Sayre Gomez

Since moving from his native Chicago to Los Angeles to study at CalArts in 2006, Sayre Gomez has made the urban landscape of the Californian megalopolis the focus of his photorealistic and semi-fictionalized work, which mainly comprises painting, but also sculpture, installation, and video work. Taking cues from his surroundings, he employs the same techniques used to paint Hollywood sets such as trompe-l’oeil, airbrushing, and stenciling. The vibrating effect of the simultaneous hyper-focused and purposefully blurred application on his highly detailed canvases conjures an emotional way of seeing otherwise the quintessential scenes and motifs of Los Angeles: strip malls filled with the signage of commercial businesses, advertising billboards, street signs, nail salons, fences, shopping carts, and cartoon figures. The flawless execution and even luminescence of the canvases, along with shifts between sharp focus and less well-defined forms, create mesmerizing images that capture the essence of the landscape he draws from, and which can be seen as painterly reflections on the digital flattening and blurring of life and culture through screen-based technology, addressing issues such as nostalgia, authenticity, and simulation.

In his conversation with Hamza Walker, the artist states: “It’s about a kind of psychology. It’s what all these things amount to collectively. It’s not about the individual door or the individual RV (recreational vehicle) or the pretty image of the sunset against the trash can. It’s really about this collection. This larger body and looking. What that looking does on a psychological level, and how that impacts us in a way that we might not necessarily be totally aware of.”

The accumulation of the Los Angeles scenes depicted in Gomez’s work portrays a city that holds both a sense of promise through its sunsets and palm trees, while revealing the realities of urban decay and guarded barriers. Such openings and barriers, namely windows, doors, gates, shutters, walls, and fences, are recurrent metaphors in his oeuvre, suggesting that Los Angeles is a city of hope and freedom, but also one of barriers and destitution.

This first monographic survey on the artist compiles works dating from 2016 to 2025 and includes two critical texts by art critic and The Industry’s Executive Director Tim Griffin and writer and curator Valerie Mindlin, as well as a conversation between the artist and The Brick’s Director Hamza Walker.

Sayre Gomez (b. Chicago, 1982) holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His works can be found in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; The Broad, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; ICA, Miami; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and other collections internationally.

Published with Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles/New York.