo Room', an architectural installation that debuted in her 2024 presentation at Pace’s New York gallery. This work, which is installed in the Los Angeles gallery’s outdoor courtyard, offers a participatory, intimate experience of scale, space, and light. When a viewer enters the room, they encounter a white light painting and as they approach the painting the resulting effect produces a glowing halo around the viewer’s shadow, registering their presence but also incorporating it into the painting itself.

This installation hinges on the energetic relationship between individual and object, producing a moment of intersubjective collision that facilitates a spiritual manifestation of bodies within space. Up to two participants will be allowed inside the installation at a time, and each viewer will only be able to see their own halo—a phenomenon that speaks to the personal nature of experiencing Corse’s art. The presence and presentness of the viewer within the Halo Room become a pure expression of grace, reflecting the ethos that has animated Corse’s practice for decades: as she puts it, “the art is not on the wall, it’s in your perception.”

ARTIST MARY CORSE

Mary Corse (b. 1945, Berkeley, California) investigates materiality, abstraction, and perception through the subtly gestural and precisely geometric paintings that she has made over her sixty-year career. Earning a BFA in 1968 from Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, Corse developed her initial work during the emergence of the Light and Space movement in Southern California. Throughout the 1960s, she experimented with unconventional media and supports, producing shaped canvases, works with plexiglass, and illuminated boxes. In 1968, Mary Corse discovered glass microspheres, an industrial material used in street signs and dividing lines on highways. Combining these tiny refractive beads with acrylic paint, she creates paintings that appear to radiate light from within and produce shifts in appearance contingent on their surroundings and the viewer’s position. First developing her White Light paintings, by the 1970s she began making her Black Light series with black acrylic and microspheres. The Black Earth works followed-large ceramic slabs that she fired in a custom-built kiln and glazed black. After thirty years of working monochromatically, she reintroduced primary colours into her paintings based on her understanding of colour as constitutive of white light. Corse’s art emphasizes the abstract nature of human perception, expanding beyond the visual to include subtleties of feeling and awareness.

In 2021, Mary Corse was the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Long Museum, Shanghai which traveled to the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Seoul. Mary Corse: A Survey in Light, the artist’s first solo museum survey, was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Comprehensive catalogs were published with both surveys. A focused presentation of Corse’s work was on view at Dia: Beacon in New York for four years highlighting historical works from the collection.

Mary Corse was also included in the major presentation Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A., Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970 at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2011. The artist’s work can be found in the permanent collections of Dia Art Foundation, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the National Gallery, Washington D.C.; The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Long Museum, Shanghai; Amorepacfic Museum, Seoul; and other institutions.

PACE GALLERY LOS ANGELES

1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA

www.pacegallery.com

Jeffrey Gibson @ The Broad, Los Angeles - "the space in which to place me" Exhibition

Jeffrey Gibson 

the space in which to place me

The Broad, Los Angeles

May 10 - September 28, 2025

Jeffrey Gibson 

BIRDS FLYING HIGH YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL, 2024 

Mural, acrylic on Polytab, 

12 ft. 6 ¾ in. × 26 ft. 5 ¾ in. (382.9 × 807.1 cm)

The Broad presents Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, a special exhibition of the artist’s multidimensional work, adapted from its original presentation at the U.S. Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, where Jeffrey Gibson was the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States with a solo exhibition. Gibson’s first single-artist museum exhibition in Southern California, The Broad’s presentation includes over thirty artworks joyously affirming the artist’s radically inclusive vision. The exhibition highlights Gibson’s distinct use of geometric design and saturated color alongside references to 19th and 20th century foundational American documents and modern music, critiquing systemic injustices and imagining a more equitable future.

Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me borrows its title from the Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier’s poem “Ȟe Sápa,” which contemplates Indigeneity using a playful geometric format. Like Long Soldier, Gibson probes the visceral feeling of belonging. Across ten paintings, seven sculptures, eight flags, three murals, and one video installation, Jeffrey Gibson honors the multiplicity of identity. Museum galleries morph into kaleidoscopic environments of Gibson’s paintings.

