By Karan Singh
Between the dreams and nightmares (Gatorade commercial auditions and raging wildfires, to name a few) that make Los Angeles such a polarizing city, a new exhibition emerges that encapsulates the sobering reality of human existence. Located in the Miracle Mile neighborhood, Sprüth Magers gallery presents Horror, an artistic exploration of fright, agitation, and panic.
The show opens on November 21 at the international gallery’s California branch, featuring an array of perspectives from a roster of cross-generational talent. Curated by Jill Mulleady (also a featured artist), Horror explores the disturbing facets of things literal through an abstract lens.
“The central mechanism of horror in art is the distortion of the familiar,” says Mulleady. “The resulting visceral dread forces the viewer to deal with the subject on a primal level, making the artwork a direct site of confrontation with mortality and decay. It transforms the object of comfort into an object of abjection.”
In contrast with the supernatural thrills of the genre now playing on Broadway eight times a week and this year’s best-selling witchy read, Alex Grecian’s Rose of Jericho, the exhibition fuses looming threats of the real world with psychological unease. This ranges from concerns over societal collapse to the paranoia surrounding war to anxieties resulting from governmental surveillance.
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“By shocking us into intense self-reflection about what we fear and why, horror connects our internal landscape to the wider human narrative,” Mulleady adds. “It transcends chaos, becoming a tool for reflecting a profound empathy for the precariousness of the human experience.”
Among the dozens of artists on display, Arthur Jafa’s “Ex-Slave Gordon” is particularly compelling.
Using vacuum-formed plastic, the multidisciplinary artist meticulously recreated the textures of lashing scars on the back of a slave as a reminder of the grotesque history behind the United States’ monopoly on “freedom” today.
Uncomfortable though it may be, Horror demands we look anyway.
Fast facts: ‘Horror’ at Sprüth Magers
Horrors, curated by Jill Mulleady, is designed to make spectators confront their deepest fears by reflecting on the fragility of human existence.
- Sprüth Magers, 5900 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036
- Through February 14, 2026
