Anj Smith Returns to L.A. with “The Sequin-Strewn Night”

For the first time in twenty years, British painter Anj Smith brings her exquisite, surreal canvases back to Los Angeles with “The Sequin-Strewn Night”, now on view at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood through 24 January 2026. This solo exhibition unfurls a series of newly imagined works that confront the mythology of the female nude, challenge narrative coherence, and explore the resilience of imagination within ecologically and emotionally hostile terrain. Titled after a line from Meret Oppenheim’s poem In the beginning is the end, the exhibition is a deeply poetic meditation on identity, sensuality, and transformation.

Born in 1978 in Kent, England, Anj Smith is known internationally for her painstakingly intricate, psychologically layered paintings. A graduate of Slade School of Fine Art and Goldsmiths College, Smith’s work has graced the walls of major institutions across the globe, from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to MOCA Los Angeles and the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Finland. With “The Sequin-Strewn Night”, Smith offers Angeleno audiences a body of work as lush and disturbing as it is defiantly beautiful.

Anj Smith Paints the Psyche with Luminous Complexity

Anj Smith’s work operates within—and against—the confines of classical genres: portraiture, landscape, and still life all dissolve into an intimate, fever-dreamed world of sublime contradiction. Drawing on references from literature, cinema, and cultural iconography, her compositions are tapestries of hyper-detailed figuration and symbolic terrain. In this new series, the viewer is drawn into charged atmospheres that hint at interior monologues and unseen dangers. A back-turned figure in “Narcissus” (2025) is adorned with insects, pearls, and botanical detritus, a contemporary echo of the baroque still life that insists on ambiguity over clarity.

In the newly debuted “Performer” series, Smith addresses Los Angeles directly, casting it as both muse and metaphor. Her harlequin portraits reflect the performative multiplicities of identity in a city that thrives on transformation. Lipstick, dyed hair, sheer tulle—objects often dismissed as feminine frivolity—are elevated to cultural signifiers worthy of deep reverence. These details do not resolve into a single narrative; instead, they mirror Smith’s larger practice: a resistance to coherence, a celebration of the liminal, and a reverence for the intricate.

Anj Smith Reimagines Resilience Through Landscape

The expansive landscapes in “The Sequin-Strewn Night” are no less psychologically rich. Inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1964 film “Red Desert”, these new paintings capture emotional desolation through jagged ecologies and impossible horizons. Monica Vitti’s character in Antonioni’s film struggles to find agency amid industrial desolation—just as Smith’s painted figures strive for transcendence through color, detail, and texture. Against backdrops of desert ice, neon skies, and toxic flora, the human form is both fragile and defiant.

What emerges is a visual vocabulary uniquely Anj Smith—dreamlike yet precise, grotesque yet seductive, always beckoning the viewer into prolonged engagement. These are not paintings that yield their meanings easily. They demand attention, they demand care. And in doing so, they reward us with new ways of seeing the world—and ourselves—through the fractured lens of vulnerability, resilience, and erotic curiosity.