CHRISTINA QUARLES: THE GROUND GLOWS BLACK
HAUSER & WIRTH is pleased to present The ground glows black, the latest work by Christina Quarles.
February 24 - May 3, 2026
This work reflects the acute sense of displacement Christina experienced in the wake of the historic Los Angeles wildfires that consumed her home in early 2025. Quarles is already admired internationally for the dexterity and assertiveness with which she manipulates paint. With the new works on view in ‘The Ground Glows Black,’ she pushes that expressive and physical power to new limits, conveying the impact of the fires on her inner landscape.
Kinetic planes of color, texture and pattern evoke architectural and digital realms where human forms jolt and bend in response to unseen forces. Denser and more frenetic than Quarles’ earlier works, these paintings feel newly urgent while hewing to the artist’s core pursuit: to show how instability and resilience coexist, creating spaces where multiple realities can overlap.
Quarles approaches each canvas with no predetermined composition, beginning with improvisatory marks that evolve into fluid lines resembling human forms. By working in acrylic paint, she maintains the immediacy of drawing, building up layers and textures while suspending moments in time. Midway through a painting, Quarles shifts to a systematic stenciling process. She photographs the work and uses Adobe Illustrator to view her initial marks against various backdrops. The patterns and planes she creates digitally are printed on a vinyl plotter and used in a multi-layered masking process. This back-and-forth relationship between the computer and the canvas lays the groundwork for seemingly impossible scenarios.
Quarles plays with interiority and exteriority throughout the exhibition, folding domestic and cosmic spaces into one another and allowing daylight and moonlight to coexist within a single frame. By refusing any one definitive narrative or perspective, her paintings generate a preternatural simultaneity—one that evokes the disorientation of trauma and transition.
The gallery windows have been covered in white film to heighten the contrast of exterior shadows, echoing the black-and-white gradients of drawings and the black pigment that has been sprayed onto the surface of the South Gallery columns—a reference to the blackened trees of Quarles’ former neighborhood. Like ash building up on a surface, the columns bear cumulative residue: layers of pigment that reveal imperfections and texture. Just as foreground and background oscillate within her canvases, so does the relationship between her work and the surrounding architecture.