Sayre Gomez recreates graffiti-covered Oceanwide Plaza as nine-foot sculpture

Sayre Gomez will debut a nearly nine-foot, hyperreal sculpture replicating the abandoned, graffiti-covered Oceanwide Plaza skyscraper at a solo exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles, opening Jan. 16. Gomez said the work was inspired by footage from early 2024, when graffiti artists broke into the half-finished tower, sprayed large tags across its mirrored glass and base-jumpers were filmed leaping from its summit.

Visiting his Boyle Heights studio in mid-December, the reporter found the sculpture still missing its upper section; Gomez said he and his assistants would be working until the last minute to finish it. He enlisted Kludge MFG for fabrication; drones took more than 7,200 photographs and video used to build a digital model, teams added 3-D printed details and Jeff Frost applied surface textures, while Gomez weathered the towers with paint, varnish and UV-printed miniaturizations of the photographed graffiti.

Gomez, 43, has built a reputation as a documentarian of Los Angeles’s urban fabric, often working in airbrush to make photorealistic paintings that address homelessness, scarce infrastructure and the wealth gap; people are frequently absent from his scenes. Anna Katz, senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, said Gomez’s paintings show “ugly or painful realities” and noted his work is in the collections of MOCA, the Hammer, the Broad, LACMA, the Whitney and the Hirshhorn.

Key Topics

Culture, Sayre Gomez, Oceanwide Plaza, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, Kludge Mfg