Oliver Bak (*1992) has become known for his historically inspired, vibrant painterly topographies, which stem from a deep engagement with the materials, procedures and influences of painting. His meticulous practice that foregrounds texture and an original use of color produces multilayered surfaces brimming with art historical and literary references. On Bak’s canvases, his aptitude for invocations of the medium’s history entwines with the themes, images and atmosphere of avant-garde poetry and myths of decadence and destruction. Interested in how the stories that have defined collective imagination develop, he delves into one particular narrative at a time, which provides the starting point for each of his bodies of work.
Horror
Dario Argento, Oliver Bak, Bruce Conner, Mati Diop, Cyprien Gaillard, Anne Imhof, Arthur Jafa, Asger Jorn, Mike Kelley, Karen Kilimnik, Harmony Korine, Tetsumi Kudo, Mire Lee, Diego Marcon, Tyler Mitchell, Ottessa Moshfegh, Jill Mulleady, Precious Okoyomon, Sondra Perry, Carol Rama, Cindy Sherman, Pol Taburet, Henry Taylor, Rosemarie Trockel, Andra Ursuta, Kara Walker, Jordan Wolfson, and others
November 21, 2025–February 14, 2026
Los Angeles
Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Horror, a group exhibition organized by Jill Mulleady featuring an intergenerational group of artists. The exhibition presents horror as both symptom and strategy, illuminating seen and unseen forces that inscribe themselves on human experience. Rooted in the shadows of trauma, repression, and social unrest, horror channels our deepest anxieties and weaves fictions that probe the intersection of societal collapse and psychological unease. Whether evoking Cold War paranoia, civil rights conflicts, radiation fears, surveillance anxieties, or the existential dread and hyperreality of our times, the works in the exhibition quietly surface the intimate, often suppressed tensions embedded within collective and individual realities. Here, horror is neither simply spectacle nor genre, but rather a potent aesthetic and psychological resource—a visceral means of navigating the contradictions that define our era.