Jeffrey Gibson 

THE RETURNED MALE STUDENT FAR TOO FREQUENTLY 

GOES BACK TO THE RESERVATION AND FALLS INTO THE 

OLD CUSTOM OF LETTING HIS HAIR GROW LONG, 2024 

Acrylic on canvas, glass beads, plastic beads, 

inset in a custom wood frame

244.8 x 194cm (96 3/8 x 76 3/8in)

The Broad has acquired Gibson’s 2024 painting THE RETURNED MALE STUDENT FAR TOO FREQUENTLY GOES BACK TO THE RESERVATION AND FALLS INTO THE OLD CUSTOM OF LETTING HIS HAIR GROW LONG, which was first presented at the Venice Biennale. Incorporating his signature use of patterned text, radiating color, and glass beads, the painting directly quotes a letter written in 1902 by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to a school superintendent in Central California, urging Native school children to cut their hair and assimilate into white Eurocentric modes of dress and appearance. The painting transforms historical oppression into both an opposition to tyranny and a celebration of cultural identity.

The Broad’s presentation includes two additional artworks first displayed together in Gibson’s 2020 Brooklyn Museum exhibition, When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks. A monumental bronze from the museum’s collection by Charles Cary Rumsey titled The Dying Indian (1900s) wears newly commissioned moccasins by John Little Sun Murie titled I’M GONNA RUN WITH EVERY MINUTE I CAN BORROW (2019). The Roberta Flack lyrics featured from the 1971 song See You Then are also spelled in the beadwork on the moccasins. These works speak to overarching themes in the space in which to place me, whether directly engaging in America’s past and present, paying tribute to histories of resistance, and boldly celebrating belonging, while bringing into this dialogue the topic of monumental sculpture as a mode of US historytelling.

“Jeffrey Gibson imbues unabashed radiant color into his paintings, murals, sculpture and video installations, signaling through his art that frank examination of difficult truths can be affirmative expressions of hope, identity and beauty,” said Joanne Heyler, Founding Director of The Broad. She added, “We are proud to be bringing this groundbreaking work to Los Angeles, directly from the Venice Biennale, where for the first time an Indigenous artist represented the United States, and we hope our audiences will be dazzled by the joy they convey and the belief in the resilience of community the works represent.”

Gibson’s practice celebrates individuals and communities who have maintained their dignity and traditions in impossible circumstances. His work reflects his admiration and respect for the generations of Indigenous makers who have come before him, situating his work within art histories that have previously excluded Native artists, and in the footsteps of postwar painters and printmakers such as Corita Kent, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Andy Warhol. Jeffrey Gibson uses recognizable language and images and unsettles the beliefs that might typically be associated with them.

“Developing this project for the Venice Biennale made me interrogate my relationship with the United States as an Indigenous person,” said Jeffrey Gibson. "I wanted to showcase that complexity while celebrating the resilience and joy present in the liberation stories and legacies of Indigenous makers. The show is about turning margin and center inside out, putting topics and people who have been pushed aside in the spotlight. I’m excited for the project to reach audiences in Los Angeles—in a way it’s coming home, from representing the country on an international stage to speaking to histories that are part of our lived experiences here in the U.S.”

“Across the exhibition’s diverse media, Jeffrey Gibson engages a wide range of texts, from foundational legal documents to quotes from civil rights activists, poems by Indigenous authors, and pop song lyrics,” said Sarah Loyer, Curator and Exhibitions Manager. “Kaleidoscopic colors and geometric forms are combined with these references to create an installation that at once pays tribute to histories of resistance in the United States and expresses the relational nature of identity and belonging, all articulated in a style that is vivacious and optimistic.”

On view are towering ceramic sculptures like WE WANT TO BE FREE (2024), made with colorful nylon fringe, tin jingles, and steel. Standing at nine-feet tall, the figure’s torso spells out its title in beads as a political demand, referencing the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the first federal law to define citizenship and claim all citizens equal under the law. Alongside its companion sculpture The Enforcer (2024), the two figures possess an ancestral presence to serve as protective guardians.

The Broad’s exhibition also includes geometric mixed-media paintings in Gibson’s distinct and internationally celebrated style. The large-scale mixed media painting ACTION NOW ACTION IS ELOQUENCE (2024) references Congressman Emmanuel Celler’s words to his fellow representatives during a session of Congress in 1964 when they were voting on the Civil Rights Act. The landmark civil rights legislation was signed into law that day, and outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in the United States. The surface is adorned with a beaded, heart-shaped bag and sash made by an Indigenous Columbia River Plateau or Crow artist, acknowledging a lineage of unnamed Indigenous makers and extending a living Native art history.

