Los Angeles artist Francisco Cohen’s installation Hollywood Hustle will be celebrated with a public opening reception in the Adams Square Mini Park on Sunday, Nov. 3 from 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. The reception is sponsored and hosted by the Adams Hill Neighborhood Association. The exhibition, on view through Nov. 15, is mounted in the park’s centerpiece, a historic gas station, dubbed by the neighborhood The Station Gallery. The exhibition is sponsored by the City of Glendale’s Arts & Culture Commission with funding from the Glendale Urban Art Fund. The exhibition will be on view through Nov. 15.

The subjects depicted in Hollywood Hustle are all actors, comedians or musicians; the only requirement for inclusion is that they had auditioned within 30 days of the portrait. 

“Hollywood Hustle is the portrait of a community – a portrait of the grind. It deals with the question, ‘What’s it like to hustle here and now in 2019?’’ said Cohen. “Each subject was asked to answer the following question: ‘When things are going bad – i.e. there are no call backs or auditions – what do you tell yourself to be able to get up and keep going?’” The answers to these questions became an integral part of the work. Many of the artists depicted in the paintings will be present at the reception and a short performance will occur at 3 p.m.

Cohen’s installation consists of 25 oil on canvas portraits painted within a 30 day span, each 16” x 20”. All are framed in black and suspended one above the other, aligned in the gas station windows, similar to an Instagram grid. Together they make a singular cohesive statement about what it is like in 2019 to be hustling for work in Hollywood.

Francisco Cohen was raised in Texas. He is a graduate of UCLA and has attended both Art College Center of Design in Pasadena and Grand Central Atelier in New York, New York.