California is Somewhere Else : Haas Brothers, Dashiell Manley, Anthony Pearson

509 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011

For inquiries, please contact Kelly Woods:

kelly@boeskygallery.com

“Which is the true California? That is what we all wonder.”

– Joan Didion, “Notes from a Native Daughter”

Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present California is Somewhere Else, an exhibition of work by Los Angeles-based artists the Haas Brothers (b. 1984; Santa Monica, CA), Dashiell Manley (b.1983; Fontana, CA), and Anthony Pearson (b. 1969, Los Angeles, CA).

When the Eaton Fire broke out near Los Angeles on January 7, 2025, a suite of nearly finished paintings lined the walls of Dashiell Manley’s home studio in Altadena, CA. The paintings—once dry—were to ship to New York for a solo exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery opening March 20. While the artist’s home—and home studio—were fortunately spared from the direct path of the fire, smoke particles and debris embedded in the still-wet paint, ultimately rendering the works unstable—and unsafe to show.

At Manley’s second studio in Echo Park—safe from fire damage—the artist was also working on new paintings from a related body of work, the Elegies, which will feature in the reimagined exhibition, California is Somewhere Else, alongside work by fellow Los Angeles artists the Haas Brothers and Anthony Pearson. Together, these artists offer a celebration of California as they know it, a place of memory and of lived experience.

The result of focused, repetitive, and labor-intensive processes, Manley’s Elegies embody psychological response to the endless barrage of anxiety-inducing headlines. Following his New York Times and Various sources (quiet satires) series—in which the artist transcribed, reproduced, and abstracted newspaper pages and political cartoons—Manley began the Elegies. Where the New York Times and Various sources (quiet satires) paintings took an analytical approach to interpreting this information, the Elegies capture the emotional response to the same sources of information. Covering the canvases in a thick layer of oil paint, Manley carves marks into the surface with a palette knife—a practice inspired, in part, by Edo Era woodblock prints. The rich textures of the resulting canvases reflect on the chaotic frenzy of the contemporary news cycle while offering subtle allusion to the meditative quiet of landscape painting, as Manley creates subtle horizon lines within the paintings. 

In California is Somewhere Else, the Haas Brothers present a group of new sculptures from their ongoing Moontowers series—both monumental and domestic in scale. The otherworldly cast-bronze lamps conjure childhood memories of the last remaining 19th moonlight towers in Austin, TX—where the artists grew up. Once a fixture of American cities—including Los Angeles—moonlight towers were significantly taller than standard streetlamps and, when illuminated, cast a warm, moon-like glow over entire city blocks. 

The Haas Brothers’ Moontowers are inspired, in part, by this nostalgic history and in part by Clair de Lune—the Paul Verlaine poem that inspired the Claude Debussy piano suite that was reinterpreted into a synth-forward arrangement by Isao Tomita. This single piece of art, recurring through the filter of new artists and their experience, embodies the notion of emergence that the Haas Brothers seek to capture throughout their practice. With the Moontowers, the artists capture the somber romanticism of the world drenched in moonlight, setting the scene for continual emergence by the soft light of the moon.  

The unique topography of Southern California has long influenced Anthony Pearson’s practice. For Pearson, curator Alex Klein once wrote, “the natural environment of the Palisades was a site of endless childhood discovery, and its earth tones and Mediterranean atmosphere would come to shape an aesthetic sensibility attuned to the dynamic subtleties of the Southern California landscape.” Throughout his career, Pearson has moved fluidly between mediums—from the abstract photography of his early practice to the sculptural work in which he is currently engaged. The artist’s meditative, labor-intensive approach is evident in the works on view in California is Somewhere Else, which varyingly absorb, reflect, and refract light, responding with specificity to the environment in which it is presented and creating a distinct sensation of place. Understated and unassuming—yet deeply felt—Pearson’s work insists on disrupting the frenzied state of our world; it is a welcome moment of respite and contemplation. In this work, the pleasure is found in the experience of close looking.

California is Somewhere Else borrows its title from Didion’s 1965 essay “Notes from a Native Daughter,” a meditation on California as a place—and as a place remembered, as a place constantly evolving based on how it is remembered. “It should be clear by now,” Didion writes, “that the truth about the place is elusive, and must be tracked with caution.” With California is Somewhere Else, these three artists—the Haas Brothers, Dashiell Manley, and Anthony Pearson—offer reflections of the place they all call home, their memories and reminisces of the history, the landscape, and the realities of living in California infusing their work in ways large and small.