Sayre Gomez
Da Vinci Staircase, 2024
Dimensions
46.5” x 33.5” (118.11 x 85.09 cm)
Medium
28 colour Silkscreen on Rising Museum Board 2-ply
Edition of 50
$4,500
Details
Co-published with Teconoco
This artwork is sold unframed
Authentication
Each print is signed and numbered by the artist
Both publisher’s blindstamp on verso and inventory number and copyright stamp on recto
Release Date
June 23rd, 2024
Shipping
Print will ship 2 weeks after purchase
Los Angeles residents have the option for local pickup from Ollin Editions
International Sales or more Payment Options
Please contact us at patricia@ollineditions.com or +1 (323) 821-0595
Conditions of Sale
Non-resale for two years from the date of the purchase.
Sayre Gomez with the painting ‘Da Vinci Staircase’ in his Los Angeles studio, 2022
About the artwork
Ollin Editions and Teconoco are proud to announce the release of Da Vinci Staircase, our first collaboration with the Los Angeles-based artist, Sayre Gomez, on June 23rd, 2024. This limited edition print also marks the first collaboration between our new publishing companies.
The new print edition Da Vinci Staircase, 2024 is based on the painting of the same name from 2022, which was part of the artist’s solo exhibition Renaissance Collection at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengoin in Turin, Italy. The title of this exhibition referenced an ongoing series of real estate developments in Downtown Los Angeles, with vaguely patriarchal names such as the ‘Medici’, ‘Orsini’, ‘Visconti’, ‘Piero’, ‘Da Vinci’, ‘Lorenzo’, and most recently ‘Ferrante’. Names that all seem to suggest a bourgeois ruling class of Florence and Tuscany during the Renaissance; a far stretch from the redevelopment project of Downtown Los Angeles.
Gomez’s hyper-realistic work challenges the viewer’s ability to differentiate between authenticity and simulation in a digital, image-saturated and screen-based world. His dreamy, post-apocalyptic sunset-scapes evoke conflicting feelings of both horror and blissful preoccupation; apt reactions for a city like Los Angeles, which is so full of contradictions. The brutal, jarring symmetry of the staircase standing in contrast to the soft evening sky was translated deftly by master serigraph printer Daniel Wlazlak for this new print edition. Building the luminous sky up through layers of airbrushed films, and completing the foreground wreckage through a digitally generated dot pattern, this new print constructs the next iteration of a structure in the state of rising and falling. As a totemic signifier, what does the burnt staircase stand in for? Ascent, escalation, escape. It bears a crude resemblance to Leonardo Da Vinci’s engineering drawings, his lofty thoughts that ran the gamut from war machines (tanks), to aerial corkscrews (helicopters), to bridges and scaling ladders for sieges. Designs and plans that have been largely sidelined by his benignly smiling Mona Lisa, or Christ enjoying a final meal with his apostles.
For Gomez, the city is a barometer of changing cultural and economic conditions, a deeply layered structure that is ripe for semiotic analysis, whereby it is not so much the structures themselves that are of interest but what they signify and are capable of evoking. From a sculpture, to a painting, to a print, over an 11 year timespan. We currently have another batch of exposed steel staircases straddling the opposite side of the freeway from the now inhabited ‘Da Vinci’ development. Situated on one of the busiest and most congested arteries of the city’s freeway system, we will soon again be delivered a bland approximation of Renaissance class, in an entirely unfitting location; Los Angeles playing itself. Perhaps over time, the allure of European balcony living will give way to the reality of smog-filled walls and patio windows, the incessant noise of commuting vehicles, views of the anonymous glass-walled skyscrapers of banking and commerce, and the misery of the City of Angels’ ever-expanding homeless encampments. Still, the sunsets will never disappoint.
Sayre Gomez (b. Chicago, 1982) has risen to prominence in recent years with his semi fictionalized and photorealistic paintings, executed using a wide range of techniques, including trompe l’oeil, airbrushing, stenciling, and those employed in painting Hollywood sets. His work draws inspiration from the urban landscape of Los Angeles, featuring housing, road signs, billboards, and landmarks that serve as the backdrop for extended commutes throughout the city. Many of Gomez's paintings simultaneously touch on the beauty of nature, such as vivid sunsets and sumptuous palms, while also addressing themes like the passage of time, urban decay, commercial signage, and nostalgia. Gomez synthesizes his observations into hyperreal images that challenge our ability to differentiate between authenticity and simulation. A cityscape that feels true-to-life might just as easily be an artificial construction, exploring the increasingly tenuous link between our everyday surroundings and a digital culture relentlessly driven by enhanced and manipulated imagery. The flawless execution and even luminescence of Gomez’s canvases, along with shifts between hard and sharp focus, can be seen as painterly reflections on the digital flattening and blurring of life and culture through screen-based technology. Openings and barriers, such as windows, doors, gates, shutters, walls, and fences, are recurrent metaphors in his oeuvre, suggesting that Los Angeles is a city of promise and freedom but also one of barriers and destitution. Gomez also explores these themes through sculpture, installation, and video.
Sayre Gomez lives and works in Los Angeles. The artist 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 Heaven ’N’ Earth at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels, BE., Landscapes at Galerie Nagel Draxler in Cologne, DE., and Enterprise at Sifang Museum of Art in Nanjing, CA. Gomez’s works are held in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; The Broad, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; ICA, Miami; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Oketa Collection, Tokyo; Maki Collection, Tokyo; and Rubell Museum, Miami.
Sayre Gomez is represented by Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne, DE, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, USA and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, BE.
Artwork photography courtesy of Charles White/JWPictures. Portrait photography courtesy of Aubrey Mayer.