Un-Exported L.A.’ begins with an exploration of historical imagery of the American West and how it relates to the philosophies of the sublime and the exporting of the Manifest Destiny as American mythology. Unexported L.A. is a series influenced by the 19th century embrace of a majestic frontier, the adaptation of artists such as Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran into American consciousness that set an aesthetic prototype and then devolved into the open spaces of desolate capitalism captured by The New Topographics photographers. The grand gestural vistas of California that once evoked the hand of God transformed into the overwhelming untenable nature of man. Los Angeles is the machine that churns out the imagery of national identity, yet the actual entity of Los Angeles is foreign to America. These paintings represent the influx of immigrants, an explosion of cultures, a Los Angeles that exists beyond any mode of attempted homogeneity. Living in the shadow of myth, the un-exported Los Angeles represents that most global, international and sprawling vista of all American cities. The sublime is not the majestic hand of God, but the impact of man.
