Survival, grief, and rebirth come to life in opa projects’ latest group exhibition.
A Show Born From the Ashes
Miami-based gallery opa projects is presenting Out of LA: Contemporary Voices, a group exhibition featuring eight Los Angeles artists directly impacted by the Southern California wildfires earlier this year. The show offers a wide lens—paintings, sculptures, and mixed media—each channeling the emotional weight of loss, the power of resilience, and the will to rebuild.
Participating artists include Cleon Peterson, Ed Ruscha, Kour Pour, Emily Ferguson, Jessica Taylor Bellamy, Kenny Scharf, Nicholas Shake, and Zoe Walsh. Their works reflect a city scorched but not silenced.
Work That Holds the Heat
Highlights include Cleon Peterson’s life-sized Between Fate and Destiny I, filled with his signature chaotic, combative figures locked in primal motion. Ed Ruscha offers FAST FROM (2019), a text-driven acrylic on paper that plays with the idea of words dissolving into images and back again. “I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again,” said Ruscha.
Jessica Taylor Bellamy’s Pastime Paradise (2025) hits close to home. The oil painting shows an LA Times front page melting into a swirl of burning leaves, the headline reading “California’s climate apocalypse”—a direct nod to the fires that reshaped the lives of so many in the region.
A City Reimagined
The gallery describes the show as a tribute to LA’s artists—not rooted in nostalgia, but in movement. In reflection. In action. “In this moment of rebuilding, Out of LA honors the artistic voices that define this city—not through nostalgia, but through action, expression, and an unshakable belief in creative future-building.”
The exhibition runs through August and captures more than a moment—it holds a mirror to the resilience of an entire city.
