JAKE LONGSTRETH

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Selected Works

Chavez Ravine II, 2022

oil on muslin
216.5 x 145.1 cm.; 85 1/4 x 57 1/8 in. (framed)
Photo: Dawn Blackman

‘Jake’s paintings aren't all big box stores either. There are also dry rolling hills studded with sage-colored shrubs, isolated trees, smoggy, occasionally cloudy skies. Often these are painted alongside imposing architecture and lonely parking lots. To me, these function not as a juxtaposition—some kind of nature vs. the built environment narrative — but the opposite. I see the hills accentuating the naturalness of the buildings and asphalt plots. Despite man's pretensions and adeptness at executing hard angles and straight lines, he remains an animal. As such, his structures belong among beaver dams, bee hives, and birds’ nests. All things manifest from the same mortal wellspring, and eventually the hard angles and straight lines of man will transition back into the wavy lines of the hills and trees. A column or two may remain, but a column holding nothing is but a rock.’

C. Mell, Jake Longstreth – Monograph, Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles; Los Angeles: Nino Mier Books, 2021.

Beachwood Canyon I, 2022

oil on muslin
154.9 x 104.1 cm.; 61 x 41 in. (framed)
Photo: Dawn Blackman

Mount Lee I, 2022

oil on muslin
218.4 x 307.3 cm.; 86 x 121 in. (framed)
Photo: Dawn Blackman

Fontana, 2022

oil on muslin
218.4 x 307.3 cm.; 86 x 121 in. (framed)
Photo: Dawn Blackman

‘Jake Longstreth’s paintings document the suburban landscapes most Americans are all too familiar with, but few artists are interested in capturing—the monotonous commercial strips that house clusters of nearly identical retail and restaurant chains that stretch from coast to coast.’

E. Tucker, ’From Circuit City to the Cheesecake Factory, Jake Longstreth Paints Suburbia’ in Metropolis Magazine, 27 October 2021.

Burbank, 2021

oil on canvas
213.36 x 213.36 cm.; 84 x 84 in.
Photo: Dawn Blackman

Weed, 2021

oil on canvas
203.2 x 304.8 cm.; 80 x 120 in.
Photo: Dawn Blackman

Los Coyotes Way, 2019

oil on canvas
182.88 x 213.36 cm.; 72 x 84 in.
Photo: Dawn Blackman

‘In a way, they’re still landscapes and there’s still sunlight and nature. […] Whether it’s falling on a pasture with cows or falling on the side of an OfficeMax, I think that light is the core of my work.’

J. Longstreth, in conversation with T. Latterner, ‘Meet the Artist Chronicling Disappearing Chain Stores’ in Architectural Digest, 21 August 2020.

Farm Hill Road, 2019

oil on canvas
213.4 x 213.4 cm.; 84 x 84 in.
Photo: Dawn Blackman

‘I don’t think anyone has a nostalgia for a Circuit City, but being the recent past, it takes on this patina of that. There’s plenty of people who take pictures of a gas station at night or diners on the side of a highway that have this Americana feel. There is a sort of romance to a diner on a desert highway, but there’s no real romance to a Circuit City. I wanted to paint these as big and beautifully as I can and they’ll take on an emotional quality.’

J. Longstreth in conversation with T. Latterner, ‘Meet the Artist Chronicling Disappearing Chain Stores’ in Architectural Digest, 21 August 2020.

Supression 3, 2014

oil on canvas, in artist’s frame
43.18 x 33.02 cm.; 17 x 13 in.
Photo: Dawn Blackman

‘In the series entitled Suppression (2014), the artist depicts smoke clouds billowing from mountains — a presumed forest fire or other sinister event. As dramatic as the fires may be in relation to Jake’s overall tranquil scenes, they are a matter of course, and appear in these landscapes due to an ambiguous mix of natural processes and our own faulty stewardship. The plumes are painted harmoniously with the hues and tones found in the mountains from which they emerge. They portray a landscape for which we all have some varying frame of reference.’ 

M. Smoler, Jake Longstreth: Free Range, exh. cat., Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco; San Francisco: Gregory Lind Gallery, 2015.

Particulate Matter #16, 2013

oil on canvas, in artist’s frame
48.26 x 38.1 cm.; 19 x 15 in.
Photo: Dawn Blackman

‘I thought that modestly scenic places choking under harsh atmospheric conditions would be an interesting way to approach paintings of pure landscape. Maybe “choking” is too intense a word – the paintings live and die in their subtlety – but the effort was to show landscapes that marry the very plain and ordinary with a very sour, creeping dissonance.’

J. Longstreth, in conversation with S. Indrisek, ’Jake Longstreth’s Beautifully Dissonant, Monastically Simple Landscapes’, in BlackBook, 19 December 2013.

Strip Mall Karate, 2009

acrylic on canvas
91.44 x 91.44 cm.; 36 x 36 in.
Photo: Dawn Blackman

‘The older work I’d done was a lot of big-box retail — deeply homogenized architecture that you would see anywhere off any exit in the U.S. That’s how I got started with art basically. I was interested in landscape pictures and how they related to our current conditions — our culture, our economy, our history.’

J. Longstreth in conversation with J. Singer, ’Studio Visit: Jake Longstreth, Artist’ in Sight Unseen, 8 November 2013.

Crematory, 2008

acrylic on canvas
121.9 x 121.9 cm.; 48 x 48 in.
Photo: Dawn Blackman

‘These paintings are not of the “sublime” in contradistinction to the “scenic”, but create local, specific emotions of place that can properly and selectively be termed the “scenic”. The predominance of stasis and rest in these paintings is a kind of beauty of the inherent presence of death in all these scenes.’

F. Cebulski, ’Jake Longstreth at Gregory Lind Gallery’ in Artweek, March 2009.

Idaho Falls, 2006

acrylic on panel
91.4 x 91.4 cm.; 36 x 36 in.
Photo: Dawn Blackman

‘[Idaho Falls] initially reads as a realist painting, meticulously rendered, yet the scene reveals a dreamy sense of displacement. The Toys R Us in the image exists in our collective imagination as much as it does down the street.’

M. Smoler, Jake Longstreth: Free Range, exh. cat., Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco; San Francisco: Gregory Lind Gallery, 2015.


All works: © Jake Longstreth

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