Jimi Gleason "Landline" is now in the Laguna Art Museum Permanent Collection
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Jimi gleason, Landline, 2023, silver nitrate, acrylic, canvas, 56”x80”
We're delighted to share that Jimi Gleason's Landline (2023) has been acquired for the permanent collection of the Laguna Art Museum.
At 56 × 80 inches, Landline is a striking example of Jimi's signature process: silver nitrate and acrylic on canvas, producing a surface that catches and shifts with the light so the painting is never quite the same twice. Laguna Art Museum has championed California artists for more than a century, and this acquisition places Jimi firmly within that lineage.
Museum recognition like this is a meaningful milestone in an artist's career, and we're proud to have supported Jimi's work.
Jimi gleason, Landline, 2023, silver nitrate, acrylic, canvas, 56”x80”
RADIANT TERRAINS
Among the exhibition highlights are works by Light and Space pioneers Peter Alexander, Craig Kauffman and Helen Pashgian; Anthony Friedkin’s photographs engaging the luminous movement of breaking waves; Stephen Hendee’s illuminated architectural environments; Lita Albuquerque’s explorations of celestial space; and Jay McCafferty’s solar-burn drawings. Together with paintings, photographs, installations and other works from the collection, the exhibition demonstrates the diverse ways artists have used light to alter, challenge and expand our understanding of the world around us.
The exhibition is curated by Tyler Stallings, a Southern California curator, writer and researcher who previously served as Chief Curator of Laguna Art Museum. Stallings has organized numerous exhibitions examining California and contemporary art and has curated several exhibitions drawn from the museum’s permanent collection.
Radiant Terrains is presented as part of Laguna Art Museum’s annual Art + Nature program, extending the initiative’s exploration of the natural environment through light, one of nature’s most fundamental and transformative elements. Throughout the exhibition, light creates connections between ocean and sky, body and landscape, scientific observation and spiritual reflection.
ABOUT LAGUNA ART MUSEUM
Laguna Art Museum exists to engage and enlighten people of all ages through art that embodies and preserves the California experience. Laguna Art Museum presents exhibitions relevant to California art and artists throughout the year and is home to the annual Art & Nature Festival celebrating the museum’s unique relationship to the environment. In 2025, Laguna Art Museum served a record-high 21,000 people during Art + Nature. This year's festival begins on September 19, 2026 with the Radiant Terrains exhibition from the Permanent Collection, which will be on view September 19, 2026 through January 10, 2027.
Jimi Gleason’s 2025 exhibition Vapor Wave at William Turner Gallery
Jimi Gleason turns painting into a shifting register of its surroundings. Using silver nitrate and acrylic, he creates luminous surfaces that reflect, distort, and partially absorb the viewer and the gallery around them. Light glides across the painting's metallic skin, producing subtle shifts in color and tone as viewers change position. Rather than functioning as a conventional mirror, the work returns a softened, fragmented reflection, making the viewer an active participant in the painting itself.
Gleason's layered surfaces oscillate between mirror-like clarity and pearlescent opacity, never settling into a single image. His practice shares affinities with Helen Pashgian's perceptual investigations, yet where Pashgian embeds light within translucent materials, Gleason allows it to remain on the surface. Nearby, Jennifer Bolande similarly redirects attention to the act of looking itself, reminding us that perception is continually shaped by light, movement, and our own presence.
Tyler Stallings - Guest Curator - Radiant Terrains