The Xela Institute of Art is delighted to present New Work, the first solo museum exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Dakota Higgins, on view from May 10 through August 20, 2025. Please join us for the opening on Saturday, May 10th from 3-5pm. In New Work, Higgins transforms industrial packing materials–foam, bubble wrap, and other protective substrates–into unconventional surfaces for painting. Through this choice, the artist complicates the boundary between utility and aesthetics, drawing out new relationships between labor and visual culture. Higgins’ signature use of irony and conceptual wit invites viewers to reconsider the ordinary and question the assumptions we bring to what is deemed “common sense.” Alongside this new body of work, the exhibition features selections from Mountains of America, Higgins’ 50-piece collage series. These intimate, small-scale works layer found materials–produce stickers, off-set prints of flora and fauna, fragments of consumer packaging–to critique the politicized construction of the American landscape. Each collage becomes a site of inquiry, evoking the fragility of our relationship to land, nationhood, and ecological presence. New Work positions Higgins as a sharp observer of the materials and messages that shape daily life, pushing spectators to encounter the overlooked and the discarded with fresh eyes. The exhibition catalog includes full-color reproductions from the Mountains of America series. Higgins’ museum debut coincides with Dentless Portraits and Other Little Things, a concurrent solo show at Leroy’s Happy Place in Chinatown, Los Angeles, on view through June 2025. For press inquiries, images, or to schedule a viewing, please contact info@xelainstitute.org. About the Artist Dakota Higgins is an artist, writer, and musician based in Los Angeles. He is the founder of the experimental music venue, the DMV (aka the Departure from Music Venues). Recent exhibitions include Things Done for Love at the University of California, Los Angeles, CA; Flat Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics at Deli Grocery, New York, NY; Infra-thick at Woodbury University, Burbank, CA; and Optogenetics: Controlled by Light, Room 3557, Los Angeles, CA. Higgins has recently been rejected from the Fine Arts Work Center Artist Residency, Provincetown, MA; the Innovative Art Grant; Headlands Center Artist Residency, Sausalito, CA; and the Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency, Joshua Tree, CA. About Xela Institute of Art Xela Institute of Art is a nonprofit art exhibition space located in Wrigley Village, Long Beach/Los Angeles County, dedicated to providing emerging and mid-career artists.