Portrait by Aaron Curry, Los Angeles, 2026
Born 1978, Long Beach, California
Lives and works in Highland Park, Los Angeles, California
Bio Brooks Shane Salzwedel is a Los Angeles–based artist whose work explores the emotional terrain between observed and imagined landscapes. His layered mixed-media works merge forests, mountains, coastlines, atmospheric phenomena, offshore structures, and industrial remnants into environments that exist somewhere between memory and invention. Rather than depicting a specific location, Salzwedel constructs places that feel psychologically familiar - landscapes shaped as much by perception and emotion as by geography itself.
Working through a self-developed process, Salzwedel layers graphite, ink, resin, translucent films, acrylic, photographic fragments, found materials, and hand-built sculptural elements into compositions that possess both visual and literal depth. Images gradually emerge through repeated acts of accumulation, concealment, suspension, and erosion. Light, transparency, and shifting viewpoints become active materials, encouraging viewers to move around the work and experience changing relationships between surface and depth.
Although grounded in observations of national parks, forests, industrial sites, and geological formations, Salzwedel's work is ultimately concerned with constructing psychological environments. Themes of memory, vulnerability, grief, resilience, environmental change, and humanity's complex relationship with the natural world quietly surface through recurring motifs of trees, mountains, water, weather, and industrial structures.
The layered resin process that continues to define his practice was first developed while studying at ArtCenter College of Design. After years of experimentation across multiple bodies of work, artist residencies - including Denali National Park in Alaska and White River National Forest in Colorado - deepened his relationship to landscape and reinforced nature as both subject and metaphor. More recent bodies of work expand these ideas through sculptural acrylic constructions, layered transparencies, and immersive installations that further blur the boundaries between drawing, sculpture, and architecture.
Salzwedel received his BFA with honors from ArtCenter College of Design in 2004. His drawing process was featured in Read This If You Want to Be Great at Drawing, and his work has appeared in numerous publications including New American Paintings. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in museum, public, corporate, and private collections. Alongside his studio practice, he has completed commissions for cultural institutions, hospitality projects, musicians, and commercial collaborators, while continuing to explore long-form experimental projects that expand his investigation of layering, accumulation, and transformation. He lives and works in Highland Park, Los Angeles, CA.
Education
2004 – BFA, Cum Laude, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
Selected Solo & Three-Person Exhibitions
2026 – Surface / Tension, Lola Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (August 7th)
2025 – Three-person exhibition, AMcE Creative Arts, Seattle, WA (July)
2025 – Three-person exhibition, Benjamin Eck Gallery, Munich, Germany (September 16)
2024 – Embodiment, AMcE Creative Arts, Seattle, WA
2019 – Isolate / Don’t Isolate, Benjamin Eck Gallery, Munich, Germany
2018 – Rut in the Soil, MOAH (Museum of Art and History), Lancaster, CA, presented by Thinkspace Projects
2018 – Dust and Dawn, Foley Gallery, New York, NY
2018 – Lost Lands, Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA
2016 – Site-specific commission, Descanso Gardens via LA Metro, Los Angeles, CA
2014 – National Parks, Gbg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2013 – Temporal Void, Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA
2012 – Of Steel, Cement & Earth, George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2010 – Bo Lee Gallery, Bath, United Kingdom
2009 – Phylum Kingdom, Black Maria Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2009 – Land Makers, Tinlark Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2008 – Modern Soil, Black Maria Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2008 – By Fault of Its Own, Tinlark Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2007 – Ultra Autumn, R3 Gallery, San Diego, CA
2006 – Hidden, Black Maria Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2006 – Halcyon, NewSpace Gallery, Hollywood, CA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2026 – Classic, Works, Corbeau Gallery, Jackson, Wy
2026 – The World in View, Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
2024 – Interpretations of Our Natural World, River Gallery, Ohio
2021 – ETA30, Nahcotta Gallery, New Hampshire
2021 – Tondo, Spoke Art, New York, NY
2021 – Other Nature, Foley Gallery, New York, NY
2021 – Creative Resource, Round Weather Gallery, Oakland, CA
2020 – Magnum Opus, Wanderlife Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2019 – Surreal Sublime, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (SJICA), CA
2018 – Remembered / Imagined, Paradigm Gallery & Antler Gallery, Portland, OR
2018 – LAX/PDX, Antler Gallery x Thinkspace Projects, Portland & Los Angeles
2018 – Audio/Visual, Nahcotta Gallery, Portsmouth, NH
2017 – Forget What You Know, Sp[a]ce Gallery, Pasadena, CA
2017 – SCOPE Art Fair, with Thinkspace Projects, Miami, FL
2017 – LUSH, MAK Center, collaboration with Superjacent, Los Angeles, CA
2017 – Pow!Wow! Hawaii, Thinkspace Projects, Honolulu, HI
2016 – Through the Woods, Giant Robot 2, Los Angeles, CA
2014 – Terra, Gallery Nucleus, Los Angeles, CA
2013 – Cityscape Show III, George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2012 – The Hammer Museum Store, Los Angeles, CA
2010 – Art London, Bo Lee Gallery, London, UK
2009 – East of Eden, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
2009 – Everything But the Kitschen Sync, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Residencies & Awards
2017 – Artist-in-Residence, White River National Forest, Aspen, CO
2015 – Artist-in-Residence, Denali National Park, Alaska
2016 – Public art commission, LA Metro x Descanso Gardens, Los Angeles, CA
2016 – Featured artist in Read This If You Want to Be Great at Drawing, Laurence King Publishing
2016 – American Illustration, 35th Edition
Collections (Selected)
Denali National Park, AK
White River National Forest, CO
MōDUS, Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia
Four Seasons Hotel, Washington D.C.
