Los Angeles is a city of contradictions — glamorous yet gritty, paradise yet perilous, sun-drenched yet shrouded in wildfire smoke. Jessica Taylor Bellamy captures this precarious balance in her latest exhibition, “Temperature Check,” now on display at Anat Ebgi’s Wilshire gallery. 

Bellamy graduated from USC with bachelor’s degrees in political science and fine arts painting in 2014 and a Master of Fine Arts from the Roski School of Art and Design in 2022. As a USC alum and L.A. local, Bellamy uses her deep familiarity with L.A. to craft works that examine the city’s landscape, culture and climate by blurring the lines between utopia and dystopia and fantasy and reality.

“Temperature Check” was inspired by the instinct to observe, reassess and recalibrate — whether it’s the climate of the nation, the vibe of a room or the literal temperature. For those familiar with Bellamy’s work, the exhibit expands her signature style: merging and layering oil painting, silkscreen, sculpture and video that collages L.A. as a city constantly in motion. 

Drawing from a wide range of elements such as personal mementos, news clippings and historical archives, Bellamy creates compositions that feel at once familiar and unsettling. Many of her paintings juxtapose idyllic California scenery — golden sunsets, open highways, lush greenery — with darker details. 

Bellamy’s vision of L.A. can be described as equal parts adoration and alarm. Her paintings lure the audience in with dreamy, soft washes of color — then interrupt it with screen-printed headlines about the wildfires, droughts and social unrest that shape the city’s reality. 

One painting that catches the eye is the signature piece “Temperature Check.” It is a painting of harsh waves with layered images of a crane hook and a red, burning palm tree. On top of that, another layer with fragments from the weather forecast is printed. Words like “Air Quality Unhealthful for: Sensitive people,” “fog, then sun” and “UV Index Minutes to burn for sensitive people” stand out. This technique forces the audience to grapple with the paradox of their own existence in a place that markets itself as paradise yet is constantly on the brink of collapse.

In a trio of paintings titled “Miss Fix It (Ambition),” “(Courage)” and “(Modesty),” Bellamy riffs on Andy Warhol’s triple portrait of Elvis Presley, replacing him with her own cropped figure, posed with a tool belt and drill against backdrops of sunsets, wildflowers and daily headlines. It’s a bold reimagining that emphasizes preparedness, progression, and the labor required to build, repair and survive in an unpredictable world. 

Bellamy’s fascination with automobiles, a defining element of L.A. culture, is reflected in works like “Foliage Gas Pump,” a hybrid painting-video piece that reimagines the relationship between humans and natural resources and their impact on ecosystems. 

In another piece, passenger-side mirror sculptures reflect not just the city’s landscapes but fragmented videos of everyday life — drives through Los Angeles, the sound of ocean waves, a Botox injection. It’s as if Bellamy is asking: What do we really see when we look at this city? What parts of it do we choose to ignore?

The exhibit makes us question how we feel about the world we live in and the slow-burning crises we often ignore. Climate change, consumerism and L.A.’s precarious relationship with both are embedded in each piece. However, Bellamy’s work doesn’t impose, nor does it provide easy answers. Instead, she invites viewers to pause, absorb and engage with these realities through a lens of curiosity, humor and poetic confrontation. 

At its core, “Temperature Check” is an L.A. story about its beauty, its contradictions and its inevitable transformation. Bellamy captures the city’s essence not just in its images but in its sensations. It’s an exhibition that urges us to look closer, past the shimmering façade, and recognize the fragility of the place we call home.

The world she presents is not one of distant dystopia; it’s the one we already inhabit, highlighted through layers of art, history and lived experience.

Her work conveys the city’s beauty and its looming uncertainties, challenging viewers to see the familiar in new ways. “Temperature Check” is a thought-provoking exhibit on what it means to live in L.A. — to love it, to critique it and to grapple with its ever-changing identity.

Jessica Taylor Bellamy’s “Temperature Check” is on view at Anat Ebgi Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd, until March 22.