by Mona Longpre
With galleries in Los Angeles (and in many metropolitan cities) struggling with art sales, the ubiquitous group show has been the preferred go-to model for galleries and alternative spaces that simply don’t have the financial bandwidth to put all their eggs in one basket in the current economic atmosphere.
2026 has started off with two such shows:
The first of the season, “Cardboard: Infinite Possibilities,” curated by cardboard-centric artist Ann Weber for Wonzimer gallery, brings together a collection of artists working in the material (some primarily, others only secondarily) that most of our living world gets packaged and shipped in (and yes, I’m looking at you boxed wine).
The exhibition seems to have been inspired by, and focused around, a cardboard chair (Wiggle Chair, 2025) by the now deceased Frank Gehry that looks like one long piece of flat taffy folded over on itself. Other works in the show include Weber’s typical anamorphically bulbous large scale structures in addition to works by Narsiso Martinez, known for painting farm-workers on cardboard grocery bins.
The show is not bad and not good. This is one of many ways that it is an almost Platonically normal group show, bringing together artists around a material (cardboard, ceramic, fiber, etc.) or around a theme (nudes, landscape, these-are-all-my-friends, this-is-all-the-art-I-like, etc.).
The second of the season was a small group show titled “Who Can Save The Universe” curated by Gwyneth Bulawsky and hosted in gallery-by-night/hair-salon-by-day—Head2Head in Silverlake. It brought together several interesting pieces, most notably by sculptor Alystair Rogers who presented two ceramic lamps atop side tables made of plaster. Although ostensibly themed around the film Barbarella, this was in truth a fun, tightly-packed, show of the this-is-all-the-art-I-like variety.
The question is, is it enough to get people interested?
Group shows come with a built-in sense of electricity, the openings are packed with artists in the show and all of their friends and the kind of collectors that spend more than three digits show up later, if at all. If work is sold, it is typically to other artists and/or their friends. At least it’s not zero, but the amounts sold are not usually enough to pay anyone’s rent, at least not in LA.
Ultimately, like a movie soundtrack, no matter how many ideas you try to curate in, the money all cascades down from the hipness factor of the top-billed artists. The big names bring in big collectors and the small names hope those big collectors notice them. The notions of “good group show” and “bad group show” are an academic parlor game we play while waiting for the largesse to spread itself around.
Financially, they’re often hardly worth it, but as far as community-building and networking? That’s what they seem to be designed for and in this economic climate, that’s not the worst idea.
Happy New Year.
Image: Courtesy Wonzimer Gallery