Southern California’s constructed setting examined via images

Laguna Art Museumpesents Eternal Construction: Photographic Perspectives on Southern California’s Built Environment, on view from September 20, 2025, via January 18, 2026. Curated by Tyler Stallings, former Laguna Art Museum chief curator (1999-2006), this exhibition includes a compelling number of works from the museum’s everlasting assortment that study the area’s evolving panorama via images.

Eternal Construction brings collectively 14 artists whose photographic practices critically interact with Southern California’s continuous reshaping via growth, erasure, reinvention, and decay. Artists represented embrace Lewis Baltz, Jeff Brouws, Laurie Brown, Luke Erickson, Jacques Garnier, Marcia Hafif, John Humble, Barbara Kasten, Jeremy Kidd, Tom Lamb, The Legacy Group, Deborah Oropallo, Julius Shulman, and Robert von Sternberg.

Through different methods—from Lewis Baltz’s stark industrial critiques to Jeremy Kidd’s digitally composed panoramas—the exhibition investigates how constructed environments mirror social values, financial pressures, and shifting notions of perform, area, and management. Key works embrace alternatives from Baltz’s seminal portfolio “The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California,” Laurie Brown’s panoramic views of suburban transitions, and The Legacy Group’s Great Picture, created in 2006 on the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, exploring monumental scale and collective reminiscence.

“The exhibition highlights how photography can uniquely reveal the complexities and contradictions inherent in how we inhabit and reshape our environments,” visitor curator Tyler Stallings mentioned. “These artists encourage us to look closely at spaces often overlooked or taken for granted.”

Barbara Kasten, Jeremy Kidd, and Deborah Oropallo use abstraction and visible manipulation to push the boundaries of photographic notion, offering a counterpoint to extra documentary practices within the present. Meanwhile, Julius Shulman’s iconic {photograph} of Richard Neutra’s Von Sternberg House connects historic and modern architectural visions.

“With Eternal Construction, Tyler Stallings has curated a thoughtful exploration of Southern California’s identity with works from Laguna Art Museum’s collection, examining how artists interpret the region’s relentless transformation,” Julie Perlin Lee, Executive Director of Laguna Art Museum, mentioned. “This exhibition deepens our appreciation for photography’s power to document, critique, and reimagine the spaces we occupy.”

For extra details about, Eternal Construction: Photographic Perspectives on Southern California’s Built Environment, go to lagunaartmuseum.org.

About the Guest Curator

Tyler Stallings is a curator, author, and researcher primarily based in Southern California. From 1999 to 2006, Stallings served as chief curator at Laguna Art Museum, the place he curated and co-curated groundbreaking exhibitions, most accompanied by books that contributed to scholarship of their respective fields, reminiscent of Sandow Birk’s “In Smog and Thunder: Historical Works from The Great War of Californias” (2000), “Struggle: The Art of Szukalski” (2000, co-curator), “Laurie Brown: Recent Terrains” (2001), “Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing” (2002, co-curator), the primary complete museum exploration of surf tradition’s visible historical past; “Whiteness, A Wayward Construction” (2003), a groundbreaking examination of whiteness as cultural and visible id; “The OsCene: Contemporary Art and Culture in OC” (2004), a landmark survey showcasing modern Orange County artists; and “Pervasion: The Art of Gary Baseman and Tim Biskup” (2006), an influential presentation of two distinguished pop-surrealist artists.

Prior to his tenure at Laguna Art Museum, he was director of applications on the then cutting-edge Huntington Beach Art Center (1995-1999), the place he curated Kara Walker’s first Southern California solo exhibition, “Kara Walker: African’t” (1997).

Following his tenure at Laguna Art Museum, Stallings held a number of positions at University of California Riverside’s downtown museums (California Museum of Photography and Barbara & Art Culver Center of the Arts) together with creative director and interim govt director from 2007 to 2017. While there, he curated important images exhibitions.

Stallings earned an MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1992. Currently working independently, he continues to discover the intersections of speculative themes, visible storytelling, and the human situation.

About Laguna Art Museum

Founded by native artists in 1918, Laguna Art Museum has celebrated California artwork and tradition on the coronary heart of the neighborhood for over a century. The museum affords a welcoming area for artists, donors, members and guests, every bringing distinctive power that drives its mission ahead. As “Your Museum,” Laguna Art Museum builds on a legacy of inspiring creativity, sustainability and reflection on California’s pure setting via exhibitions, occasions and academic applications.

The museum presents exhibitions that spotlight the California expertise and is dwelling to the annual Art + Nature. With every go to, Laguna Art Museum invitations folks from close to and much to affix in its journey of neighborhood, artwork and environmental consciousness.