Jake Longstreth

Although he documents broad swaths of the American landscape, Jake Longstreth is best known for paintings that center on the nation’s ubiquitous strip malls and their surrounding suburban sprawl. Recalling the deadpan works of Ed Ruscha, Edward Hopper, and Robert Bechtle, Longstreth’s landscapes examine the contemporary ghost towns that American consumerist culture abandoned. He also addresses climate change directly in the series “Particulate Matter,” which depicts its visceral effects on the California landscape, which is now routinely bathed in a hazy light due to smog and wildfire smoke. His works have been featured in such publications as Art in America, Artforum, and the Huffington Post. Longstreth’s paintings are in the collections of the Crocker Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and he was the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2008. Since 2015, Longstreth has co-hosted the radio show Time Crisis with musician Ezra Koenig.