Veronica Gelbaum
A World of Pure Imagination
November 14 - December 19, 2026

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 14th, 6-8pm

Veronica Gelbaum’s exhibition, A World of Pure Imagination, consists of four paintings, twenty-three collages, and a coffee vending machine. This coffee vending machine acts as a centerpiece the show revolves around. Fresh Coffee, Cup after Cup, 2026, is a readymade or sculptural object, that points to simulated everyday settings. It creates a deliberately constructed atmosphere, an immediate outré. Evoked here are the ways the patina of The Real can be added to art by placing it in unconventional spaces. At times this happens automatically or involuntarily, by artists, through lack of access to commercial real estate. Other times this happens reflexively, reverse engineered by placing artworks in ‘third spaces’ as a social gesture. This coffee machine is a cumbersome, charming, archaic object, that would normally be found in a liminal space like a hallway or a waiting room. It has been selected and removed, placing it in an immaculate gallery space, as a monument to inaccessible grittiness.

Surrounding the coffee machine are the other artworks. In three rooms are placed the paintings and various collages. Repeating characters, images, and feelings run through these works. Ducks, a child, toys, architecture, the home of Albrecht Dürer, aspiration, joy, confusion, congregation, uselessness, rounded edges, reflecting foil. Collages are extracted from a vast archive of purposely collected minor materials from around the world, such as goods catalogs and brochures. Images of consumables that promise freedom, the freedom to forget what came before and what has happened since. Paintings are drawn from Art History and images found online. Employed are established genres such as landscape, still life, and portraiture. These works are inhabited by the artist as much as they are created by her. This exhibition would like to examine (and never conclude), how and by what means a work of art becomes real in the present day.

Veronica Gelbaum lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Recent solo and two person exhibitions include Caramella Girls at Sympa in Capdenac, France (2025), Gift of the Magi at P.E.O.P.L.E., Los Angeles (2024) and Innocent World with Jake Stutz at Gaylord Fine Art, Los Angeles (2022).

*Photography by Evan Walsh.