Taking place in Los Angeles for Frieze 2026, 500 Capp Street is proud to be a part of One Hundred Year Old Water: Works by David Ireland & Anais Franco. Curated by David Horvitz and Sophie Appel, the exhibition brings together two artists known for their exploration of physical and historical materiality through their processes.

Ireland started making what he called Dumbballs in 1983, the name refers to the notion that they do not require any intellect to be made. They were to him, a meditation, a refusal to do anything but pass concrete over and over again for 12 to 14 hours a day until it became perfectly round. Anais Franco’s Strawberries are inspired by the practice Japanese American strawberry farmers had of painting rocks red and placing them throughout the strawberry fields as a deterrent to birds. In order to make Strawberries, Anais first combines a red stain with piles of clay through a process of wedging, which is slamming the clay onto a wooden plank over and over again for hours on end, before making the clay into the shape of rocks, also a meditation on the material itself, similar to Ireland’s Dumbballs.

These works are situated in the 7th Avenue Garden where the ecological memory of a landscape that once was is evoked through native plants, within a palimpsest of histories of Los Angeles: remnants of the demolished LACMA building, seafood waste from various restaurants, sand from Japanese incarceration camps, etc.

1911 7TH AVENUE, LOS ANGELES

VIEWING
FEBRUARY 26 – MARCH 1, 2026
FROM 11 UNTIL 5 O’CLOCK

CELEBRATION
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 28 FROM 3 TO 6 O’CLOCK
WITH DAVID IRELAND’S PURPLE PASTA & ANGEL FOOD CAKE MADE BY GILES CLARK