Marc Selwyn Fine Art is pleased to announce a presentation of paintings by William Leavitt for the Felix Art Fair 2026. A critical figure in the West Coast conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Leavitt’s multidisciplinary work includes paintings, works on paper, installations, and screenplays that assemble mysterious motifs and figures in environments that draw largely from the landscape and architecture of Southern California.

A critical figure in the West Coast conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Leavitt’s multidisciplinary work includes paintings, works on paper, installations, and screenplays that assemble mysterious motifs and figures in environments that draw largely from the landscape and architecture of Southern California.
 
The paintings in this presentation, created between 1995 and 2017, layer setting, object, and figure together in enigmatic compositions. The result is the impression of a narrative rather than a linear story, as in a dream or a vision of the future. In one painting, the Starship Enterprise hovers over downtown San Antonio. In another, an anonymized pixelated figure stands beside a floating Walkman. Leavitt’s dichotomies of the mundane and the exotic conjure otherworldly realms that draw comparisons to Magritte and other practitioners of Surrealism.

While none of the tableaux in this presentation seem logical, the deadpan formality of Leavitt’s compositions compels us to interpret meaning. Untitled (JA&H), 2002, and Memory Modes, 2017, are composed of multiple perspectives, inferring breaks in time or divergent scenes happening simultaneously. The artist’s depiction of light as an illuminating yellow bulb in a dark interior in Blue Rooms, 2001, or as the soft diffused dawn over mountains in Walkman, 2000, immerses the viewer in an uncanny atmospheric setting. Leavitt’s suggestions of meaning never satisfy us with an answer but rather linger just out of grasp. 

Since the late 1960s, Leavitt’s work has been the subject of numerous one-person exhibitions, including an extensive survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2011, curated by Ann Goldstein and Bennett Simpson. Recent solo exhibitions include Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Beverly Hills (2024); Sebastian Gladstone, Los Angeles (2024); Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Beverly Hills (2022); Greene Naftali, New York (2019); Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Genève, (2017); and the Institute of the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH, Zurich (2014). His work has been featured in thematic exhibitions around the world and is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Getty, Los Angeles; The Art Institute of Chicago; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and many others.

Leavitt lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.