This Week in LA: April 2→8
In this Edition: Dreamscapes, Stripped Libraries, and LA Sunsets on the Edge of Collapse — Painting, Photography, and Performance Across LA and Beyond
This week moves between mythology and memory, institutional critique and the fragility of domestic life — from figures drifting through surrealist dreamscapes to libraries stripped of their language. M+B Art opens Liu Xin’s The Apple Fell, and the Dream Ended, where solitary figures inhabit psychological landscapes suspended between Greek mythology, Zen philosophy, and Freudian longing. At Roberts Projects, Instant Theatre brings Rachel Rosenthal and King Moody’s experimental theatre movement back from the archive — reimagining the gallery as a stage complete with props, costumes, mannequins, and painted bodies that commune with contemporary viewers.
Thordis Adalsteinsdottir’s Rules of the Game at Shoshana Wayne Gallery draws from Old Testament narratives to create a world where animals carry quiet authority and biblical figures are reduced to fragile human episodes. Diane Rosenstein opens her new Hollywood space with Amir Zaki’s No Dust to Settle, presenting modernist Southern California libraries photographed with all text removed — exploring how these spaces have shifted in meaning through reflection and absence. At MOCA, a focused survey of Michael Asher reveals how the conceptual art pioneer turned institutional context itself into the content of his work across six decades. Alec Egan’s Groundskeeper at Vielmetter Los Angeles renders LA sunsets in saturated pinks and blues through clashing patterns and textures — his first solo show since losing his home and studio in the 2025 Palisades fire. And Artbox at Janssen Artspace in Palm Springs presents Glen Wexler’s Everywhere & Nowhere, three decades of photographs inhabiting a liminal space between fact and fiction.
See what’s on view across LA and beyond this week.
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On View Now
M+B Art | West Hollywood
Liu Xin: The Apple Fell, and the Dream Ended
On view through April 18, 2026
@mblosangeles
In The Apple Fell, and the Dream Ended, Chinese artist Liu Xin constructs dreamlike psychological landscapes in which solitary figures move through spaces suspended between reality and illusion — with apples, lotus flowers, dead trees, and pearls weaving together Greek mythology, Freudian dream analysis, and the contemplative emptiness of Zen philosophy.
Sebastian Gladstone | Hollywood
Franne Davids: Figures without Names
April 3 – May 16, 2026
@sebastiangladstone
The late artist Franne Davids spent nearly four decades in a self-fashioned basement studio, adding countless layers of oil paint to forty-two canvases and several hundred works on paper — Figures without Names reveals a world populated almost exclusively by women, bound by interior spaces, with each painting containing within it layers that can no longer be seen but embody a lifetime of revision and obsession.
Roberts Projects | Hollywood
Instant Theatre: Rachel Rosenthal and King Moody
April 4 – May 23, 2026
@robertsprojects
Instant Theatre explores the experimental theatre movement founded by Rachel Rosenthal in 1955 and continued with her husband King Moody through 1966 — featuring archival photographs, paintings, postcards, and ephemera alongside a reimagined gallery-as-theatre-set complete with props, costumes, and painted bodies that situate the movement as a precursor to 1960s and ‘70s performance art.
Shoshana Wayne Gallery | West Adams
Thordis Adalsteinsdottir: Rules of the Game
April 4 – May 23, 2026
@shoshanawayne
Thordis Adalsteinsdottir’s Rules of the Game brings together paintings produced between 2022 and 2026 in which humans and animals coexist without clear hierarchy — with a new series drawing loosely from Old Testament stories, reducing foundational biblical figures to fragile human episodes where myth, domestic life, and quiet absurdity occupy the same visual space.
Make Room | Hollywood
Kahlil Robert Irving, Maddie Butler, Jedediah Caesar
April 4 – May 9, 2026
@makeroom.la
Kahlil Robert Irving, Jedediah Caesar, and Maddie Butler operate within unstable material terrain — Irving’s ceramic sculptures accrete gestures that look like asphalt across multiple firings, Caesar binds metal powders with spices like turmeric and cinnamon in dense composite structures, and Butler stitches Fresnel lenses into large-scale surfaces that capture and fracture their environment.
Diane Rosenstein Gallery | Hollywood
Amir Zaki: No Dust to Settle
April 4 – May 9, 2026
@dianerosenstein
Inaugurating the gallery’s new Hollywood space, Amir Zaki’s No Dust to Settle presents fifteen black and white photographs of postwar modernist library interiors and exteriors across Southern California — including buildings by Richard Neutra and William Pereira — with all legible text removed, exploring how these spaces have shifted in meaning and function through reflection, architecture, and absence.
MOCA Grand Avenue | DTLA
Michael Asher
On view through August 2, 2026
@moca
This focused survey presents twenty works by Michael Asher (1943–2012) via their material elements, documentation, and an accompanying exhibition guide — revealing how the conceptual art pioneer’s site-specific interventions made their surrounding context the active content of his work, critiquing the often unseen social, economic, and institutional structures that underpin the subjects art addresses.
Vielmetter Los Angeles | Arts District, DTLA
Alec Egan: Groundskeeper
April 4 – May 16, 2026
@vielmetter
Alec Egan’s Groundskeeper stems from the psychological concept of the prodromal — the onset of psychosis before it fully emerges — channeling meticulous layers of clashing patterns, prints, and textures into iconic Los Angeles sunsets that swerve between the sublime and the domestic. As Egan’s first LA solo show since the 2025 Palisades fire claimed his home and studio, the paintings locate personal and collective loss within the fragility of the constructed self.
California Museum of Photography | UCR ARTS, Riverside
Lost in the Wilderness: Ansel Adams in the 1960s
On view through May 17, 2026
@ucrarts
Lost in the Wilderness explores Ansel Adams’s sprawling Fiat Lux project — a six-year University of California commission spanning 1963 to 1968 and over 7,500 images — revealing a great photographer off-balance as photography itself changed beneath him and the new generation rejected the pieties of tradition and the shackles of his Zone System.
Artbox at Janssen Artspace | Palm Springs
Glen Wexler: Everywhere & Nowhere
April 4 – May 3, 2026
@janssenartspace
A solo exhibition of Glen Wexler’s Improbable Realities spanning 1996–2024, Everywhere & Nowhere presents photographs that make the impossible feel believable. First emerging in an era when photography was widely trusted as truth, these works now resonate differently in today’s image-saturated world, where that certainty has dissolved. Seen through this shift, Wexler’s images feel both timeless and prescient—inhabiting a liminal space between fact and fiction, reality and imagination. Featured in Palm Springs Life’s “Must-See Exhibitions,” the exhibition invites viewers into a threshold where belief and doubt coexist, and where looking becomes an experience of uncertainty and discovery.
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LA Insider is the weekly newsletter that connects you to LA's vibrant art and culture scene. From the Hollywood Hills to downtown, Malibu and beyond, we uncover a curated selection of standout exhibitions, cultural events, and creative experiences that define the City of Angels.
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