Nicholas Hondrogen

This Saturday, The Hole presents a special exhibition of works from the estate of Nicholas Hondrogen (1952–2007), organized in partnership with his longtime friend and estate manager Jeff Vespa. The show marks the first time since his passing that key works from across decades of his career are brought together in Los Angeles.

The exhibition traces Hondrogen’s restless experimentation, beginning with shaped canvases and material explorations from the 1970s, created while living in Paris. The main gallery highlights luminous oil-on-Mylar paintings from the 1990s, layered with poured pigment and energetic line work, while the rear gallery presents his late “Fractal Ellipse” paintings—large-scale oil-and-wax works on styrene panel that reflect his deep engagement with abstraction in the final years of his life. One of his last works, Fractal Ellipse No. 31, incorporates a full-body scan of the artist overlaid with vivid orange ellipses, a meditation on both presence and mortality.

Born in New Hampshire, Hondrogen studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston before moving to Paris, where his early works were acquired by institutions including the Centre Pompidou and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. Though the 1990s saw him turn toward filmmaking, he returned fully to painting with his acclaimed series Mumonkan (1996–2000), Natural Selection (2000–2002), and Fractal Ellipse (2002–2007). He received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant shortly before his death from peritoneal mesothelioma at age 55.