With the exhibition “The 1970s—A Decade of Defiance and Dreams”, the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) returns to Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in Los Angeles to present the latest completed segment of The Great Wall of Los Angeles, Judith F. Baca’s iconic half-mile mural, marking 50 years since its inception. This exhibition showcases a vibrant 400-foot portable panel depicting pivotal 1970s U.S. resistance movements. The segment begins with the 1969 Native American occupation of Alcatraz, igniting Indigenous activism, then portrays political prisoners like George Jackson and Angela Davis resisting state violence. It continues with the 1970 Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, campus uprisings (from San Fernando Valley State College to Kent State), Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” voicing generational grief, and emerging artists/activists from refugee communities. Through collaborative creation, the mural uses art as testimony and transformation, amplifying underrepresented voices. Judith F. Baca is a renowned Chicana muralist, SPARC founder, UCLA Professor Emeritus, and 2023 National Medal of Arts recipient. Under her direction, the team employs innovative portable poly-synthetic panels for year-round production, supported by foundations like Mellon. This builds on prior Deitch shows and advances the mural’s expansion toward a full mile by 2028. The exhibition runs until April 4, 2026.

Judith F. Baca: Great Wall of Los Angeles: The 1970s- A Decade of Defiance and Dreams. Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles, 925 N. Orange Drive, Los Angeles. February 21, 2026.

Exhibition text:

In February 2026, SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) will return to Jeffrey Deitch to exhibit the latest complete segment in the expansion of The Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, fifty years after its initial production.

The 1970s marked a pivotal decade of resistance, reckoning, and reimagining in the United States, and this segment of The Great Wall of Los Angeles captures the heartbeat of its most consequential movements. Beginning with the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in 1969, a reclamation of land and identity that reignited Indigenous activism, the latest complete section of the mural next unfolds in moments that echo across the prisons of America, where political prisoners like George Jackson and Angela Davis embody the era’s radical resistance to state violence.

Next, the mural depicts protestors marching in the 1970 Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, followed by interconnected uprisings reverberating across campuses from San Fernando Valley State College to Kent State. As Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” gives voice to a generation mourning its war dead and protesting systemic injustice, the mural shows new waves of artists and activists rising from refugee communities. The mural’s overarching story is how art becomes a vehicle for testimony and transformation.

SPARC’s expansion of The Great Wall of Los Angeles is currently in production under the artistic direction of Judith F. Baca. Consisting of a team of three lead artists, four painting assistants, and visiting professional muralists, SPARC’s innovative artistic technology has blazed a pathway for year-round mural production. Painting on 12-foot high poly-synthetic panels that are upheld by a railing and scrolling system, SPARC’s Great Wall of Los Angeles is able to partner and travel to various studios, galleries, and community-centered locations with generous support from the Mellon Foundation, California Natural Resources Agency, California Community Foundation, and Adams-Mastrovich Family Foundation.

For over forty years, Judy Baca has been innovating and spearheading the practice of working with local communities to create countless social justice oriented, large-scale vibrant works of art. She founded the first City of Los Angeles Mural Program in 1974, which evolved into a community arts organization known as the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). Today, while continuing to serve SPARC as artistic director, Baca is one of the most celebrated Chicana artists, a world-renowned muralist, social activist and UCLA Professor Emeritus. In March 2023, Baca was awarded the National Medal of Art Recognition by the President of the United States, Joseph Biden.

Baca’s collaborative, portable mural World Wall: A Vision of the Future Without Fear was shown in an enveloping installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) in 2022. She transformed the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (LACMA) into her studio in 2023, adding on to the Great Wall in real time during her exhibition, Painting in the River of Angels: Judy Baca and the Great Wall. That same year, The Great Wall of Los Angeles, Judy Baca’s first major exhibition at a commercial gallery, was shown at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles.

