
Sayre Gomez’s paintings show LA ‘as it is, rather than a projection’
CNN
Expect Californian beaches, sunsets and glittering skylines mixed with hulking construction machinery, abandoned cars and shopping carts set on fire.
It was not until I looked at “Family Room” for the second time that I saw the two children. Underneath a faded sign advertising a “DJ,” “cocktails” and “live entertainment,” where a graffitied security fence gives way to piles of bike wheels, discarded clothes, broken bits of tech and some curtains, two small figures emerge, rummaging in the detritus. The scene of decay and demise is a painting by LA-based artist Sayre Gomez, called “Family Room,” that brings together disparate elements of his hometown in an unnervingly photorealist style. The work forms part of his solo show “Heaven N’ Earth,” at art dealer Xavier Hufkens’ flagship gallery in Brussels, Belgium, exploring the complex dichotomies of the urban landscape. “For the most part, I keep figures out of the paintings, so it was a tricky decision to include them,” Gomez said over Zoom of the image, which was inspired by a real family living in a make-shift encampment of tents and RVs across the road from his studio. “The kids (depicted) in that painting are my kids, but they became a surrogate for this situation.” It’s a deeply disconcerting starting point to a show that stretches over four floors, juxtaposing Californian beaches, sunsets and glittering skylines with hulking construction machinery, abandoned cars and shopping carts set on fire. “Gomez devotes his attention to the physical and cultural survival techniques of those left behind in the wake of capitalist development,” reads the exhibition notes, “with a sincere commitment to documenting traces of lived experience in the ruins of deindustrialization.” Or as Hufkens, who first showed Gomez’s work in Brussels in 2021, said: “Taking ordinary southern Californian scenes as his subject matter, Gomez offers us glimpses of the human experience amid societal change.” “The work has gotten continuously darker over the past few years,” said the 42-year-old artist who, dressed in a sweatshirt and drinking coffee, noted that this shift “coincided with becoming a dad.”