This Week in LA: July 23→29
In this Edition: Pope.L's America at 250, Breath Made Sculpture, Vintage Wegman, and More Across LA
This week Los Angeles tilts between the collective and the singular — sweeping group reckonings on one side, artists returned to in deep and solitary focus on the other. At Vielmetter Los Angeles, Ongoingness gathers nineteen gallery artists around Pope.L’s Heaven (Vielmetter Version) for a wide, unruly meditation on the United States at its 250th year — a portrait of the country assembled from many hands rather than one. Also in downtown at François Ghebaly, Rapido pulls a rarely seen installation and works on paper from Alexis Smith’s formative 1970s back into view, the decade when her spliced-together Americana first found its voice.
In West Adams, Shoshana Wayne Gallery gives Shirley Tse and Dana Berman Duff — working together as Relational — the room for The Universe Breathes Us, where tidal pull and the simple fact of breath are turned into sculpture, sound, and projected film, the invisible forces between bodies rendered almost tangible. Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Beverly Hills winds the clock back too, with William Wegman: Private Show, vintage 1970s photographs and video from the years Wegman was inventing his deadpan conceptual grammar, hung alongside later work that extends it. And in Hollywood, Diane Rosenstein Gallery presents Trophies, David Hicks’ new glazed ceramic vessels — his ongoing clippings series pushed toward the fruit-heavy, the swollen, the almost-overripe.
Around these highlights the week fills in with a downtown frieze of 360 portraits, a forty-artist survey of landscape and escape, Douglas Gordon’s looped Zidane, a Punjabi sculptor’s first show outside India, and a one-night sound sculpture in Pasadena.
Check out the full lineup is below.
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Featured Exhibitions
Vielmetter Los Angeles | DTLA, Los Angeles
Ongoingness
July 25 – September 5, 2026
@vielmetter
Vielmetter Los Angeles opens the summer with Ongoingness, a nineteen-artist group exhibition built around Pope.L’s Heaven (Vielmetter Version) and pitched as a reflection on the United States at its 250th anniversary — a subject too large and too contested for any single voice, handed here to nineteen. Across installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, and mixed media, the show reads less as a thesis than as a chorus, its artists circling questions of belonging, myth, and unfinished national business without ever agreeing on the answers. It is the kind of exhibition that treats a country the way one might treat a difficult family — with attention, with argument, and without the comfort of a conclusion.
François Ghebaly | DTLA, Los Angeles
Alexis Smith: Rapido
On view through August 15, 2026
@francoisghebaly
François Ghebaly turns back to a formative moment with Rapido, a focused presentation of rarely exhibited installation and works on paper that Alexis Smith made in the 1970s — the decade when her signature language of spliced text, found imagery, and the sun-bleached poetry of American vernacular first cohered. Made before the wall-spanning narrative installations that would define her, these early works catch the artist mid-invention, cutting and arranging the country’s throwaway culture into something wry and unexpectedly tender. Seen now, they read as both period document and origin story.
Shoshana Wayne Gallery | West Adams, Los Angeles
Shirley Tse & Dana Berman Duff: The Universe Breathes Us
July 25 – September 5, 2026
@shoshanawayne
At its West Adams space, Shoshana Wayne Gallery presents The Universe Breathes Us, a collaborative exhibition by Shirley Tse and Dana Berman Duff working under the shared name Relational, where the invisible traffic between bodies — tidal pull, shared air, the mechanics of breath — is translated into sculpture, sound, projected film, video, and installation. The two treat connection not as metaphor but as physics, building an environment in which the forces that ordinarily pass unnoticed between people are slowed down and made perceptible. The result asks the viewer to feel, rather than merely observe, the medium they are suspended in.
Marc Selwyn Fine Art | Beverly Hills
William Wegman: Private Show
On view through September 5, 2026
@marcselwynfineart
Marc Selwyn Fine Art mounts Private Show, a gathering of rare vintage photographs and video from the 1970s — the years when William Wegman was working out the deadpan conceptual grammar that would make his name — shown alongside later works that expand those early strategies. Before the polished, widely-loved Weimaraner portraits, Wegman was a restless maker of quick, funny, formally sharp gestures on paper, tape, and film, and this exhibition returns to that scrappier, more experimental register. It is a chance to see the wit before it hardened into a signature.
Diane Rosenstein Gallery | Hollywood, Los Angeles
David Hicks: Trophies
July 25 – August 29, 2026
@dianerosenstein
Diane Rosenstein Gallery gives David Hicks his third solo show with Trophies, a suite of new glazed ceramic vessels drawn from his ongoing clippings series — forms that borrow the language of botany and abundance, swelling toward the ripe, the heavy, and the faintly excessive. Hicks treats the vessel less as a container than as a specimen, each glazed surface pooling and running like fruit caught at the edge of overripeness. Titled Trophies, the works carry a quiet irony about what we choose to keep, preserve, and put on display.
Also On View
Bergamot Station
MEASURED FORMS — Group Show · Nüart Gallery · Through August 8, 2026 · @nuartgallery
ART IN MUSIC — Group Show · Copro Gallery · Through August 8, 2026 · @coprogallery
Mid-Wilshire
ESCAPE — Group Show · CMay Gallery · Through August 22, 2026 · @cmaygallery
Selected Works 1974–2018 — Joel-Peter Witkin · Fahey/Klein Gallery · July 23 – September 26, 2026 · @faheykleingallery
Beverly Hills
Magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all — Douglas Gordon · Gagosian · Through August 22, 2026 · @gagosian
Hollywood
I Got a Cut in My Flower Valley — Gurjeet Singh · Rajiv Menon Contemporary · Through August 22, 2026 · @rajivmenoncontemporary
Chinatown
Cosecha — Curated by Ever Velasquez · Charlie James Gallery · July 24 – August 29, 2026 · @charliejamesgallery
DTLA
Portraits 2019–2026 — Tyler Matthew Oyer · Night Gallery · Through August 15, 2026 · @nightgallery
A Gaze Through Time — Group Show · Advocartsy · July 26 – September 27, 2026 · @advocartsy
Pasadena
Sound Activism — A Sound Sculpture — Jim Brown · AMPHI · July 25, 2026 (one night, 7–9pm) · @amphi____
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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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