Sandow Birk’s new exhibition, “Los Angeles and Her Surroundings” explores the metropolis and her sprawl, glimpsing overlooked poignant moments of resilience, and staring aghast at the chosen hostility of our built environment. His 40 drawings update the orange crate art and railroad advertisements that once attracted Americans to the burgeoning city, supplanting edenic groves and orchards with moribund concrete. As “Hollywood Sign'' announces, we are gazing at Los Angeles from its inverse angle. The vaseline has worn off the lens just enough to reveal that the American Century is past its prime, the American Dream is on the cutting room floor, and suggests the production itself was a fever dream sequence of our own narcotic direction. 

Birk’s meticulous eye captures the immutable dignity among Angelenos toiling through daily life across its concrete basin, depicting our vernacular totems and spirit guides. The tamale lady. Early morning tagging. A shoe tree grows in a nondescript skate park. Gaudy signs and rampant facsimiles of commercial products adorn our mini-markets. Los Angeles is a laid back land of extreme polarity, and extreme proximity; where else do dilapidated million dollar bungalows squat proudly beneath palms while Skid Row gapes like an open wound under the eaves?

His treatment of traditional monuments and iconic buildings encourage the viewer to reacquaint themselves with the time and place of their depiction. Traffic crawls in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, this time Angelenos are in search of their first dose and not first pitch. Starchitect Frank Gehry’s whimsical Disney Hall is upstaged by the wilder, freeform sculpture of a balloon vendor. Birk has not just zeroed in on the flotsam that forms the fabric of life in Greater Los Angeles, he points toward ominous forces that we barely fathom. Oil pumps and cargo cranes dominate local horizons to enrich the city while encircling it like a noose, choking its children with noxious air. 

Birk shares: 

“While in Mexico City I bought a book of prints from the 1800s. The original book was published as a view of Mexico City intended for Spaniards who had never visited – a guided tour of the capital showcasing architecture and culture. I loved the early chromolithography technique. They couldn’t print many colors, so they would print one color plate with a blur of soft colors, and then black on top. I wanted to recreate that in my drawings, with soft colors underneath dark colors. As the pandemic sent everything sideways in 2020, the only way we got out was to bike ride around our neighborhood. I felt like I was rediscovering L.A. The places I’ve lived since I was a teen, by choice, were diverse communities speaking countless languages. I imagined this project as a tour book for people who don’t know L.A., taking care to showcase landmarks but also the places and streets and their juxtapositions. These drawings reflect my experiences of L.A. – the clash of cultures.”

Birk has also produced a series of paintings included in this exhibition that depict the spate of acts of white terrorism that have ravaged communities across the country. The “Triumph” series features towns whose names most Americans only learned in the wake of gun violence (Parkland), police brutality (Ferguson), or displays of white nationalism (Charlottesville). This series follows the Dutch Renaissance tradition of Pieter Breugel the Elder’s genre paintings, depicting bird’s-eye view panoramas rich with tiny details that capture America’s violent malaise. 

The concluding painting of the exhibition, “LACMA on Fire (After Ruscha)”, pays homage to Ed Ruscha’s blazing original, while addressing recent upheaval regarding the institution’s reimaging. The LA County Museum of Art has not been spared 21st century attempts to reimagine public spaces as “revitalized.” Four museum buildings have been demolished, and construction is underway to replace them with a structure that promises to bridge the expanse of Wilshire Boulevard and connect our present accomplishments in high art to the oozing La Brea Tarpits, which still belch relics of our primordial past. There is always much criticism to be laid at the door of our public institutions, but as Ruscha commented, “it’s fun to paint fire."