Kristopher Raos in “Model World” at Tierra del Sol Gallery January 17 – March 1, 2026
Tierra del Sol Gallery is proud to present Model World, a 32 artist group exhibition curated by Elliott Hundley. Opening January 17, 2026, with a public reception from 6 to 9 pm, the exhibition will be on view through March 1. Building on the gallery’s ongoing series of guest curated exhibitions with collaborators including Alison Saar, Darren Romanelli, and jill moniz, Model World marks the first time a guest curator has invited artists from outside Tierra del Sol’s studio program to exhibit alongside its artists. This expanded curatorial framework brings together diverse voices to examine models, miniatures, and imagined worlds as ways of understanding, shaping, and rethinking the present moment.
Contributing Artists:
Douglas Allen, Wihro Kim, Mario Ayala, Abraham Khan, Sucy Ayala, Shana Lutker, Tanya Brodsky, John Maull, Vincent Blair, Kristen Morgin, Beverly Buchanan, John Peterson, Claire Chambless, Kristopher Raos, Terra Clendening, Levon Riggins, Jory Drew, Angel Rodriguez, Mary Lou Dimsdale, David Romero, Pippa Garner, Ed Ruscha, Carissa Hackman, Ellen Schafer, Karl Haendel, Christopher Suarez, Lauren Halsey, Chiffon Thomas, Herb Herod, Matthew Wilson, Liane Kaino, Joe Zaldivar
“Miniatures, blueprints, maps, and models are ways of holding the world in our hands. They help us plan and design, speculate and explain, teach and imagine, play and remember, memorialize and make sense of what might otherwise feel elusive. Theorists have long tried to understand our desire to shrink the world into legible form. For Gaston Bachelard, these acts invite poetic reverie and imaginative immersion; for Susan Stewart, they summon nostalgia and the promise of control; for Umberto Eco, the miniature offers the seductive illusion of “perfect knowledge,” a momentary grasp of the whole.
The thirty-two artists gathered here take up the model as both tool and metaphor. Bachelard says miniatures are intrinsically verbose and so is this show. A world within a world within a world overflows with detail, contradiction, and meaning.
Tierra del Sol Gallery | 7414 Santa Monica Blvd. West Hollywood, CA 90046
323.243.0658 | gallery@tierradelsol.org | www.tierradelsolgallery.org | IG: @tierradelsolgallery
Some artists work systematically, beginning with measured observation—still photographs, surveys, and Google Maps—translating the seen into carefully constructed form. Others draw from memory or the mind’s eye, conjuring evocative worlds shaped by signs, symbols, and sensation. Still others stack and layer image- landscapes with riotous joy, delighting in excess and collision. From these approaches, three recurring subjects emerge: our country, our city, our home. Some artists present these places as they are; others imagine how they might be. Together, they offer ways of orienting ourselves within the vast, shifting complexity of the world.”
-Elliott Hundley, December 21, 2025
Tierra del Sol Gallery: Tierra del Sol Gallery is part of the Tierra del Sol Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 1971 that supports adults with disabilities through creative pathways to employment, education, and the arts. Based in West Hollywood, the gallery presents year round exhibitions and public programs that connect artists from Tierra del Sol’s progressive art studios with national and international audiences. Tierra del Sol Gallery has debuted artists at major art fairs including Felix, Frieze, NADA Miami, and The Armory Show, and works by its artists are held in the collections of MoMA, the American Folk Art Museum, and El Museo del Barrio. All sales directly support the artists and the Foundation’s mission to foster inclusive, sustainable creative careers.
Elliott Hundley:
Elliott Hundley (b. 1975, Greensboro, North Carolina) is an artist based in Los Angeles. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Known for dense, multimedia compositions that fuse painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, photography, and performance, Hundley’s work draws on mythology, art history, and contemporary culture. He has presented solo exhibitions at institutions including the Hammer Museum, Nasher Sculpture Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. His work is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, LACMA, SFMOMA, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Broad. He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow.
Gallery events attached to this show:
Jan 17, 11 - 12pm, Press Preview with Elliott Hundley curator walk through
Jan 17, 6 - 9pm, Public Reception
Feb 27, 6:30 - 9:30pm Party during Felix & Frieze with Tierra del Sol + NIAD
