The work of Alex Israel trafficks in the images and cultural eccentricities of his native Los Angeles and in the wider legacy of the readymade. From his sunglass company Freeway Eyewear to his YouTube talk show called As it LAys, wherein he interviews famous and not-so-famous Hollywood personalities in the style of a 1990s daytime talk show, Israel appropriates the iconic pop culture of LA to better understand its pervasive influence. In addition, Israel works with the set production crew on the Warner Brothers studio lot to create paintings of twilight and sunset skies in the manner of those typically used for movie and television studio backdrops. His use of these paintings as walls and sculptural structures within the gallery space creates an arena of theatricality both for the objects he places in proximity to them—often small sculptures derived from the Hollywood lexicon, or actual rented cinema props—and for viewers in the space.

Israel will speak in conjunction with his Sightings exhibition at the Nasher, which will combine new sculptural objects made in the vernacular vocabulary of Hollywood movies to make a quasi-narrative installation related to a film that Israel is soon to release.