Place/Displace

A Solo Exhibition by Beth Davila Waldman

January 31st - February 15th, 2026

Artist Reception Saturday, January 31st 5-9pm

(December 15, 2025) Examining sites between desert and sea, Beth Davila Waldman presents the landscape in relation to home, shelter and sanctuary in Place/Displace at Keystone Gallery in Los Angeles. Aiming to define a global language through material, abrasion and paint, Waldman’s horizons carry anthropomorphic implications. Nodding to maps, surveillance and archeology, she dissects places within a photographic context using the process of the printmaking pull within intentional challenging conditions to speak of survival. Place/Displace speaks to an ecological and social urgency and presents a dynamic, multidisciplinary suite of works offering a moving reflection on the interwoven histories of humanity and nature. Waldman’s practice bridges research, conceptual explorations, and material history in continually evolving projects. Join us for the reception Saturday, January 31st 5-9pm.

Artist Bio Beth Davila Waldman was born in Princeton, New Jersey with indigenous roots per part of the Quechua and Aymara tribes from the Southern Peruvian Andes as well as northern Spain, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria and eastern Poland. As educators, her parents initiated a life style of campus to campus, from Princeton to Cincinnati, Houston to Florence. Waldman pursued her undergraduate degree in the arts at Wellesley College where she graduated with honors in studio arts with a focus on sculpture with her senior thesis “Transposing Time and Culture: Personal and Abstract Interpretations of Pre-Incan and Incan Art”. Summer trips over the years to Peru, her 34 days traversing the Appalachian Trail in the summer of 1996, and her childhood days trespassing construction sites with her father inspired her material based work influenced by site and scale at SFAI where she earned her second degree in sculpture with a focus on public art. She studied with John Roloff and Jon Rubin solidifying her conceptual practice as a contemporary artist reading the social, political and economic elements of expansive urban landscapes. Her work was recognized by SFAI with the Harold E. Weiner Memorial Sculpture Award. Two years following her her graduation, a substantial public project commissioned by the Sonoma Community Center, led by Shelly Willis, encouraged her relationship with large scale photography and found materials. She built her largest work yet - six constructed gateways made of wrought iron, corrugated metal and framing lumber and integrated with text from archival research and interviews with the local community. Another trip to Peru a couple years thereafter pushed Waldman’s work into the constructive photo based work of today founded in the landscapes of mother’s city Arequipa. Two following trips between 2015 and 2024 evolved her curious mindset about the economy, politics and the growing copper industry carrying concerns from San Francisco brewing issues. In 2017, Waldman was awarded her first residency at Kala Art Institute where she dedicated four months to a new practice of line and aquatint etching and photo polymer prints on paper of Peruvian landscapes. These transformations led her deeper into her work with residencies at Playa Institute and EditionBasel. In August of 2020, Waldman was a visiting artist in residency in Los Angeles at 18th Street Art Center where she launched her pivotal “Divisions Series” leading with large draping white tarp and photo transfers of the City's state. Over recent years, Waldman has exhibited at the de Young Museum OPEN, annual projects at Djerassi Art Residency and participation in art fairs in Hong Kong, Mexico City, San Francisco, and Berlin. This year, Waldman installed a site-specific public sculpture in the Antelope Valley, CA with Art-in-Residence and launched the publication of her 1st catalog covering 25 years of her art. It is now part of SFMOMA's Library and Archives per the support of SFMOMA curator Shana Lopes whose essay is included in the publication. She is a current SFMOMA SECA Award Nominee. Waldman currently maintains studios in Los Angeles and Mill Valley, CA.

Press Inquiries

Keystone Director Melanie Mandl, keystoneartspace@gmail.com

Exhibition Artist Beth Davila Waldman, bdwaldman@gmail.com

Keystone Gallery, 338 S. Ave 16, Los Angeles, CA 90031

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