The mural BIRDS FLYING HIGH YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL (2024) borrows lyrics from the song Feeling Good, originally composed by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse and made famous by the American singer Nina Simone in 1965, an anthem for freedom and justice during the Civil Rights era. Synchronized, abstract avian shapes are centered between the title’s geometric text and a glowing yellow sun in the background. This mural exemplifies Gibson’s ability to demonstrate how history informs our present, locating significant moments of collective power, persistence, and strength amidst oppression.

Jeffrey Gibson collaborates with The Broad on a dynamic slate of programming. The relationship between art and community is central to Gibson’s practice. These performances, talks, and workshops create spaces for recognition and response, inviting audiences to engage more deeply with his work. 

Born in Colorado in 1972, interdisciplinary artist JEFFREY GIBSON is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent. Gibson received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and his Master of Arts in painting from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. Throughout his career, Jeffrey Gibson has centered Indigenous and LGBTQ+ perspectives, exploring cultural authenticity, stereotypes of Native people, and how aesthetics circulate amongst different groups. Vibrant colors, geometric patterns and found objects are common throughout his art, resulting in a distinct visual language that celebrates interconnectedness and assemblage.

Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me was first presented by Portland Art Museum, Oregon, and SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico at the United States Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, the 60th International Art Exhibition (April 20, 2024 through November 24, 2024); commissioned by Louis Grachos, Phillips Executive Director, SITE Santa Fe; commissioned and curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby, Curator of Native American Art, Portland Art Museum and Abigail Winograd, Independent Curator. 

The Broad’s presentation is organized by Sarah Loyer, Curator and Exhibitions Manager, with the participation of Abigail Winograd.

THE BROAD

221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012

www.thebroad.org

Bruce Nauman @ Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles - "Pasadena Years" Exhibition

Bruce Nauman

Pasadena Years

Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles 

19 February - 26 April 2025

From left to right: Bruce Nauman, Justine Nauman,

Marcia Tucker, and Nauman’s son, Erik, 1970

Photo courtesy Bruce Nauman / Marian Goodman Gallery

Marian Goodman Gallery presents its first solo exhibition with BRUCE NAUMAN. Pasadena Years is a historical reflection on the prolific decade that established one of the most important contemporary artists of our time. The exhibition emphasizes the radical foundation of Nauman’s practice while he lived in Los Angeles between 1969-79. Across the entire gallery and garden, works on view include sculptures, installations, sound works, videos, works on paper, and editions. Pasadena Years notably marks Nauman’s first exhibition in Los Angeles in over 30 years and includes Text for a Room, 1973-2025, a work that the artist recreated for the first time since its debut at his earliest retrospective, which originated at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1972.

In 1969, Bruce Nauman arrived in Los Angeles at the age of 27 with his wife and son. Following his MFA from the University of California, Davis, and an NEA grant in Southhampton, New York, he subsequently relocated to Los Angeles for his small but notable community based there: his parents, his dealer, Nicholas Wilder, and his friends—Walter Hopps, Edward Kienholz, and Richard Jackson. He and his family lived for eight years in Hopps’s Pasadena house along with Jackson before moving to nearby Altadena. In 1972, Bruce Nauman was the subject of a retrospective coorganized by LACMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art, which thereafter traveled extensively through Europe. As Jane Livingston, the LACMA curator who co-organized the retrospective with Marcia Tucker, described in 1972: “[Bruce] is not only ahead of his audience but ahead of himself.”

The 1960s in Southern California was an important period for conceptual art. The Ferus Gallery (1957-66), founded by Hopps and Kienholz, was largely focused on avant-garde work from the West Coast. In 1962, Hopps became the curator of the Pasadena Museum of Art, famously opening the first U.S. exhibition of Marcel Duchamp shortly thereafter. LACMA opened to the public three years later, in 1965. Within this decade, Light and Space, Finish Fetish, California pop art and assemblage movements had all simultaneously emerged. In 1966, while based in Northern California, Nauman had his first commercial solo exhibition at Nicholas Wilder Gallery (located up the block from Ferus), which contextualized him with the emergence of West Coast conceptualism. This development would help pave the way for a coming decade that would bring Nauman into relationships with other prominent LA-based artists such as Larry Bell, Vija Celmins, Maria Nordman, and Ed Ruscha.

