Garden of Eve
Long Beach Museum of Art
Long Beach, California
July 2025
Garden of Eve marked my first solo museum exhibition and the largest body of work I’ve created to date. Installed across multiple galleries at the Long Beach Museum of Art, the exhibition brought together paintings developed over several years exploring luxury, desire, beauty, and the emotional weight we project onto objects.
The exhibition expanded my earlier diamond paintings into more immersive environments filled with botanical forms, ornamental objects, gemstones, insects, and figures suspended somewhere between fantasy and discomfort. Many of the paintings examine how wealth and aspiration can function both as seduction and entrapment.
Throughout the exhibition, diamonds appear beside exotic plants, pearls, designer accessories, carnivorous flowers, and carefully constructed surfaces. I became interested in creating spaces that felt lush and beautiful at first glance, but increasingly uneasy the longer you looked at them.
The title Garden of Eve references temptation, mythology, consumption, and the human desire to reach for something just beyond ourselves. While developing the series, I kept thinking about the relationship between beauty and longing — the ways people attempt to construct identity through accumulation, adornment, and perfection.
Several works in the exhibition were created specifically for the museum, including large-scale paintings that pushed further into theatrical composition and psychological tension. I also began incorporating new materials and techniques into the work, including gilded panel edges and ultraviolet-reactive paint that subtly shifts under changing light conditions.
The opening weekend was overwhelming in the best possible way. Seeing visitors move slowly through the galleries, discovering small details hidden inside the paintings, reminded me how important physical scale and in-person viewing are to my practice. These works are ultimately about attention — what we choose to worship, pursue, preserve, or consume.
I’m deeply grateful to the Long Beach Museum of Art, curator Paul Loya, and everyone who helped bring the exhibition to life. The experience marked an important turning point in my practice and opened new possibilities for where the work can go next.
