Menu

LA Invitational

October 26–December 16, 2017
555 West 24th Street, New York

Installation view with Thomas Houseago, Abstract I (2015) Artwork © Thomas Houseago. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view with Thomas Houseago, Abstract I (2015)

Artwork © Thomas Houseago. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view with Nancy Rubins, Dense Bud (2016) Artwork © Nancy Rubins. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view with Nancy Rubins, Dense Bud (2016)

Artwork © Nancy Rubins. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Mark Grotjahn, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Mark Grotjahn, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Mark Grotjahn, © Sterling Ruby. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Mark Grotjahn, © Sterling Ruby. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Sterling Ruby, © Mary Weatherford. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Sterling Ruby, © Mary Weatherford. Photo: Rob McKeever

Works Exhibited

Jonas Wood, Landscape Pot 2, 2014 Oil and acrylic on canvas, 120 × 76 inches (304.8 × 193 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, Landscape Pot 2, 2014

Oil and acrylic on canvas, 120 × 76 inches (304.8 × 193 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

About

Gagosian is pleased to present LA Invitational, a wide-ranging exhibition of works by Los Angeles–based artists Chris Burden, Frank Gehry, Piero Golia, Mark Grotjahn, Thomas Houseago, Alex Israel, Mike Kelley, Nancy Rubins, Sterling Ruby, Ed Ruscha, Robert Therrien, Jeff Wall, Mary Weatherford, and Jonas Wood. Many works have been made specifically for this exhibition, while others are being shown in New York for the first time.

In the popular imagination, the cultural motor of Los Angeles has always been rooted in Hollywood. The exchange between the movie business and the visual arts, however, has had notable impacts on both worlds—clearly discernible in the works of artists such as Kelley, Ruscha, and Israel. From the 1950s, as the entertainment industry increasingly required industrial, artisanal, and artistic skills such as set painting, animation, modeling, and editing, generations of dedicated visual artists both resisted and participated in Los Angeles’s far-reaching cultural boom during the city’s transformation into one of the world’s most influential industrial, economic, and creative capitals.

The landscape of southern California serves as a catalyst for fantasy, from its modernist architecture to its otherworldly rock formations, trees, coastline, mountains, and hills from which twinkling towns and cities can be viewed in the valleys below. Alex Israel’s Sky Backdrop (2016) depicts Los Angeles’s wide skies in scenographic terms, while Mary Weatherford, showing her first large-scale painting since joining Gagosian, captures the shifting atmosphere of the Pacific coast, evoking the sky and sea in painted layers and glowing, neon light. In Jeff Wall’s Property Line (2015), two surveyors mark a patch of dirt on the outskirts of California City, located about 100 miles outside of Los Angeles, capturing the exact moment at which nature is transformed into property.

Mark Grotjahn’s Untitled (Turkish Forest V Face 43.94) (2012) is the largest example of his iconic “face paintings” to date. The Turkish Forest is a single work comprising eleven paintings; nine were shown together in 2014 at the Punta della Dogana in Venice. Evolving out of Grotjahn’s Butterfly series, Untitled (Turkish Forest V Face 43.94) features a dichromatic scheme of red and blue oil paint, applied layer by layer with a brush and a palette knife, the colors building upon each other to an almost sculptural effect.

Read more

Inkjet print of Jeff Wall's "In the Legion" (2022)

Jeff Wall: In the Domain of Likeness

The Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, has staged a comprehensive Jeff Wall exhibition including more than fifty works spanning five decades. Here, Barry Schwabsky reflects on the enduring power of and mystery in Wall’s photography.

Image of artist Mary Weatherford in front of her artwork

Mary Weatherford: The Flaying of Marsyas

In conjunction with her exhibition The Flaying of Marsyas at Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice, Mary Weatherford discusses the featured paintings, which are directly inspired by Titian’s late, eponymous masterpiece of circa 1570–76 and reflect her enduring fascination with the painting.

Sterling Ruby: The Frenetic Beat

Sterling Ruby: The Frenetic Beat

Ester Coen meditates on the dynamism of Sterling Ruby’s recent projects, tracing parallels between these works and the histories of Futurism, Constructivism, and the avant-garde.

Sterling Ruby studio

Sterling Ruby: TURBINES

Join Sterling Ruby in his Los Angeles studio as he works on new abstract paintings ahead of his exhibition TURBINES at Gagosian in New York.

Jeff Wall at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, in front of his photography

Jeff Wall: An Exhibition Tour

Join Jeff Wall as he leads a tour through his latest exhibition in Beverly Hills. The artist speaks about the genesis and creation of each photograph, addressing the aesthetic decisions involved.

Image of American Artist, Yayoi Shionoiri, Sydney Stutterheim

In Conversation
American Artist, Yayoi Shionoiri, and Sydney Stutterheim on Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden

Join Gagosian to celebrate the publication of Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden with a conversation between American Artist, Yayoi Shionoiri, and Sydney Stutterheim presented at the Kitchen, New York. Considering the book’s sustained examination of sixty-seven projects that remained incomplete at the time of Burden’s death in 2015, the trio discuss the various ways that an artist’s work and legacy live on beyond their lifetime.