This exhibition opens with works from 1968-69, highlighting a time when Bruce Nauman gained exposure in several significant group shows across Europe, including documenta (1968), When Attitudes Become Form (1969), and Anti-Illusion (1969). Performance Corridor, 1969, on loan from the Panza Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, marks a crucial transformation in Nauman’s practice that focused on phenomenological explorations in space. Initially used by the artist as a set for a video piece, it was later exhibited in Anti-Illusion as an autonomous sculpture with a narrow walkway and dead end that leads viewers to imagine the physical constraints of engaging the object. This gesture would open up his practice to an era of thinking through a wide variety of room-sized and corridor-like structures that relate to the body, space, movement, and light. On one side of the Performance Corridor, rare performance instructions from 1968 are on view.

In dialogue with Performance Corridor, just across the gallery, is a selection of videos that grew out of Nauman’s activities in his studio. Revolving Upside Down, 1969, and Violin Tuned D.E.A.D., 1969, were both made in Pasadena and represent the breadth of his simple and persistent, action-as-material performances for video. Bruce Nauman, in his own words, considers these works an answer to “the fundamental question of what an artist does when left alone in the studio. My conclusion was that [if ] I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.”

On view in the garden, Dark (1968) is a 4’ x 4’ x 4” solid steel slab with the work “dark” written on the bottom. In 1968, Bruce Nauman proposed Dark to the Southwestern College of Chula Vista, CA Purchase Award Exhibition, and subsequently won. Once the acquisition was announced, students and faculty responded in outrage to the use of school funds for such an austere work, which led John Baldessari, an art faculty member at the time, to defend the work in a public lecture. A minimal tombstone meant to be displayed outdoors, the piece was included in Nauman’s 1972-74 retrospective tour throughout the United States and Europe, and recalls other other straightforward works by the artist that mentally confront viewers with the imaginative, abyssmal space of the elsewhere. Nearby, for Microphone/Tree Piece (1971), originally conceived for legendary Los Angeles art patrons Stanley and Elyse Grinstein, Nauman discreetly places a microphone into a pre-drilled hole upon a tree and amplifies the sound of the tree growing into the neighboring, interior lobby space of the gallery.

A gallery dedicated to Nauman’s text-based works presents early examples of his conceptual practice with linguistic play, propositions, and puns. During this period, Bruce Nauman began concurrently creating editions with Marian Goodman through her former art publishing company, Multiples, Inc. The two worked together on several works, including one on view: the artist book LAAir (1970), featuring spreads of color photographs the artist took of the city’s smog. In addition, a selection of his rare presstypes are on view, along with additional prints made with Gemini G.E.L. and Cirrus.

The Main Gallery is transformed into a rigid architectural setting that consists of two large works: Funnel Piece (Françoise Lambert Installation), 1971, and Text for a Room, 1973-2025.

Bruce Nauman originally designed Funnel Piece to physically wedge and occupy the entirety of a pre-existing room of a gallery in Milan. The floating walls are a variation on his corridor works that look at human physiology and how it shapes our perception of space. Text for a Room, recreated for the first time since its 1973 debut, includes a sheet of performance instructions at its narrow entryway; the viewer enters, prepared to execute an action, but is unaware of what will be encountered. The sensation echoes what Nauman would later reflect on in 1980: “the feeling that I had about a lot of that work was going up the stairs in the dark and either having an extra stair that you didn’t expect or not having one that you thought was going to be there—that kind of misstep that surprises you every time it happens.”

This exhibition was organized by Philipp Kaiser with Samantha Gregg of Marian Goodman Gallery, and in close collaboration with Bruce Nauman and his studio.

Bruce Nauman has been the focus of over 250 solo exhibitions, most recently at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2024); SITE Santa Fe, NM (2023); and Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana, Venice (2021-22). Recent retrospectives include those at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2022-23) and M Woods, Beijing (2022). An eponymous survey at Tate (2020) traveled to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2021), while Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts, a comprehensive retrospective, made its debut at Schaulager, Basel (2018) and then traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, New York and MoMA P.S.1 (201819). Notable awards include the Praemium Imperiale (2004) and the Frederick Kiesler Prize (2014) and the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale (2009 and (1999).

