This Week in LA: Oct. 2→8
Identity, Memory, and Place Across LA Galleries
October opens with the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. 2025, the seventh iteration of its signature biennial featuring 28 artists engaging with the city’s complex terrain. This week also brings French Humanist photography from the 1950s and 60s at Peter Fetterman Gallery, Carol Bove’s industrial reflections at Gagosian Beverly Hills, and Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.’s vehicle portraits exploring labor and survival at Matthew Brown Gallery. Whether you’re drawn to Igor Hosnedl’s ethereal lunar paintings at Nicodim or Esteban Raheem Abdul Raheem Samayoa’s dreamlike airbrush works weaving heritage and faith at Charlie James Gallery, October showcases artists grappling with identity, memory, and place. Time to explore our picks for this week’s compelling exhibitions...
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On View Now
Hammer Museum | Westwood
Made in L.A. 2025
October 5, 2025 – March 1, 2026
The seventh iteration of the Hammer’s signature biennial featuring 28 artists practicing throughout greater Los Angeles, presenting work in film, painting, theater, choreography, photography, sculpture, sound, and video that engages with the city in ways alternately literal, formal, material, and metaphoric.
Peter Fetterman Gallery | Bergamot Station, Santa Monica
Nouvelle Vague: French Photography from the 1950s and 1960s
On view through January 3, 2026
A compelling survey of French Humanist photography featuring iconic works by Raymond Cauchetier, Edouard Boubat, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, and others who captured spontaneous moments and everyday life with sensitivity and poetic depth in post-war France.
Galerie XII | Bergamot Station, Santa Monica
Lauri Gaffin: Moving Still
October 4 – November 22, 2025
A visual diary spanning 35 years as a photographer and set decorator for feature films including Fargo, Iron Man, and Captain Marvel, offering behind-the-scenes insights into the collaborative spirit of filmmaking while chronicling the emotional life led pursuing success in cinema.
Gagosian | Beverly Hills
Carol Bove: Nights of Cabiria
On view through November 1, 2025
New sculptures reflecting on LA’s industrial heritage as a Cold War aerospace and weapons manufacturing center, incorporating reclaimed structural scaffolding, fabric scrims screenprinted with imagery from Italian silent film Cabiria, and works combining weathered girders with mirror-polished steel.
Matthew Brown Gallery | Los Angeles
Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.: NO PARKING
On view through October 29, 2025
The artist’s second solo exhibition featuring vehicles as proxies for people moving through LA, including fire-gutted vans, graffitied trucks, and abandoned RVs rendered with careful attention to every scorch mark and dent, alongside human-scale sculptures recalling improvised parking spot barriers.
Karma | Los Angeles
Manoucher Yektai: Beginnings
On view through November 1, 2025
The most expansive presentation of the artist-poet’s early work from 1948-1969, curated by Negar Azimi, featuring Surrealist-inflected abstractions, Abstract Expressionist still lifes, and heavily impastoed portraits that reveal his engagement with postwar art movements while remaining concerned with color, gesture, and spatial construction.
Nicodim Gallery | Arts District, DTLA
Igor Hosnedl: Night Tide
On view through November 8, 2025
The artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles featuring monumental ethereal paintings starring almost-human characters grappling with their autonomy in the face of nature, exploring the depths of soul exposed by lunar gravity and the forces of the cosmos.
Charlie James Gallery | Chinatown
Esteban Raheem Abdul Raheem Samayoa: Hug the sky for it
On view through November 1, 2025
The Oakland-based artist’s first exhibition with the gallery featuring airbrush paintings in hauntingly expressive greyscale that speak to his Guatemalan and Mexican heritage, Oakland community, and Islamic faith through dreamlike compositions weaving symbols, icons, and cosmic imagery.
Wonzimer Gallery | DTLA
Vasco Del Rey: Mythologies of a Mexican Boy
On view through October 12, 2025
The gallery’s first solo exhibition with the artist featuring paintings that construct a mythology rooted in rupture, ritual, and remembrance, grappling with the immigrant experience through faceless figures suspended between tenderness and ache while transforming reclaimed wood pallets into altars.
Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion, Orange Coast College | Costa Mesa
Group Exhibition: Split Ends
On view through November 20, 2025
A boldly woven multi-generational fiber art exhibition capturing current threads in transformation and disruption, featuring 23 Southern California artists working with thread, burlap, yarn, fabric, and found elements transmuted into stretched and sculptural narratives that challenge convention.
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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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