In Los Angeles, everything is surface. The golden skin, the varnish on the car bodies, the screens on the displays. It took an eye as sharp as that of Russell Ferguson, former chief curator of the Hammer Museum, to transform this cliché into an exhibition concept of rare relevance.
Mother's Wardrobe ©Elon Schoenholz
At the Marian Goodman Gallery, a prestigious New York and Parisian institution now located on Seward Street in Los Angeles, he is curating "Surface Streets," a group exhibition that takes the pulse of the city's art scene. The title, with its double meaning, is key to understanding the exhibition. It refers to these ordinary streets in the urban fabric of LA, as opposed to the freeways controlled access, It evokes both the specificity of the local environment and the tactility inherent in painting, this materiality which unites the 15 selected artists.
The brilliant idea is to examine recent paintings created in Los Angeles not through their subject matter, but through their physicality. The Marian Goodman Gallery thus becomes the stage for a dialogue between artists of diverse generations and backgrounds, whose only commonality is that they are currently working in Los Angeles and paying almost obsessive attention to the texture of their works.
Ferguson's selection of artists is a balancing act. He juxtaposes the raw power of a legendary figure like Californian Henry Taylor (born in 1958), basking in the glow of his retrospective at MOCA and the Whitney Museum of American Art, with the virtuosity of Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal (born in 1972) and the conceptual rigor of Paul Sietsema (born in Los Angeles in 1968), a regular at major institutions. But the exhibition's true strength lies in its mapping of the vitality of contemporary art, revealing a vibrant and cosmopolitan scene. For example, we discover the work of Owen Fu, born in China in 1988, whose philosophy studies at the Art Institute of Chicago inform a style of painting already acclaimed at the Hammer Museum. Or that of Hye-Shin Chun, born in Gabon in 1983 and also a Chicago native, whose international career, from Shanghai to Santa Fe, brings a global perspective to this very local landscape.
These voices mingle with those of other talents closely followed by the art world, such as Tidawhitney Lek, born in Long Beach in 1992, already represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and LACMA, and Concord native Anna Glantz (born in 1989), who has a string of solo exhibitions to her name. As proof of their importance to the curatorial approach, these last two artists will participate, alongside Canadian Tristan Unrau (born in 1989), in a public conversation with Ferguson on September 13. This is a powerful signal: talent doesn't wait for years in the LA art market.
The exhibition defies expectations. While many canvases depict familiar scenes of urban life, others venture into unexpected territories: a film set, an ancient fossil, or even spaces of pure fiction. Each artist, from Kirsten Everberg to Paige Jiyoung Moon, including Robert Gunderman and Manuel López, offers their own answer to a simple question: what does it mean to paint in Los Angeles today?
By bringing together these fifteen perspectives, Russell Ferguson does more than simply take stock of the situation: he asserts that painting in Los Angeles is more alive than ever. It is a tactile language, a way of probing appearances to reveal their subtleties. Going beyond a mere exhibition, “ Surface Streets " asserts itself as a statement. In a city obsessed with images, painting offers a poetic resistance, a depth that paradoxically lies within its own surface.
"Surface Streets"
Marian Goodman Gallery
1120 Seward Street, Los Angeles (United States)
From 6 September to 18 October 2025
Woman Looking at a Garden ©Elon Schoenholz
