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John Baldessari: Sculptures

Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles Los Angeles · Mid-City

Exhibition on view: Sep 11, 2026 - Dec 12, 2026

John Baldessari’s Sculptures at Sprüth Magers gathers, for the first time, works tracing how the artist moved into three dimensions. Recreated late-1990s wallpaper installations sit beside Beethoven’s Trumpet (with Ear), a giant ear that plays string quartets when a visitor speaks, and Ear Sofa, turning body parts into funny tools for examining perception.

John Baldessari

John Baldessari (1931–2020) was a pioneer of American conceptual art who continuously explored the relationship between image and text. Born in National City, California, he received his BA (1953) and MA in painting (1957) from San Diego State College. He trained as a painter before his 1970 "Cremation Project," in which he burned the paintings he had made between 1953 and 1966. Based in Los Angeles, he combined found photographs, film stills, colored dots and text to probe the gaps between image and meaning, in works such as "I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art" (1971). A longtime teacher at CalArts (1970–88) and UCLA (1996–2007), he influenced artists from David Salle to Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger. His retrospective "Pure Beauty," organized by Tate Modern in 2009, traveled to LACMA and the Metropolitan Museum. He received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2009 and the National Medal of Arts in 2014.