LOS ANGELES, CA.- For Wilding Cran Gallery's inaugural show in the new Melrose Hill location, the gallery presents The Messengers, an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artists Francesca Gabbiani and Eddie Ruscha.
Through their collaborative exchange, Gabbiani and Ruscha channel shared visions of ecological hope and healing to reflect upon the restorative cycles of the natural world. The vibrant series of works on paper combine painting and collage with soft, fluid forms and hard edges to embrace interconnection as a transcendent mode of survival. While Ruscha’s airbrush techniques produce smooth, ethereal forms, Gabbiani’s hand-painted paper collages add depth and texture, pulling the viewer into a pulsing landscape of fusion and duality.
Across the exhibition, Gabbiani’s collages of various cacti and their blossoms vibrate within Ruscha’s vivid psychedelic abstractions. The material use of paper echoes the delicate nature of each subject, while vibrant waves of radiating color allude to the unspoken presence of a deep spiritual power. Within Swelter, the jagged stalk of a flower rises through swirling hues of red and orange. The saturation gradually fades into an ethereal mist, framing two blossoms in a halo of light. The encircling beams of energy seem to emanate from the plant itself, as though it has been caught within the process of transformation. Whether withering or blossoming, the aura of each piece alludes to the sacred role of life cycles, reflecting upon the reciprocal forces of birth and death.
By inviting the viewer into a space of intuitive knowledge and spiritual resonance, The Messengers explores the resilient adaptability of plants and the ways in which they can reinform notions of transcendence and survival. The largest piece in the show, Psyacti 6, centers a blooming agave plant. As an allegory of endurance in the face of adversity, the agave blooms just before it dies -- a final act which simultaneously imparts the symbolic beauty of life’s impermanence, while functioning as an evolutionary means of seed dispersal, bringing new life through death.
Amidst the upheaval of shifting landscapes and climate disaster, the regenerative nature of life on Earth continues, reminding us that visions of destruction bring with them an organic sequence of rebirth. Within The Messengers, Francesca Gabbiani and Eddie Ruscha impart their mutual reverence for the mystical teachings embedded within the Southern California landscape. By honoring those who have grown to adapt under harsh conditions, the exhibition summons the ancient wisdom of natural forces which call to us, offering themselves as sacred beacons of strength, healing, and harmony.
Francesca Gabbiani (b. 1965, Montreal, Canada, raised Geneva, Switzerland) creates depictions of overlooked landscapes, where nature and urbanization collide in their true anarchic state. Combining intricately layered cut paper, mixed media washes, and airbrush, Gabbiani's paper paintings pair literary influences with her own photographic documentation of environments in disastrous, damaged, and regenerative states. Reminiscent of settings in science fiction, her philosophical approach depicts humanity secondary to the omnipresent force of Mother Nature.
Selected exhibitions include Life on Earth: Art and Ecofeminism and Gossip (performance), The Brick, Los Angeles, CA and West Museum Den Haag, The Netherlands (2025); Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); Cedric Bardawil Gallery, London (2023); Mixografia, Los Angeles (2022); Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, Texas (2021); Monica De Cardenas, Milan, Italy (2021) and Zuoz, Switzerland (2020); GAVLAK, Los Angeles (2018), and film screenings at the Malibu International Film Festival, Los Angeles (2023, awarded Best Experimental Short); Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills at San Vicente Bungalows (2022); and the Getty Center, Los Angeles (2022). Selected group exhibitions include Kunsthaus Centre d'Art Pasquart, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland (2023), the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2022); MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2022); Kunsthaus Zurich (2021); KANAL Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2020); Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (2018); MAMCO Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva (2016), and the Underground Museum (2014). Her work is included in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; National Collection, Switzerland; and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. Gabbiani lives and works in Los Angeles.
Eddie Ruscha is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Los Angeles, California. Art and music have always gone hand in hand for Ruscha and in both mediums he attempts to bridge elements of mysticism, beauty and humor of the subconscious. In his visual art, he skirts the usual results of the airbrush medium and attempts to shatter forms and skew perspectives flirting with a style sometimes devoid of the artist's hand, infusing warmth in color and tone.
Ruscha’s visual style is highly informed by unschooled graphic design, animation, psychedelic album, comic and poster art, Italian interiors and fashion, as well as all manner of fine art movements in the hope of blurring the lines between them.
Ruscha has released records with labels such as Beats In Space/RVNG, Good Morning Tapes, Invisible Inc. amongst others, producing different styles of electronic psychedelic music in addition to creating much of the visual art to accompany it. Recent projects include Green Mirror (Secret Circuit) and Who Are You (E Ruscha V), as well as film score compositions and ambient soundscapes for the ongoing series of Slow Show performances choreographed by Dimitri Chamblas, and presented at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles, Lafayette Anticipation, Paris and LUMA, Arles. He recently made an album with Peter Zummo, one of Arthur Russell’s most consistent collaborators.
Ruscha has co-composed several film scores with Oscar winning sound designer, Nicolas Becker. Black Flies was presented at the Cannes film festival in 2023 and Planetes will be presented at Cannes in 2025.
Eddie Ruscha graduated from California Institute of Art in 1991. His work has been in numerous exhibitions, notably The London Institute, Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain. Ruscha is represented by Cedric Bardawil Gallery in London.