On March 7, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel, and Gabriela Ortiz will unite a group of composers inspired by The Great Wall of Los Angeles for an hour-long symphonic tribute to the Angelenos who have shaped the city’s history, featuring an original film by director Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

“I want to use public space to create public voice and consciousness about the presence of people who are often the majority of the population but who may not be represented in any visual way. By telling their stories we are giving voice to the voiceless and visualizing the whole of the American story.” — Judith F. Baca

The Being is the title of a solo exhibition by Italian born artist Marco Perego at Deitch Los Angeles. Perego works across mediums such as video, installation, and drawing. The Being is an installation made of a few parts: a big screen, speakers for sound, a device that releases smells, special film on the windows that can change. It watches and responds to people who enter the room. It moves with the rhythm of the solar system. When you walk in, it reads your facial expression and copies your emotions on the screen. Its “heartbeat” shows on the window film and follows live data from the Sun. When the room is empty, The Being becomes more active — almost like it’s trying hard to speak or call someone. When a person sits down, images start appearing on the screen. If two people sit together and breathe at the same rhythm, the screen and the windows start pulsing together. Then a smell of fresh rain (petrichor) fills the air. The whole piece is always changing. It links the very slow time of outer space with right now. It hints at a shared kind of awareness that lasts much longer than one human life.

Marco Perego: The Being / Deitch Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. Opening reception, February 20, 2026.

Exhibition text (excerpt):
The Being is composed of a set of elements— a screen, a sound system, a scent diffuser, and a switchable film on the windows— which forms a network of influences and responses. It observes and reacts to the presence of the visitor and is animated by the rhythm of the solar system. As visitors enter the gallery, their facial expressions are captured and transferred to The Being. The Being adapts to the visitor’s emotional states as they observe the screen. The “heartbeat” of The Being materializes through the film on the windows and is guided by real-time data from the Sun. The room intensifies when it is empty, as if it were desperately trying to communicate. When a person enters the exhibition and sits down, images begin to appear on the screen. When two people synchronize their breathing, the rhythm of the screen and that of the glass align, releasing a scent of petrichor. The installation exists in a constant state of flux, connecting the deep time of distant space to the present moment, suggesting a form of shared consciousness that extends beyond the span of a human life.

Born 1979 in Vimercate, Italy, Marco Perego works in Los Angeles and lives with his wife and their three children. His artistic practice is driven by a deep interest in transformation and transcendence. Perego’s work responds to the turbulence of contemporary life, seeking to spark conversations about the constant changes unfolding both in the world around us and within ourselves. Perego’s works have been exhibited internationally at the Michele Maccarone Gallery in New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA; the Museum of Modern Art in Bologna, Italy; the National Archeological Museum in Florence, Italy; the Rennie Museum in Vancouver, Canada; the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA; and Untilthen in Paris, France. His works are included in the public collections of the Museo Jumex in Mexico City, Mexico; the Rennie Museum in Vancouver, Canada; the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA; and the Pinault Collection in Paris, France. In 2024, the artist participated in the Venice Biennale as part of the Vatican Pavilion. His first feature film, The Absence of Eden, was produced by Martin Scorsese. The screenplay was acquired by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures as part of its permanent collection and his short film DOVECOTE was shortlisted for the Academy Awards. Following Perego’s exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch, the artist will return to the Centre Pompidou-Metz to present a project made in collaboration with the institution.

The exhibition Star-Crossed Rendezvous at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles presents two art installations by Haegue Yang. Haegue Yang (b. 1971, Seoul; lives in Seoul and Berlin) creates large-scale installations using everyday utilitarian objects, driven by the generative potential of abstraction. Her immersive environments engage light, color, and sound to evoke sensory experiences that transcend language. Through “incubated abstraction,” she subtly embeds historical narratives and figures as latent structures, forging porous connections between past and present.

The exhibition Star-Crossed Rendezvous pairs two major works made with customized venetian blinds—a signature material since the mid-2000s that manipulates light, space, and viewer perception. Created nearly a decade apart, they form an asymmetrical, doubled whole.

