Mindset Los Angeles – Frank Gehry and the Cool School
Group Exhibition
Marta Herford, Herford, Germany
Through January 10, 2027

Architect Frank Gehry’s thinking and work are closely linked to the influence of Los Angeles and its art scene. This comprehensive exhibition explores Gehry’s early artistic influences, which led to his revolutionary approach to rethinking architecture. The free-spirited environment surrounding the “Cool School” group, which established itself in Los Angeles from the late 1950s onward, was a melting pot of artistic (material) experiments, shaped by Beat literature. In this vibrant network on the California coast, an inspiring cross-disciplinary dialogue between art and architecture developed.

10 Years LA!
May 15–August 15, 2026
Los Angeles

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present 10 Years LA!, an exhibition celebrating the gallery’s decade-long presence in Los Angeles. Since opening its doors in February 2016, the gallery has featured solo and group exhibitions debuting new works by its iconic LA-based artists as well as major installations by artists from around the world, often bringing their work to the city for the very first time. Illustrating this expansive approach, 10 Years LA! fills not only the 10,000 square feet of the gallery at 5900 Wilshire Boulevard with works by a wide cross-section of Sprüth Magers artists, but also extends to the former Sizzler restaurant at 6145 Wilshire with an installation focusing on film and video.

10 Years LA! features the work of, among others, Kenneth Anger, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Gretchen Bender, Cao Fei, George Condo, Hanne Darboven, Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Thea Djordjadze, Lucy Dodd, Peter Fischli David Weiss, Sylvie Fleury, Cyprien Gaillard, Gilbert & George, Andreas Gursky, Nancy Holt, Jenny Holzer, Gary Hume, Anne Imhof, Robert Irwin, Arthur Jafa, Craig Kauffman, Karen Kilimnik, Joseph Kosuth, Barbara Kruger, David Lamelas, Louise Lawler, Mire Lee, Anthony McCall, Robert Morris, Reinhard Mucha, Senga Nengudi, David Ostrowski, Otto Piene, Michail Pirgelis, Gala Porras-Kim, Stephen Prina, Jon Rafman, Bridget Riley, Pamela Rosenkranz, Sterling Ruby, Ed Ruscha, Analia Saban, David Salle, Thomas Scheibitz, Andreas Schulze, Cindy Sherman, Stephen Shore, Martine Syms, Ryan Trecartin, Rosemarie Trockel, Nora Turato, Kaari Upson, Kara Walker, John Waters, Andro Wekua, and Andrea Zittel.

Seriously.
Curated by Nana Bahlmann
November 21, 2025–January 31, 2026
London

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Seriously., a group exhibition curated by Nana Bahlmann, featuring over a hundred conceptual photographs, print media, and select films ranging from the 1960s to the present, which expose the absurdities of our world and its representations. Through visual wit, subversiveness, and even outright slapstick, these photographic experiments offer humorous conceptual investigations of how images are constructed and interpreted. Employing a range of strategies, from masquerade and role-play to the construction of inexplicable scenarios, unexpected juxtapositions, and idiosyncratic sculptural compositions, these works reveal the farcical and fantastical within the visual realm. In reframing our visual world through satire and playful mimicry, they create space for both reflection and amusement.

Seriously. features the work of, among others, Keith Arnatt, John Baldessari, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lynda Benglis, Helen Chadwick, Robert Cumming, Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Braco Dimitrijević, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Tom Friedman, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Scott Grieger, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Sigurður Guðmundsson, Andreas Gursky, Barbara Hammer, Rebecca Horn, Douglas Huebler, Astrid Klein, David Lamelas, Louise Lawler, Tom Marioni, Anthony McCall, Jonathan Monk, Peter Moore, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Charles Ray, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, Thomas Ruff, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Stephen Shore, Santiago Sierra and Franz Erhard Walther, Roman Signer, Laurie Simmons, Robert Therrien, Rosemarie Trockel, Keiji Uematsu, Ger van Elk, John Waters, William Wegman, and Hannah Wilke.

Ed Ruscha
Metro Mattresses
November 3, 2015–January 16, 2016
Berlin

"The mattresses become not just litter in the landscape but more like scary animals."
– Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha has been casting his eye across the landscapes of the American west for over 50 years, taking in everything from gas stations to swimming pools to sublime mountain ranges. With their clarity and deadpan wit, his photographs, drawings and paintings impart a mood of playful awe on everyday monuments. The motifs for his new series Metro Mattresses were found, like so many of the subjects of his work, on the streets of Los Angeles.

Ed Ruscha
Apartments, Parking Lots, Palm Trees and others: Films, Photographs and Drawings from 1961 to 1975
September 3–October 23, 2010
Berlin

Since the early 1960s, Ed Ruscha has created an extensive painterly, graphical, and photographic oeuvre. Ruscha first considered working as a graphic artist but soon developed a deep passion for painting and photography. Inspired by the American photography of the 1940s and 1950s, Ruscha developed an independent conceptual approach.

Source Codes
Kenneth Anger, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Bruce Conner, Richard Hamilton, David Lamelas, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Lucas Samaras, John Stezaker, Paul Thek
June 26–August 29, 2009
Berlin

Source Codes juxtaposes a selection of works by a number of artists and filmmakers from Europe and America who mapped essential conceptual groundwork in the 1960s and 1970s and whose work remains influential to many artists today By examining new ways to rethink and translate visual information and cultural codes in the gaps between Minimalism and Pop Art, and through an interest in process-based performative practice, their work has exerted significant influence on younger artists in a variety of ways.

Ed Ruscha
With and Without Words
October 31, 2002–February 28, 2003
Cologne

Ed Ruscha is one of the first Americans to criticize the mechanisms and means of pop culture in his work by making use of its means and visual language. In this way, he also paid homage to precisely these visual languages, on whose effectiveness and recognition effect he could and can rely. Furthermore, he is one of the protagonists in relation to the examination of language in the visual arts, as is already explicitly stated in the title of the Munich exhibition, because pictures are exhibited "with and without words".

Ed Ruscha
With and Without Words
September 13–October 19, 2002
Munich

"Hints of narrow pop culture meanings in conventionally insignificant elements and vice versa are the actual material (…) with which Ruscha deals with what has become classic and casual."
-Diederich Diederichsen

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present new pictures and works on paper by Ed Ruscha. He is one of the first Americans to criticize the mechanisms and means of pop culture in his work by making use of its means and visual language. In this way, he also paid homage to precisely these visual languages, on whose effectiveness and recognition effect he could and can rely.

Das Licht von der anderen Seite – Teil II Photographie
John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Anna & Bernhard Blume, Victor Burgin, Walter Dahn, Jimmy De Sana, Barbara Ess, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Peter Fischli David Weiss, Hamish Fulton, Günther Förg, Georg Herold, Martin Kippenberger, Imi Knoebel, Thomas Locher, Allan Mccollum, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, James Welling, Richard Wentworth
September 17–October 29, 1988
Cologne