On Saturday morning, The Broad opened its new exhibition, “Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog).” Showcasing the work of 21 Los Angeles-based artists, the show draws together more than 60 works — all from the museum’s own collection. Though exceptionally diverse in their aesthetic approaches, the pieces connect through their interest to dissect the contents (and discontents) of the urban experience, constructing a penetrating view into life in the city.

The exhibition excerpts its title from a 1985 work by John Baldessari, “Buildings=Guns=People: Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog).” The leviathan piece, measuring more than 15 feet in height and 37 feet in width, collages images suggested by the title: A central skyscraper is symmetrically flanked by sideways photographs of individuals in public (each made anonymous through Baldessari’s trademark painted dots over the faces), all of which are positioned under downward-facing pistols. More images appear on the outermost panels, including four prints of kissing mouths above a partially-consumed apple on the left and a blue rose on the right.

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Baldessari’s conceptual artwork encapsulates many of the issues at play in the exhibition. Composing various elements of metropolitan life, he challenges the viewer to consider the complex fugue of urban issues in the modern day such as violence, love, morality — and yes, smog. Baldessari assails spoken and unspoken assumptions about the city with a skillful counterpoint.

“A lot of the artists are intent to disrupt a paradise narrative of Los Angeles, which is as old as the movie industry,” said Ed Schad, curator at The Broad. “John Baldessari is very much at the heart of rethinking that, throwing things that we think we know out of context.”

But while the exhibition touches specifically on Angeleno creatives, many of the works extend past Southern California into broader reflections on city life in general. Seeking visual representation of common experiences, the artists probe subjects that are economic, environmental, social, political and domestic.

Barbara Kruger boldly steps into this universality with “Untitled (I shop therefore I am),” revising Descartes’ famous philosophical formulation “I think, therefore I am.” Derived from her 1987 work of the same name, the exhibition shows her 2019 video displayed on an LED panel. A jumble of jigsaw puzzle pieces fly into position to form the photograph of a hand holding a red rectangle with the titular phrase. The video then cycles through a series of related expressions, synchronized to the chime of a cash register’s bell — before falling out of order to be reconstructed again.

Set in its own individual gallery, Kruger’s work demands audience attention and involvement through its exploration of the “I,” forcing viewers to project themselves into the image. Setting the visual customs of corporate iconography against an intimate photograph of a hand, the piece meditates on the conflation of personal identity and economic participation.

In the gallery across, a diptych by Sayre Gomez engages in similar considerations of consumerism. Entitled “Diamonds and Pearls,” the paired pieces photorealistically capture the windows of a nail salon, including the nearly comical decals of impeccably manicured hands and feet, a neon “OPEN” sign and its soft red glow, and a perimetric string of small lights that radiate their blue hue onto the rest of the picture. With just acrylic on canvas, Gomez produces an uncannily convincing snapshot of a seemingly familiar image.

Indeed, the apparent familiarity of the work speaks to the nature of uniformity and superficiality in the aesthetics of service industry entities such as nail spas. Although Gomez does reference a real “Crystal Nails” of L.A. — the phone number shown in the piece directs callers to an actual salon — the art seems more interested in the formulaic, indistinct qualities of the display — a result of the economic forces at play.

This dialogic aspect runs throughout the exhibition, sometimes manifesting in even more striking ways. For instance, the show positions the boldly political posters of Robbie Conal against the dense collages of Mark Bradford, which use paper materials such as posters or billboards to realize evocatively abstract images.

Further into the show, Ed Ruscha is set against Toba Khedoori. Although they come from markedly disparate backgrounds, belong to different generations and align with contrasting movements, the exhibition reveals the two artists actually have notable similarities in their understandings of urban environments.

“The installation really celebrates connections that I don’t think people have experienced before, or collisions of artists that are unexpected,” Schad said. “These types of relationships were very important for [Curatorial Assistant] Jennifer Vanegas Rocha and myself as we were putting this together.”

More often than not, “Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog)” attempts to expose romanticized visions of urban spaces as chimeric mirages, characterizing life in the city as intrinsically idealistic. Yet the exhibition also shows a clear commitment to highlighting the exciting possibilities of the city as what the museum’s president and founding director, Joanne Heyler, said is a “center of cultural production.”

“Desire, Knowledge and Hope (with Smog)” is on view at The Broad until April 7, 2024. Admission is free, but visitors should reserve tickets in advance.