{"id":180003,"date":"2026-02-16T11:21:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T11:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/180003\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T11:21:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T11:21:20","slug":"sayre-gomez-miniaturizes-downtown-l-a-s-graffiti-towers-in-new-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/180003\/","title":{"rendered":"Sayre Gomez miniaturizes downtown L.A.’s Graffiti Towers in new exhibit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Oceanwide Plaza was supposed to be a trio of gleaming, high-rise mixed-use towers in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. Instead, their unfinished carcasses were abandoned when the developer ran out of money for the $1-billion luxury build in 2019; they now stand as a ruin of capitalist ambition, and an unintentionally spectacular canvas for daring acts of graffiti. An artist couldn\u2019t have dreamed up a better monument to the hubris of overheated development in a city where so many remain unhoused.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, L.A. artist Sayre Gomez has built an incredibly faithful scale model of the towers, now on view through March 1 in his exhibition, \u201cPrecious Moments,\u201d at David Kordansky Gallery. Created from imagery of the actual towers captured via drone, the sculpture is over 8 feet tall and amazingly accurate, recording the details of each individual work of graffiti, the textures of concrete and iron, and the construction debris left haphazardly about the site. Gomez\u2019s attention to recreating these nuances not only provides views of the towers that can\u2019t be seen from the street but asks visitors to pay attention to the waste, neglect and thwarted possibility they symbolize in our urban core.<\/p>\n

The work can be compared to Chris Burden\u2019s erector-set sculptures, but with very different ends. Burden\u2019s \u201cMetropolis II,\u201d <\/a>perennially on view at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is a dizzying, looping track for toy cars that zoom between shiny skyscrapers. It provokes wonder at the density and dynamism of a fantasy city. Gomez\u2019s \u201cOceanwide Plaza,\u201d by contrast, depicts something real and quite dystopian. The sculpture highlights the hollowing out of a dream of unbridled growth as it happens, in real time, in our city.<\/p>\n

It may prove a serendipitous snapshot. Earlier this month, the city of L.A. struck a bankruptcy exit deal <\/a>that resolves creditor disputes and opens up the possibility of a sale, paving the way for change. Gomez\u2019s sculpture thus becomes an important record of a precious moment: one in which the dregs of greed were laid bare for all to see.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Sayre Gomez, \u201cIce Cream Groceries,\u201d 2025, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 72 inches.<\/p>\n

(Sayre Gomez \/ David Kordansky Gallery)<\/p>\n

What the model can\u2019t capture is the way the graffiti tags on the towers often stand out, as if emblazoned against the L.A. sky. Surely, writing one\u2019s name amid the clouds is a gleeful exploitation of the buildings\u2019 arrested progress, laying claim to one of the few spaces where nature and the city reliably meet. Gomez takes up this theme in his photorealistic paintings, which often feature dramatic skies juxtaposed with decaying urban signs. \u201cIce Cream Groceries\u201d depicts a tender, glowing sunset that would be right at home in a travel magazine or a religious pamphlet, except that it\u2019s interrupted by the hulking frame of a busted grocery store sign. In \u201cVaccine Flag,\u201d a vertical banner arcs gracefully across a soft gradient of L.A. haze, but the banner\u2019s fabric is so tattered and decayed that its advertisement for vaccines is barely legible. The painting is both a lovely composition and a comment on the erosion of public trust in science.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Sayre Gomez, \u201cVaccine Flag,\u201d 2025, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 60 inches.<\/p>\n

(Sayre Gomez \/ David Kordansky Gallery)<\/p>\n

Such images urge an ironic interpretation of the show\u2019s title, \u201cPrecious Moments,\u201d which refers to a line of collectible, often Christian-themed figurines<\/a> that depict cute, mostly white children with doe eyes and oversized heads. Usually engaged in anodyne activities, they present idealized versions of childhood: full of stereotypical sweetness, innocence and light. Perched in the rafters of one gallery are two large dolls in the style of these figurines. Representing Gomez\u2019s children, they evoke something closer to a parent\u2019s reality: lovable kids, grungy and soiled. As \u201cOceanwide Plaza\u201d subverts the fantasy of the miniature, the dolls do the same for the collectible figurine, asking what makes a moment \u201cprecious.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibition also includes murals featuring familiar childhood imagery: One is an illustration of an enormous traffic accident by children\u2019s book author Richard Scarry. The cacophonous pileup of cars and trucks driven by a wide variety of animals feels like a metaphor for our hopelessly polarized, chaotic and heedless society. This is what people do all day! While Scarry\u2019s books present such catastrophes with bright colors and good humor, Gomez undermines this cheer by superimposing on the mural a nearly all-black painting of a desolate tent encampment in front of a home destroyed by the Eaton fire. The dark underbelly of chaos.<\/p>\n

Some of the strongest works in the show are paintings of windows, which depict at least three spaces: what\u2019s behind the glass, the surface of the glass marked with stickers or signs, and a reflection of the outdoors. These images feel like little worlds pressed up against the surface of each painting, akin to the ubiquitous screens \u2014 phones, TVs, computers \u2014 that routinely flatten our reality. \u201cApartment Window\u201d is nearly abstract, sandwiching a constellation of peeling, sun-bleached cartoon stickers between a reflected sunset and the stripes of vertical blinds. It\u2019s a mysterious image, suggesting the waning of childhood joy. \u201cBay Window\u201d is more disturbing, backing its sunset and cheery children\u2019s stickers with crumpled brown drapes and a jumble of pill bottles. Harsh realities \u2014 in this case, disease and addiction \u2014 don\u2019t often stay behind the curtain.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Sayre Gomez, \u201cVertigo,\u201d 2025, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 144 inches.<\/p>\n

(Sayre Gomez \/ David Kordansky Gallery)<\/p>\n

I was somewhat disappointed to learn that Gomez\u2019s paintings are not based on spontaneous discoveries but on composites of photos he\u2019s taken around the city. The images are purposefully composed, but why paint them? Why not make big printouts of the digital collages and call it a day? Gomez has left at least one clue. In the painting \u201cVertigo,\u201d an image of a car that someone is clearly living in appears in front of a building topped by a large ad with a sexy, recumbent woman. Looking closely, I spied a thin black outline between the car and the building, a sliver of the car\u2019s original background. By including this artifact of his digital process, Gomez acknowledges that the painting\u2019s subject is not reality as experienced on the streets of the city, but a constructed proposition. By turning such propositions into paintings, he converts slippery digital imagery into something lasting and tangible. His precious moments are not memories of an idealized past, nor projections of a tantalizing dream, but interventions in our complex present that reveal beautiful and unsettling layers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oceanwide Plaza was supposed to be a trio of gleaming, high-rise mixed-use towers in the heart of downtown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3409,1409,51912,80556,8568,2303,48,52,51,47,50,49,76768,27635,85434,4269,8673,73710,85433,18120,10697],"class_list":{"0":"post-180003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-child","9":"tag-city","10":"tag-gomez","11":"tag-graffiti-towers","12":"tag-image","13":"tag-l-a","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-la-headlines","16":"tag-la-news","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","19":"tag-los-angeles-news","20":"tag-oceanwide-plaza","21":"tag-painting","22":"tag-precious-moment","23":"tag-reality","24":"tag-sculpture","25":"tag-tower","26":"tag-toy-car","27":"tag-view","28":"tag-waste"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}