Sun Sign
Maggie Friedman, Veronica Gelbaum, Hanna Hur, Artem Nanushyan, Jon Pestoni, Lauren Quin
February 21 - March 21, 2026

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 21st, 3-6 pm

Zodiac Pictures is thrilled to present the inaugural exhibition at its new location, Sun Sign, featuring works by Maggie Friedman, Veronica Gelbaum, Hanna Hur, Artem Nanushyan, Jon Pestoni, and Lauren Quin.

The exhibition brings together six distinct painting practices, each defined by a highly developed and recognizable visual language. While their approaches differ, these artists share a commitment to painting as a reflective medium - one that engages its histories, materials, and conditions while asserting its capacity to respond to contemporary life.

The exhibition takes its name from the previous tenant of the new gallery space, a commercial sign shop called ‘Sun Sign’. The title playfully draws parallels between astrology and art, pointing to the structures through which meaning is organized and interpreted.

According to C.G. Jung, astrology began as an early form of psychological inquiry, functioning as a symbolic system for understanding the psyche. The zodiac operates as a network of archetypes. Sun, moon, and rising signs serve as coordinates, mapping consciousness, emotion, and social persona within an interconnected framework.

Drawing on this analogy, Sun Sign considers how artists develop their own symbolic systems to organize aesthetics, perception, and historical reference. Across the exhibition, the paintings reflect on their own production while engaging broader histories and visual languages, generating meaning through recurrence, citation, and variation.

Like a sun sign, the works articulate a singular presence while forming constellations through relation and interplay. Through their material, gestural, and temporal processes, each painting reveals its own character while orienting itself within a larger aesthetic and cultural framework, presenting painting as a practice defined by individuality and context.

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Maggie Friedman (b. 1995) lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from Art Center College of Design in 2022. Solo and two person exhibitions include Icon at Coastal Signs, New Zealand (2025), Alibis at As It Stands, Los Angeles (2024) and Seven Paintings at Shoot the Lobster, New York (2023) as well as group exhibitions at Neu Coln with JUBG, Cologne DE (2025), Overduin and Co, Los Angeles (2025), Iowa Projects, New York (2025), As It Stands, Los Angeles (2024), STARS Los Angeles (2024, as Paul Manton) and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles (2022). She is currently writing an art world mystery novel that will be published by Apogee Graphics, Los Angeles. 

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). 

Hanna Hur (b. 1985, Toronto, Canada) lives and works in New York.Hur earned a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal, and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include Sweetwater, Berlin (2025); Doosan Art Center, Seoul (2024); Dracula’s Revenge, New York (2024); Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles (2023, 2021); Feuilleton, Los Angeles (2020). Recent group exhibitions include the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2025, 2022); XYZ collective, Tokyo (2025); Galeria Dawid Radziszewski, Warsaw (2024); Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles (2024); Capc—Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux (2024); STARS Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); Gallery 12.26, Dallas (2023); Room 3557, Los Angeles (2023); Aspen Art Museum, CO (2022).

Artem Nanushyan (b. 1997, Moscow, Russia) lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include Artem Nanushyan at The Village, Los Angeles, (2025) and O-1 at Gaylord Fine Arts, Los Angeles (2024). His work has also been included in group exhibitions: The Body is The Body, curated by Simon Brewer and Nathalie Martin in Miami, Attrition at Amity, New York; Condo 2025 243 Luz x Roland Ross hosted by Arcadia Missa, London.

Jon Pestoni (b. 1969, St. Helena, CA) lives and works in Los Angeles. Pestoni holds an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles and BA from University of California, Berkeley. Recent solo exhibitions include Jon Pestoni at Broadway Gallery, New York (2022) and Some Years at the Cleveland Museum of Art (2016). Selected two-person and group exhibitions include Pure Abstractions with Kent Familton at Le Maximum (2022), Rosebud, Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles (2019), and Trace of Existence, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2016).

Lauren Quin (b. 1992, Los Angeles) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her solo exhibition Eyelets of Alkaline is currently on view at Pace, Los Angeles. Other solo presentations have taken place at 125 Newbury in New York (2024), the Nerman Museum of Art (2023), Pond Society in Shanghai (2022), and Blum & Poe in Los Angeles (2022) and Tokyo (2023). Her work is held in public collections worldwide, including those of the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Long Museum, Shanghai; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai, among others.