With the recent opening of Los Angeles Metro’s D Line Extension, subway riders can now travel between downtown Los Angeles and Beverly Hills while encountering a new collection of site-specific public artworks integrated directly into the stations themselves. The extension adds three underground stations along Wilshire Boulevard: Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, and Wilshire/La Cienega—and continues LA Metro’s longstanding approach of embedding large-scale contemporary art into the transit experience.
Among the public artworks at the newly opened Wilshire/La Cienega Station are large-scale installations by CalArts alumni Todd Gray (Art BFA 79, MFA 89) and Soo Kim (Art MFA 95).
Soo Kim’s Night / Quartz stretches across the new station’s platform walls as a fragmented, dreamlike cityscape assembled from photographs of buildings along the Wilshire Corridor and imagery from cities around the world. Kim created stencil-like architectural cutouts that reveal layered urban environments beneath the surface of the image. “The process of excision provides an antidote that is both hostile and sympathetic toward the type of reverie the images… might belie,” Kim said in her artist statement.
Also at Wilshire/La Cienega Station, Todd Gray’s Mining the Archive: S. Charles Lee, Architect transforms archival drawings of the historic Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills into a sprawling architectural collage rendered in vivid blue and white. Historic imagery of the theater is layered with textile-inspired patterns referencing the many cultures that shape the surrounding neighborhoods. “I’ve collaged images into my design to engage this narrative and paint a broader, more inclusive cultural picture,” Gray said in his artist statement.
The unveiling of Gray’s Metro works comes just weeks after the debut of Octavia’s Gaze, his large-scale installation for the opening of LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries on Wilshire Boulevard. Additionally, on Sunday, May 17, Gray participates in a conversation at the museum titled LACMA x Metro Art: Todd Gray—Histories Plural focused on the D Line commission and the relationship between public art, Los Angeles history, and cultural memory.
For more information on Gray’s previous Metro projects, visit his artist page on the Metro Art website.
Future phases of the D Line Extension will also feature works by additional CalArts alumni, including Gala Porras-Kim (Art MFA 09), whose work will appear at Westwood/UCLA Station, and Victoria Fu (Art MFA 05), whose work, a collaboration with fellow artist Matt Rich, is planned for Westwood/VA Hospital Station.
Gray, Kim, Porras-Kim, and Fu join a broader group of CalArtians who have contributed to Metro Art projects over the years, including current faculty member Harry Gamboa Jr. and former faculty member Barbara Kruger, as well as alumni Catherine Opie (Art MFA 88) and Roy Dowell (Art BFA 73, Art MFA 75).
The artists are commissioned by Metro Art, an initiative of Metro that works with curators and arts professionals from leading Los Angeles museums and cultural organizations as part of an open, competitive selection process. The latest stations join Metro’s system of more than 120 art-filled stops, one of the largest collections of public art in the nation.
