Hollywood, Los Angeles
Patrick Winfield Vogel
The Iris
Giovanni's RoomGiovanni’s Room is pleased to present The Iris, a site-specific installation of drawings and photographs by artist Patrick Winfield Vogel, with an original text by Norman M. Klein. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The intersection at Cahuenga and Romaine first bustled in 1918. Two stages in LA’s memory are buried here— both the hidden process inside films, and stages in the rapid growth of the entire Hollywood area, from an old Tongva trail to Cahuenga Pass to present-day Hollywood. The iris shot was developed as a camera transition device during the silent era, and many of those films were made on this block. Vogel’s exhibition continues a contemplation at this crossroads of film, light and the apparatus effect, framing the intersection as a silent movie which bustles in, out and through the iris of the gallery. There is a focusing and blurring effect of inner and outer space, a pulling of focus; a single celestial photograph taken by the artist in Canoga Park invokes the cosmologic lens, with the viewer as ontological apparatus. Background, foreground and the ground all converge into a dream state of the present. Meanwhile, with the film industry all but having left Hollywood, this iris fades in and out as a mental picture into layers of forgotten buildings, each a stage that is replaced. Patrick Winfield Vogel was born in West Hollywood in 1991. Growing up in the film industry provided early exposure to many disciplines and modes of working. Vogel’s installations, drawings and sculptures have been exhibited in Los Angeles at the New Wolford House, Phase Gallery, Helen J Gallery, CalArts, and the Torrance Art Museum. In late August 2026 they will begin a yearlong Fulbright project in Bangalore, India conducting independent research on Dravidian architecture and public space.