Sol LeWitt Upside Down – K123456, Expanded 1078 Times, Doubled and Mirrored (2015) reinterprets Sol LeWitt’s open cubes as dense, oscillating layers of blinds in monochromatic form. In contrast, Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun (2024) honors composer Isang Yun (1917–95) with vibrant geometric structures animated by moving lights synchronized to his Double Concerto (1977), creating a dynamic, multisensory tribute.

Haegue Yang: Star-Crossed Rendezvous at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles runs until August 2, 2026.

Haegue Yang: Star-Crossed Rendezvous / Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles, Grand Avenue. Press preview, February 24, 2026.

Press text (excerpt): Haegue Yang (b. 1971, Seoul; lives in Seoul and Berlin) is known for large-scale installations that employ utilitarian objects. Motivated by the generative power of abstraction, Yang choreographs immersive encounters with light, color, and sound, creating heightened sensory environments that communicate beyond language. Her works often draw on specific historical narratives and figures, yet these sources remain mostly concealed. Through what the artist describes as “incubated abstraction,” historical references function as latent structures for the work, creating a porous relationship between past and present where new possibilities emerge. Star-Crossed Rendezvous brings together two major installations executed using customized venetian blinds, a window treatment designed with adjustable angled slats that filter light and structure spatial relationships. This material has been central to Yang’s practice since the mid-2000s, allowing the artist to engage with the viewer’s perception and movement. Made nearly a decade apart, these markedly different works appear as two halves of an imperfect whole, foregrounding Yang’s interest in asymmetry and doubling, both recurring principles in her practice. On one side of the exhibition, Sol LeWitt Upside Down – K123456, Expanded 1078 Times, Doubled and Mirrored (2015) is a monochromatic installation inspired by the cube structures of American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007). Yang adopts LeWitt’s open cubes and replaces them with a dense accumulation of blinds, with layers of slotted angular forms that oscillate between transparency and opacity. On the other side, Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun (2024) pays tribute to the life and work of Isang Yun (1917–95), a pioneering composer and political dissident. Moving lights synchronized to Yun’s Double Concerto (1977) animate vibrant geometric structures, producing a shifting, multisensory encounter with the musical composition.

In this video we share some impressions and highlights from the Frieze art fair in Los Angeles. Frieze Los Angeles 2026 is the seventh edition of the contemporary art fair, currently ongoing at the Santa Monica Airport in Los Angeles. It runs from February 26 to March 1, 2026. The fair brings together approximately 100 galleries, a program of installations, and collaborations with nonprofit organizations.

Frieze Art Fair Los Angeles 2026. Santa Monica Airport, Los Angeles, February 27, 2026.

In this video we attend the opening reception of the exhibition “American Cement at the American Cement Building”, a group show with works by Aimee Goguen, Margaret Haines and P Staff. Curated by Henry Hopper, the exhibition runs until March 9, 2026.

Aimee Goguen, Margaret Haines and P Staff curated by Henry Hopper at Tropical Berlin Gallery, Los Angeles. February 22, 2026.

Press release (excerpt):

Cement as bad alchemy

Cement is a spiritless stone: fake earth that has hardened before it has integrated. Opus Caementicium – the rubble-work at the root of empire – follows the alchemical process up to fixation, then commits the ultimate error: it freezes transformation before reconciliation, producing endless matter without spirit.

Our play is one in which the ghosts of our narrative fragments escape fixation and are performed once again. What has risen out of the mire is what has passed through the body, the voice, the hand, the eye, and the fire.

Unfolding within the American Cement Building (a structure shaped by the marriage of American industry, military defense architecture, and corporate power), three artists—Aimee Goguen, Margaret Haines, and P. Staff ” brandish prophecy, theatre, poetry, surveillance, alchemical instruments, masks, blades, regurgitated teratomas, and the fixative properties of cement itself, upending the architectural and ideological confines and utilizing them as means to transcend their surroundings.

Henry Hopper