Ashlynn Trane

Ashlynn Trane // Splay debuts a new typology developed by the Artist over the past few years that is both technically and conceptually fresh. The works resist definition—cascading past abstraction and figuration, over painting and under sculpture, and down a rabbit hole that is entirely her own. They pulse with obvious inspiration, and are infectiously innovative.

Although classically trained as a painter, the artist’s love affair with the physical presence of sculpture is palpable throughout the exhibition. Drawing from her background as a model-maker for a Los Angeles architectural firm, Trane developed a technique that allows her canvases to unfurl into the third dimension. Laser-cut wooden supports, upholstered with canvas, fit together like a jigsaw puzzle that becomes the substrate for her painting. The works are demandingly sculptural, and carry a commanding, unforgettable presence.

Refracting throughout the works on view, Trane’s curiosity about the modern world is as cunning as it is warm. She investigates her surroundings by holding a mirror up to the flotsam and jetsam of the 2020s—both literally and figuratively, as mirroring images is an important part of her practice. Throughout the exhibition, Trane invites us into a chamber of limitless reflection and adoration for the common milieu, echoing and morphing familiar forms until they become seductive, kaleidoscopic abstractions of the original. In 4-eared Friend (2026) Trane draws inspiration from a porcelain rabbit, subverting its form through duplication and distortion until it becomes alien; four ears, two noses, and a deliciously painterly belly swirl into a shape resembling a rare and beautiful orchid. There is, however, a distinct, discerning quality to her veneration. In Ralph’s Display (2026), Trane depicts a display of five-pointed balloons inside of a Ralph’s supermarket, the shapes like ready-made abstractions of their celestial inspirations. The swollen stars drift into a synthetic Milky Way, simultaneously calling out and celebrating the preposterousness of the display’s very existence. In reimagining the small trinkets and the objects of fleeting infatuation that populate kitchen counters and car dashboards, Trane builds an ethereal forest that is decidedly manufactured, questioning what beauty and comfort looks like in the quotidian landscape of the artist’s home city. In Los Angeles, isn’t Ralph’s balloon just as ubiquitous as a star? Intermingled, the works form a poem about contemporary material

delight that is both an ode and an epitaph.

“This,” she says, holding up her key ring, lovingly adorned with a pink vibrator and a worn stuffed animal (among other baubles), “is just landfill”.

At the center of the exhibition, Trane presents In Knots (2026), an ambitious diptych in the form of two symmetrical ribbons, intricately knotted, as if ready to festoon a wrapped gift. Atop her construction, for those who look closely, Trane weaves a self portrait, skin and hands tangling into the otherwise white canvas, providing a tantalizingly coy glimpse at its creator. In Knots is hung adjacent to It’s Raining It’s Pouring (Big Oil) (2023–2026), a work from her time at USC Roski that Trane has reimagined, inviting the viewer into her journey as an artist. Like the contents of a cluttered bedroom, the works provide a constellation of breadcrumbs that create a portrait of the artist, wholly alluring in its strangeness and in its deliberate obfuscation.

Ashlynn Trane (b. 2001, Washington D.C.) is currently based in Los Angeles. She received her BFA with honors from The University of Southern California in 2024. In 2022 she received the Ruth Weisberg Prize for drawing, and held her debut solo show Shock Collar at Lindhurst Gallery (2023). Trane unveiled two portraits of the esteemed twin judges, Inez Smith Reid and George Bundy Smith, at Yale Law School in 2023. Later that year, Trane co-curated and showed work in Me and You and Me and at SADE Gallery (2023). Her recent exhibitions include America (Soy Yo!) at Charlie James Gallery (2025), and May Flowers at David Maxwell’s Flower Residency (2025).

—Natalie Garms