“along the high embankments” opens with LAND at Presqu’ile
Los Angeles Nomadic Division presents Cole Sternberg’s along the high embankments, a site-specific installation in Santa Maria, CA.
Sternberg was invited to respond to an empty concrete bunker located on the property of Presqu’ile Winery, the building unused by humans for years, yet quietly occupied by other species, nature slowly reclaiming it. Like the process of winemaking, his paintings emerge from an alchemical transformation. Made in collaboration with the elements - soil, wind, sun, and water - they reveal themselves over time. The installation becomes a record of this place, this moment. The installation asks us to consider the effects of our own presence on the environment, individually and collectively.
How do we as humans reckon with the effects of our presence on this land? What might the land teach us? How do we learn to listen?
“Under the late afternoon sun, the wind slaps the mountain peak while the Pacific sits at low tide. The grand deep expanse is a sliver of midnight seen on the horizon, between the pale of both sky and rolling hills. A snake bathes in our path, seagulls feed on the dolphins’ scraps, tan becomes green from a singular rain fall, chill turns to burn, and this place lives on. There is magic and fear and memories in it.”
“A coolness is felt on the mountain peak, in the bunker, out on the high seas. It is refreshing even with the goosebumps. Our luck in finding this place, of all places, is unfathomable. We can only hope to exist amongst it.”
“The works of this exhibition take this Central Californian coast in mind, with its many high embankments, as a palette reference and as a compositional and physical collaborator. The paintings have seen the land, the water and the air. They’ve ridden wakes, whipped in the wind and frozen in the soil’s morning frost. The environment takes watercolor in its hands leaving marks of these physical experiences as fracturing light, ribboning and texture. There are wide horizons, prisms, bark, fires, and cloud formations to be found. There are portals.” - Cole Sternberg, 2026.
Reserve a one-hour time slot by clicking here and explore at your own pace. The experience is self-guided — plan for about an hour to take in the work fully. Time slots are available every Saturday and Sunday from 12-5PM through September 20th.