Four Seasons Resort Lana’i, Hawaii
The Houston Museum of Contemporary Art
Portland Art Museum
Blum Private Collection
Commissions & Collaborations
Novo Amor (album artwork)
Guthrie Theater
LA Metro
Fogland Wine / ClubW
Tia Mowry Cooking Show
J Skis Collaboration
Man Appears in the Holocene (film)
The New York Times
L.A. Weekly
Geffen Records
Press & Publications (Selected)
Editorial & Print
The New York Times
GQ Magazine
Juxtapoz
New American Paintings
ArtWeek
ArtReview
Drawing Magazine
NYArts
Los Angeles Magazine
American Art Collector
Los Angeles Times Magazine
TimeOut New York
Lucky Magazine
Online & Audio
The Jealous Curator (podcast & feature)
Booooooom
Supersonic Art
Designboom
My Modern Met
East Bay Express – Invisible Lands
Surface & Surface
Sp[a]ce Gallery YouTube Interview
Lives and works in Highland Park, Los Angeles, California
Bio Brooks Shane Salzwedel is a Los Angeles–based artist whose work explores the emotional terrain between observed and imagined landscapes. His layered mixed-media works merge forests, mountains, coastlines, atmospheric phenomena, offshore structures, and industrial remnants into environments that exist somewhere between memory and invention. Rather than depicting a specific location, Salzwedel constructs places that feel psychologically familiar - landscapes shaped as much by perception and emotion as by geography itself.
Working through a self-developed process, Salzwedel layers graphite, ink, resin, translucent films, acrylic, photographic fragments, found materials, and hand-built sculptural elements into compositions that possess both visual and literal depth. Images gradually emerge through repeated acts of accumulation, concealment, suspension, and erosion. Light, transparency, and shifting viewpoints become active materials, encouraging viewers to move around the work and experience changing relationships between surface and depth.
Although grounded in observations of national parks, forests, industrial sites, and geological formations, Salzwedel's work is ultimately concerned with constructing psychological environments. Themes of memory, vulnerability, grief, resilience, environmental change, and humanity's complex relationship with the natural world quietly surface through recurring motifs of trees, mountains, water, weather, and industrial structures.
The layered resin process that continues to define his practice was first developed while studying at ArtCenter College of Design. After years of experimentation across multiple bodies of work, artist residencies - including Denali National Park in Alaska and White River National Forest in Colorado - deepened his relationship to landscape and reinforced nature as both subject and metaphor. More recent bodies of work expand these ideas through sculptural acrylic constructions, layered transparencies, and immersive installations that further blur the boundaries between drawing, sculpture, and architecture.
Salzwedel received his BFA with honors from ArtCenter College of Design in 2004. His drawing process was featured in Read This If You Want to Be Great at Drawing, and his work has appeared in numerous publications including New American Paintings. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in museum, public, corporate, and private collections. Alongside his studio practice, he has completed commissions for cultural institutions, hospitality projects, musicians, and commercial collaborators, while continuing to explore long-form experimental projects that expand his investigation of layering, accumulation, and transformation. He lives and works in Highland Park, Los Angeles, CA.
