Gagosian to exhibit new works by Lauren Halsey, opening on November 14th at the gallery’s Park & 75 location. The installation is composed of protruded engravings and a large-scale plaza sign sculpture—honoring the aesthetics of her home community in South Central Los Angeles and the diasporic, mythological features of Black life in the United States.
The six-foot-tall sculpture from the plaza sign series (2024–) pays homage to the iconography, color palettes, and creative wordplay commonly found on Black- and Brown-owned business signage in working-class neighborhoods. Whereas signs like “Watts Happening” are tributes to artist- and community-run cultural centers, others like “Dreams and Things” and “Sisters Serving the Community” are a call to action and a reminder of the historic and current roles that community members and institutions play in stewarding Black and Brown neighborhoods amid conditions of economic inequality, systemic racism, state violence, gentrification, and displacement.
The monochrome sculptural reliefs in the protruded engravings series (2022–), on the other hand, assemble a historical, contemporary, and mythical graphic record of Black culture in Los Angeles. Like the cosmological carvings of ancient Egypt and Mesoamerican civilizations, Halsey’s engravings appear almost hieroglyphic, transforming South Central residents, institutions, and everyday moments into ciphers that illuminate alternative constructions of the past, present, and future. She places their expressive cultures and community designs into a dynamic exchange with Afro-diasporic mythologies, Funk music and aesthetics, personal memory, and collective history.
“These works grow out of my desire to create a vocabulary and practice that exists somewhere beyond celebration and preservation,” Halsey explains. “They represent my dreamscape for a plaza and my yearning to create a unique portrait of a place. I celebrate how color, text, and informal language are used in my neighborhood to articulate the promise of a business or community institution. The artwork also expresses gratitude to the brilliant hands and energy that create these messages and aesthetic. Los Angeles is one point of reference in this work,” she continues. “But it also speaks to the symbols, poetics, and cultural environment that I experienced during my years living in Harlem. It was there that I began developing certain aspects of my approach, most especially as it relates to carving. It feels serendipitous to reintroduce it at Gagosian’s location in upper Manhattan.”
The installation at Park & 75 offers a portal into Halsey’s world-building practice. It also builds on concepts from the artist’s recent projects, most notably the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I) (2023), her site-specific installation on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Roof Garden, and sister dreamer, lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles, a sculpture park and garden that will open in Los Angeles in spring 2026.
Lauren Halsey, November 14–December 20, 2025 Gagosian Park & 75, New York
About the artist
Lauren Halsey (b. 1987, Los Angeles) reimagines what art, architecture, and community can be. Rooted in South Central Los Angeles—where her family has lived for generations—her practice bridges sculpture, installation, and civic space. Mixing found, fabricated, and handmade elements, Halsey builds immersive environments charged with local energy and collective imagination. Her work celebrates the aesthetics of the neighborhood while confronting systems of gentrification, displacement, and inequality.
Influenced by Afrofuturism, funk, and the visual language of hand-painted signs, her practice proposes new, radical architectures for Black cultural life. Each project becomes a living monument—part artwork, part social infrastructure.
Recent solo exhibitions include Serpentine, London (2024); Seattle Art Museum (2022); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2021); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2019); and MOCA Los Angeles (2018). She has created major site-specific installations for La Biennale di Venezia (2024) and The Met’s Roof Garden (2023).
Halsey received the 2021 Gwendolyn Knight | Jacob Lawrence Prize and the Mohn Award at the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. biennial (2018). Her work is held in leading collections including MoMA, The Met, LACMA, The Broad, and the Hammer Museum.
In 2020, she founded the Summaeverythang Community Center, extending her practice into direct community action. She is currently developing sister dreamer, a major public sculpture park—a visionary ode to the surge and splurge of South Central Los Angeles.
Halsey lives and works in Los Angeles.