MARIAN GOODMAN GALLERY, LOS ANGELES

1120 Seward Street, Los Angeles, CA

www.mariangoodman.com

Chico da Silva @ David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles - "Amazônico" Exhibition

Chico da Silva 

Amazônico

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

March 13 - April 26, 2025

David Kordansky Gallery presents Amazônico, the first solo exhibition of CHICO DA SILVA’s work in Los Angeles.

“I feel the animals, the jungles, the fantastic worlds, entering the phase of other worlds.”

—Chico da Silva, 1972

Over a prolific career spanning four decades, Chico da Silva devoted himself to depicting the celestial, otherworldly realms within his imagination. His work, which spans a rich and varied body of paintings, drawings, and performance, encapsulates a profound engagement with the intersection of personal mythology, cultural history, and collective creativity. Amazônico brings together exemplary paintings from the 1980s—an often-overlooked phase of Chico da Silva’s career—alongside works from the 1960s, offering a comprehensive look at his practice and insight into the evolution of his distinctive artistic vision.

Born in Alto Tejo, Brazil, Chico da Silva’s early years in the Amazon deeply influenced the development of his cosmology of fantastical creatures and environments. As a teenager, he moved to Pirambu with his mother. It was only a few years later that Swiss art critic Jean-Pierre Chabloz saw him drawing on some neighborhood buildings and quickly became a key supporter, launching Chico da Silva’s international career. By the early-to-mid 1960s, Chico da Silva had honed his unique style, working primarily on paper and depicting creatures—both real and imagined—in suspended states of conflict. The 1964 and 1966 works featured in this exhibition both feature stippled lines and dots that define his bichos (creatures). In the 1966 example, fish surrounding a tree share the same intricate patterns, dissolving the boundary between flora and fauna in Chico da Silva’s invented world.

Chico da Silva continued to garner significant attention, culminating with an invitation to participate in the 1966 Venice Biennale, where he received an honorable mention. A work from this pivotal year is included in Amazônico. The only painting in the original artist frame, this work offers critical insight into Chico da Silva’s process: the painting’s frame bears marks from the artist, who constantly wiped his brush onto the frame’s border to ensure precision in every stroke. His refined technique later became the foundation for the Pirambu School. Originally conceived as an arts workshop for children and local artisans to learn directly from Chico da Silva, the school quickly evolved into a collective. Members of the Pirambu School began to create their own works, expanding Chico da Silva’s visual language and contributing to a shared, imaginative universe. 

Throughout his time teaching at Pirambu, Chico da Silva continuously reinterpreted and evolved his compositions. Two works from disparate parts of his practice, 1966 and 1981, exemplify this sustained reinterpretation. Both of these works feature a large, central fish surrounded by smaller ones swimming around its open mouth. In the earlier of the two paintings, an eel swims into the fish’s mouth, while in the later version, Chico da Silva replaces it with a slim fin extending from the fish’s head, subtly shifting the composition and drawing in the smaller fish. Moreover, Chico da Silva’s use of color and pattern shifts from a moody, dark tone in the 1966 work to a vibrant, eclectic style in the 1981 piece. Fifteen years apart, these works highlight Chico da Silva’s endless ability to reinvent his fantastical world and the characters that inhabit it.

Chico da Silva’s Venice Biennale recognition brought both fame and scrutiny to the Pirambu School. European audiences struggled to make sense of the school’s collective approach. Meanwhile, Chico da Silva’s worsening alcoholism led to extended inpatient treatment. While hospitalized, Chico da Silva continued to paint and by the late 1970s, he had returned to the studio. An untitled painting from 1980, created in the last few years of Chico’s life, presents a notable departure from his earlier style by omitting the patterned gradient backgrounds that had defined much of his previous work. Here, a vibrant grid serves as the backdrop for two dueling dragons. Each square is composed of creatures and scenes amassed throughout his decades-long body of work. The snakes, trees, birds, and fish familiar from his 1960s pieces are reimagined in smaller forms, subtly obscured by the dramatic presence of the two dragons. Through this grid, Chico da Silva synthesizes the rich cosmology he had developed over many years. 

Chico da Silva’s deployment of Amazonian flora, fauna, and mythical iconography has had a lasting impact on international audiences. By presenting regional narratives on an international stage, Chico continues to play a key role in shaping the conversation around Latin American art, challenging conventional views and highlighting the relevance of art practices from outside traditional art centers in global movements.

