How Painter Sayre Gomez Captured the Polarized Heart of Los Angeles

Morgan Waltz / Courtesy of The Artist and Xavier Hufkens

The painter and multimedia artist Sayre Gomez moved to Los Angeles from his native Chicago in 2006 to attend graduate school at CalArts. Now 42, he’s celebrated for his photorealistic L.A. landscapes that capture the city’s diverse, ever-morphing nature. His latest gallery show, “Heaven ‘N’ Earth,” is on view at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels, Belgium through March 2.

Isimeme “Easy” Otabor, owner and curator of the Anthony Gallery in Chicago, met Gomez in Brussels to discuss his path as an artist and how he came to love the idea of L.A., even as the city itself sometimes depresses him.

GQ: What is it about L.A. that captures your imagination?

Sayre Gomez: There's a ton to unpack. L.A.'s history is pretty fascinating to me. It's also arguably the most commercially photographed city in the world, but not in the obvious, “postcard” way like the Eiffel Tower or the Hollywood sign. I’m more interested in its kind of “use value”—L.A. really is the background in almost all commercials and movies. Hollywood uses the city like a giant set.

The city's diversity is striking too, right? From the grit of Skid Row to the beauty of its parks.

Exactly, it's the contrast.

The juxtaposition—

It’s more than just the juxtaposition. L.A. is almost universal in its role as a backdrop. Even if someone has never set foot here, they recognize it. You could shoot a snowy mountain ski/snowboard ad and then drive a couple hours and shoot the beach for a surfing summer ad. The city’s geography is so versatile. The way it’s manipulated and used in media is intriguing. Downtown can convincingly double as New York or South Pasadena can easily be small town America.

How do you go about choosing the specific scenes you want to capture in your paintings? Is it a deliberate search, or do you stumble upon these places by chance?

It's a mix of both, really. A lot of my inspiration comes from my daily commute between my house and the studio. Sometimes, it's as simple as waiting at a red light and noticing something about a strip mall that I've never seen before. The city is constantly changing, and that really feeds into my work.

Change really is the only constant.

There's this suite of paintings I did inspired by these 99 cent stores windows that I noticed in 2008. They’re two blocks from my studio, so I pass them daily. When they were brand new I thought about painting them but never did. Over the years they began to crackle and fade and they became much more interesting. When I realized how much they had transformed, I decided to make them into paintings. And a few months later I drove by and saw that the store painted over them. So I’m really glad I made them.

Some of your paintings remind me of scenes you'd see from a car window. Do you actually enjoy driving, or has it become something you've learned to appreciate because it's part of your routine?

Honestly, it's a bit of both. Initially, I saw driving as just a necessity, something I had to do, so I tried to find the joy in it amidst all the traffic. Over time, though, I've grown to genuinely enjoy it. There's something about finding the right time to drive, when the roads are clearer—it can actually be pretty fun.

Yeah, there's something about hitting the road to Malibu, with the open roads and no traffic late at night, that's just peaceful.

Driving late at night, especially after a long day, is super fun. I love speeding! And during Covid, the empty streets were pretty uncanny.

How has L.A. evolved during your time here?

I would say the whole city feels more intensified—more polarized. When I first landed in 2006, downtown felt deserted, almost like a no-man’s land. Skid row was its own world, somewhat separated, and the homelessness crisis seemed pretty much isolated within skid row. You really didn’t see tons of encampments all over. It’s so diffuse now. At the same time the city has become so much more fancy and expensive. Over the last decade or so it’s gone from a moderately affordable city to one of the 10 most expensive cities in the world.

What’s your favorite city in the world?

I’ve traveled a lot, but you don’t really get a sense of what a city is really like when you’re just visiting, so I would have to narrow it down to Chicago and Los Angeles, the only two cities I’ve ever lived in. I love Chicago, but I’m not sure I’d move back. L.A., on the other hand, is complicated. I love the idea of it, but it can also be overwhelmingly sad at times. It’s an incredible place, but it can be really depressing.

You’re originally from Chicago, correct?

