Sayre Gomez

Sayre Gomez uses hyperreal painting techniques to address themes of representation and visuality in contemporary society. His paintings, sculptures, and videos adopt the visual vernacular of Los Angeles, drawing on the postmodern mashup of urban sprawl, car culture, mass media, and natural beauty inherent to the city. Gomez layers disparate visual references, including found images, cell phone photos, and video fragments, summing to a patchwork vision of mediated urban terrain. He shows Los Angeles as it is rarely depicted in popular imagery. Yet beyond this truth, Gomez’s practice explores how this city stands as a symbol for broader conditions in American society—stark and brutal inequality, widespread voyeuristic exposure, pervasive imaging technologies, and the disorienting collision of splendor and decline.

Sayre Gomez (b. 1982, Chicago, USA) holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin. Gomez’s works are held in the permanent collections of LACMA, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; mumok, Vienna; ICA, Miami; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turino; Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal; and Rubell Museum, Miami. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.