CHICO DA SILVA (b. circa 1910, d. 1985) has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including the major, traveling retrospective Chico da Silva e o ateliê do Pirambu, presented at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2023) and the Pinacoteca do Ceará (2023). Other solo exhibitions include Chico da Silva: Sacred Connection, Global Vision, Museu de Arte Sacra, São Paulo (2022); Chico da Silva – O Renascer 100 Anos, Espaço Cultural Correios, Fortaleza, Brazil (2010); Retrospectiva Chico da Silva: do delírio ao dilúvio, Espaço Cultural do Palácio da Abolição, Fortaleza, Brazil (1989). Group exhibitions include Uma história da arte brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro (2024–2025); Patrimônios, Memórias, Artes e Ofícios, Museu da Cultura Cearense, Fortaleza, Brazil (2024); The Sacred in the Amazon, Centro Cultural Inclusartiz, Rio de Janeiro (2023); Fantaisies brésiliennes, Musée International d’Art naïf Anatole Jakovsky, Nice, France (2016); Brasileiro, Brasileiros, Museu Afro Brasil, São Paulo (2005); and 33rd Venice Biennale, Italy (1966). His work is in the permanent collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate, London; Pinacoteca de São Paulo; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro; and Fundacão Edson Queiroz, Fortaleza, Brazil.

DAVID KORDANSKY GALLERY LOS ANGELES

5130 W. Edgewood Pl., Los Angeles, CA 90019

www.davidkordanskygallery.com  

Ritual Expressions: African Adornment from the Permanent Collection @ LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Ritual Expressions: African Adornment from the Permanent Collection

Los Angeles County Museum of Art - LACMA

February 23 – July 6, 2025

Man’s Royal Ceremonial Robe, Africa, Nigeria, Yoruba people,

early 20th century 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 

Marcel and Zaira Mis Collection, 

purchased with funds from the LACMA 50th Anniversary Gala

Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

Detail of Man’s Royal Ceremonial Robe, Africa, Nigeria, 

Yoruba people, early 20th century 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 

Marcel and Zaira Mis Collection, 

purchased with funds from the LACMA 50th Anniversary Gala

Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

Man’s Headdress, Gishu or Acholi people, mid-20th century

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 

Marcel and Zaira Mis Collection, 

purchased with funds from the LACMA 50th Anniversary Gala

Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

Robe, Africa, Cameroon, Grasslands Bamum people, 

mid-20th century 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 

Marcel and Zaira Mis Collection, 

purchased with funds from the LACMA 50th Anniversary Gala

Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Ritual Expressions: African Adornment from the Permanent Collection. Bodily adornments, such as ritual textiles, clothing, and headwear, are created by the many cultures throughout the African continent. The exhibition explores how adornments are constructed to express societal conventions, and reveals their critical role in establishing and transmitting the wearer’s identity and rank. Ritual Expressions is a focused presentation that brings together more than 30 examples of a rich diversity of textiles, clothing, and headwear representing more than 20 cultures from Africa, all drawn from LACMA’s permanent collection.

The exhibition explores how adornments are constructed to express societal conventions, and reveals their critical role in establishing and transmitting the wearer’s identity and rank. For example, a striking 28-foot-long raffia palmfiber textile is wrapped around the body to transform into a dimensional ceremonial skirt, enlarging the wearer’s figure while indicating status and wealth within the community. Dramatic headdresses sculpted with diverse natural materials, such as gourds, raffia palms, bast fibers, and cotton, are embellished with distinctive elements, such as pigments, feathers, fur, shells, or glass beads. A person’s individuality, intelligence, and spirit are acknowledged by crowning the head with structures imbued with cultural traditions, which encircle and rise above the head, magnifying the subject’s stature and status. African adornments such as these are testaments to the meticulous craftsmanship of their creators, physically and symbolically linking the present with past legacies.

LACMA has developed and presented a number of exhibitions of African Art, including Shaping Power: Luba Masterworks from the Royal Museum for Central Africa (2013), African Cosmos (2014), and The Inner Eye: Vision and Transcendence in African Arts (2017), all curated by the late Dr. Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts, consulting curator of African Art. Many of these exhibitions featured significant works from the permanent collection. Additionally, LACMA will be working with artists and creative leaders in West Africa on future collaborations and programs that will augment the museum’s exhibition programming.

This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Ritual Expressions is curated by Sharon S. Takeda, Senior Curator and Department Head of Costume and Textiles.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART - LACMA

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036 

lacma.org