Sprüth Magers in Los Angeles has devoted its current show to a side of John Baldessari that tends to be overshadowed by his photographs and text pieces. Titled Sculptures, the exhibition runs from September 11 to December 19, 2026, and gathers three-dimensional works that the American conceptual artist, who died in 2020 at 89, made alongside his better-known image-based practice. An ArtRabbit feature published on October 20 notes that many objects are staged against large photographs or patterned wallpaper, so the sculptures are read in dialogue with flat images.

Scale is the running joke. Outside the building stands Camel (Albino) Contemplating Needle (Large) from 2013, a stark white camel around eight feet tall with bright blue eyes, paired with an oversized needle in a nod to the old saying about a camel and the eye of a needle. Inside, Fake Carrot (2015), roughly eight feet long, hangs high on a wall as if floating, its orange tip and green leaves pointing downward. Nearby, Penguin (2018) stands at least twice life size with its beak open, placed before an ocean backdrop that makes the enlarged bird look oddly exposed.

Two wall-mounted works anchor the show. Beethoven's Trumpet (with Ear) Opus #135 (2007) presents a huge white ear fitted with a copy of the composer's own listening device; clapping or calling into it sets off short bursts of Beethoven's late music. Brain Cloud (Two Views) With Palm Tree and Seascapes (2009) stretches a giant white brain across a bright blue wall beside a photographic mural of a palm tree by the sea, while a concealed camera films visitors and plays them back with a slight delay, turning the audience into part of the piece.

Upstairs, photographs and videos from 1972 to 2012 fill in the background, including the 1972 video Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, in which the artist holds up children's letter cards to a potted plant and reads each one aloud. The selection underlines a career-long habit: lifting found images, cutting them apart, enlarging fragments to absurd proportions, and letting the mismatches do the talking.