Yeah, I was born in Downers Grove and raised in Elmhurst and Lombard—Western ‘burbs. A pretty short drive from the city, about 20 to 30 minutes on 290.

And you've got pieces up at the Broad Museum right now.

Yeah, it's pretty wild. I'm showing alongside some of my all-time heroes. Feels good, man.

Heroes—who are we talking about?

Everyone in that show, really, but some of the more historically canonized. Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha, and John Baldessari [were] all hugely inspiring for me, especially when I was really first learning about contemporary art.

What's something that people commonly misunderstand about your work?

I think the biggest one is people mistake my paintings for photos.

Your work does resemble photojournalism in some ways. Do you share any similar goals in terms of shining a light on specific conditions or issues?

There are some similarities, but I think photojournalism operates from the position that photographic imagery can be neutral and in service of documenting some kind of truth. My work is in conversation with that, but it's more critical of that. I’m more interested in the conversation around photography not being able to present the truth in some kind of objective way. I like the idea of trying to figure out the truth or find it in some roundabout way. Truth is a subjective thing.

Back when I saw your pieces on iPads at art fairs, I’d think, “Oh, these just look like photos” without even knowing who you were. But then a friend brought me to your show in L.A., I think it was around 2017 or 2018, and when I saw one of your sticker paintings in person, I was blown away. I thought it was real wood with actual stickers. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. That’s when I was like, Oh this guy is going to be big.

It’s always a bit of a surprise for people. I find myself explaining that they’re paintings and not photos, and it immediately changes their perspective and appreciation. Which is really interesting to me. People don’t pay much mind when they think it’s a photo, but learning it’s a painting changes everything.

It’s probably the impact of technology. Nowadays, with everything so accessible and reproducible through our phones, seeing something hyper-realistic that’s manually created fascinates people. It's like my Polaroids; taking a photo with an iPhone is one thing, but there's something more tangible about a Polaroid. It gives a different sense of reality, highlighting the craftsmanship involved.

Exactly—it’s all about the craftsmanship. People still really respond to that. It has mass appeal!

Let’s talk about your show “Heaven ‘N’ Earth,” currently on view at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels. What's the story behind the name?

Honestly, the title just clicked for me. It's catchy, feels familiar, like something you've heard before but maybe can’t place exactly. I’m a fan of keeping titles straightforward but also a bit playful. The Hufkens space is enormous, four stories, which really pushed me to think about how to really take advantage of and use the space. I originally envisioned the exhibition as a series of interconnected yet distinct exhibitions. So I originally thought of it as four separate exhibitions, one on each floor. As I was making the work I kept revisiting the layout and making more connections between the works on each floor. I had the idea to focus the top floor, which features an enormous beautiful skylight in the center, on a series of sunset paintings I was working on. That's when the idea of “Heaven” hit me—it seemed perfect. And then the floors below just became “Earth.” The title is actually quite literal in the end.

What else do you have planned for 2024?

Well, it's funny because I don't have that much lined up, which is kind of nice. I mean, for the past five years, I've had my whole year booked out, at least a year in advance. Usually, I'm working towards a fall show, and having had my big show of the year open in January and already behind me is kind of a relief. But my work will actually be featured in two exhibitions at MOCA in Los Angeles. The first will open in April and is a show of recent acquisitions, and then in the fall I will have a new work included in their photorealism survey show curated by Anna Katz. I'll have work at Frieze in L.A. and Basel in Switzerland. I’m also working on a big monograph that will come out in the fall. In the summer I'm going to help organize a benefit in the summer with this guy, Sebastian Gladstone. Have you heard of that gallery?

Yeah, I'm familiar.

So, we're organizing a benefit for Feed the Streets. They're really incredible and grassroots, they are very hands-on and out there every day on the streets, providing people with water, food, clothes, hygiene kits—all the basics. They also have a great youth outreach program. I worked with them a couple of years ago and published an edition that raised quite a bit of money for them, so I'm looking forward to putting this together.

Originally Appeared on GQ