Education
2004 – BFA, Cum Laude, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
Selected Solo & Three-Person Exhibitions
2026 – Surface / Tension, Lola Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (August 7th)
2025 – Three-person exhibition, AMcE Creative Arts, Seattle, WA (July)
2025 – Three-person exhibition, Benjamin Eck Gallery, Munich, Germany (September 16)
2024 – Embodiment, AMcE Creative Arts, Seattle, WA
2019 – Isolate / Don’t Isolate, Benjamin Eck Gallery, Munich, Germany
2018 – Rut in the Soil, MOAH (Museum of Art and History), Lancaster, CA, presented by Thinkspace Projects
2018 – Dust and Dawn, Foley Gallery, New York, NY
2018 – Lost Lands, Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA
2016 – Site-specific commission, Descanso Gardens via LA Metro, Los Angeles, CA
2014 – National Parks, Gbg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2013 – Temporal Void, Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA
2012 – Of Steel, Cement & Earth, George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2010 – Bo Lee Gallery, Bath, United Kingdom
2009 – Phylum Kingdom, Black Maria Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2009 – Land Makers, Tinlark Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2008 – Modern Soil, Black Maria Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2008 – By Fault of Its Own, Tinlark Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2007 – Ultra Autumn, R3 Gallery, San Diego, CA
2006 – Hidden, Black Maria Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2006 – Halcyon, NewSpace Gallery, Hollywood, CA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2026 – Classic, Works, Corbeau Gallery, Jackson, Wy
2026 – The World in View, Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
2024 – Interpretations of Our Natural World, River Gallery, Ohio
2021 – ETA30, Nahcotta Gallery, New Hampshire
2021 – Tondo, Spoke Art, New York, NY
2021 – Other Nature, Foley Gallery, New York, NY
2021 – Creative Resource, Round Weather Gallery, Oakland, CA
2020 – Magnum Opus, Wanderlife Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2019 – Surreal Sublime, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (SJICA), CA
2018 – Remembered / Imagined, Paradigm Gallery & Antler Gallery, Portland, OR
2018 – LAX/PDX, Antler Gallery x Thinkspace Projects, Portland & Los Angeles
2018 – Audio/Visual, Nahcotta Gallery, Portsmouth, NH
2017 – Forget What You Know, Sp[a]ce Gallery, Pasadena, CA
2017 – SCOPE Art Fair, with Thinkspace Projects, Miami, FL
2017 – LUSH, MAK Center, collaboration with Superjacent, Los Angeles, CA
2017 – Pow!Wow! Hawaii, Thinkspace Projects, Honolulu, HI
2016 – Through the Woods, Giant Robot 2, Los Angeles, CA
2014 – Terra, Gallery Nucleus, Los Angeles, CA
2013 – Cityscape Show III, George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2012 – The Hammer Museum Store, Los Angeles, CA
2010 – Art London, Bo Lee Gallery, London, UK
2009 – East of Eden, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
2009 – Everything But the Kitschen Sync, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Residencies & Awards
2017 – Artist-in-Residence, White River National Forest, Aspen, CO
2015 – Artist-in-Residence, Denali National Park, Alaska
2016 – Public art commission, LA Metro x Descanso Gardens, Los Angeles, CA
2016 – Featured artist in Read This If You Want to Be Great at Drawing, Laurence King Publishing
2016 – American Illustration, 35th Edition
Collections (Selected)
Denali National Park, AK
White River National Forest, CO
MōDUS, Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia
Four Seasons Hotel, Washington D.C.
Four Seasons Resort Lana’i, Hawaii
The Houston Museum of Contemporary Art
Portland Art Museum
Blum Private Collection
Commissions & Collaborations
Novo Amor (album artwork)
Guthrie Theater
LA Metro
Fogland Wine / ClubW
Tia Mowry Cooking Show
J Skis Collaboration
Man Appears in the Holocene (film)
The New York Times
L.A. Weekly
Geffen Records
Press & Publications (Selected)
Editorial & Print
The New York Times
GQ Magazine
Juxtapoz
New American Paintings
ArtWeek
ArtReview
Drawing Magazine
NYArts
Los Angeles Magazine
American Art Collector
Los Angeles Times Magazine
TimeOut New York
Lucky Magazine
Online & Audio
The Jealous Curator (podcast & feature)
Booooooom
Supersonic Art
Designboom
My Modern Met
East Bay Express – Invisible Lands
Surface & Surface
Sp[a]ce Gallery YouTube Interview
© 2006-2026 Brooks Shane Salzwedel - All Rights Reserved.
All artwork and intellectual property protected by U.S. & International Law.. Copyright Statement/click here to read
All artwork and intellectual property protected by U.S. & International Law.. Copyright Statement/click here to read
