Too Fast To Sing

Los Angeles – The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs’ (DCA) Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG) proudly presents Too Fast To Sing, a group exhibition exploring the rapidly shifting landscapes of contemporary music and culture. The exhibition will be on view from Saturday, November 1, 2025, through Saturday, January 24, 2026.

Too Fast To Sing gestures toward the dizzying speed at which music’s systems and values are evolving—so quickly that any attempt at definitive theorizing risks immediate obsolescence. From the underground to the mainstream, everything is in flux. The exhibition brings together a constellation of artists deeply engaged with these transformations, documenting, archiving, riffing on, and building upon music’s contemporary metamorphosis.

Together, the works on view explore how music permeates our emotional lives and daily environments, how technological advances and aesthetics shape its sound, how we gather around it, and how visual artists use music and sound as raw material in their practices. Too Fast To Sing attempts to mirror music’s contemporary state, offering an opportunity to study and learn from these critical changes while also glimpsing how the song might continue—or end altogether.

Participating artists include:
Amina Cruz, Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., Caitlin Cherry, Christelle Oyiri, Elana Mann, Fiona Connor, Guadalupe Rosales, Harmony Holiday, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Jazmin “Jazzy” Romero, Julian Stein, Luke Fischbeck, Mario Ayala, Neva Wireko, Nico B. Young, Nicole Cooke, Pedro Alejandro Verdin, rafa esparza, Romi Ron Morrison, Sarah Rara, Tania Daniel, and Ulysses Jenkins.

Too Fast To Sing is curated by Hugo Cervantes, LAMAG Curator, with research support provided by Cyrus Blot, Getty Marrow Curatorial Intern.

This exhibition is supported in part by The Jenni Crain Foundation, an initiative dedicated to preserving the legacy of the esteemed artist and curator. Additional support is provided by The Barnsdall Art Park Foundation and Plum Foundation.

An opening reception will be held at LAMAG on Saturday, November 2, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Additional programming information to come.

LAMAG is open Thursday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and by appointment Tuesday and Wednesday by appointment. Please make an appointment via our website.  

About the Curator

Hugo Cervantes is a writer and Curator of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG). He has held curatorial roles at Human Resources–Los Angeles (HRLA), Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, and LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division). While at LAND, he co-organized BLKNWS by Kahlil Joseph, a city-wide public art project included in Made in L.A. 2020: a version, and partnered with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) to curate commissioned public art projects by Nico d’entremont and Julia Bogany, Megan Dorame, and iris yirei hu at the Los Angeles State Historic Park. In 2025, he was awarded a Teiger Foundation Curatorial Research Award for the first major survey of Chicana cross-genre performance and installation artist Nao Bustamante, forthcoming at LAMAG. He received a BA from the University of California, Riverside (2018), and an MA in Curatorial Practices from the University of Southern California (2022).

About the Jenni Crane Foundation 

Jenni Crain (1991–2021) was an esteemed artist and curator who passed away suddenly due to complications related to Covid-19. She was widely recognized for her original minimalist sculpture and curatorial projects that championed under-recognized women artists as well as for her rigorous scholarship and writing. Crain was a passionate and tireless advocate of artists and art. Throughout her life, she built a vast community of friends, collaborators, and colleagues whose work she drove forward with generosity, sensitivity, and the deep probing intelligence with which she considered the world. The Foundation preserves her legacy by supporting transformative projects by artists, curators, and writers of any age at early or pivotal stages of their career. jennicrain.com 

About the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery 

The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery’s (LAMAG) mission is to be responsive to the human experience. Established in 1954, LAMAG is the longest running institution in Los Angeles devoted solely to exhibiting art. The gallery focuses on artists from Los Angeles – in particular underrepresented artists whose work may not otherwise have found a platform. Our exhibitions, educational and public programs aim to inspire conversation about the contemporary issues and ideas that resonate most with the people of Los Angeles. Many local artists who have exhibited at the gallery have gone on to become fixtures of the national and international art world, including Carlos Almaraz, Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Mark Bradford, Vija Celmins, Harry Gamboa Jr., David Hammons, Barbara Kruger, Kerry James Marshall, Senga Nengudi, Catherine Opie, Sandy Rodriguez, Ed Ruscha, and Bruce and Norman Yonemoto. Today, the gallery continues to build on this rich legacy, operating as a site of discovery for outstanding work by the city’s most exciting artists, from recent graduates to practitioners with years of experience. Offering free admission and programs, LAMAG serves as a welcoming space for everyone, regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, domestic partner status, marital status or medical condition. It is important that the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery prioritize respect for both the historic culture and the contemporary presence of indigenous peoples throughout California, and especially in the Los Angeles area. To that end, and particularly as a public and civic institution, we acknowledge that our gallery resides on what was historically the homeland of Kizh, Tongva, and Chumash peoples who were dispossessed of their land. If you would like to learn more about the land you are on please visit: https://native-land.ca For more information, please contact lamag@lacity.org or visit lamag.org and follow us on Facebook at: facebook.com/LAMAGBarnsdall and Instagram @lamagbarnsdall. The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery is a facility of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

About the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) 

As a leading, progressive arts and cultural agency, DCA empowers Los Angeles’ vibrant communities by supporting and providing access to quality visual, literary, musical, performing, and educational arts programming; managing vital cultural centers; preserving historic sites; creating public art; and funding services provided by arts organizations and individual artists. Formed in 1925, DCA promotes arts and culture as a way to ignite a powerful dialogue, engage LA’s residents and visitors, and ensure LA’s varied cultures are recognized, acknowledged, and experienced. DCA’s mission is to strengthen the quality of life in Los Angeles by stimulating and supporting arts and cultural activities, ensuring public access to the arts for residents and visitors alike. 4 DCA advances the social and economic impact of arts and culture through grantmaking; public art; community arts; performing arts; and strategic marketing, development, design, and digital research. DCA creates and supports arts programming, maximizing relationships with other city agencies, artists, and arts 5 and cultural nonprofit organizations to provide excellent service in neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles. For more information, please visit culture.lacity.gov or follow us on Facebook at: facebook.com/culturela, Instagram @culture_la, and Twitter @culture_la.