Los Angeles Night Gallery is currently hosting a duo exhibition of works by artists Chaz Guest and Josh Callaghan entitled Promised Land. It transforms the collective fantasies on the American consciousness through painting and sculpture. “Promised Land reckons with history while at the same time suggesting the possibility of renewal,” the gallery said in a statement.

Guest’s monumental canvas work THE TENTH, 2019, portrays the 10th Cavalry — the first of only six Black brigades created by Congress in the years following the Civil War. Popularly known as the Buffalo Soldiers, these regiments continued to serve through the Second World War, playing important roles in various military campaigns while undergoing frequent discrimination.

To add contrast to Guest’s painting, Callaghan’s series of sculptural works titled Flagpole People represents a group of people walking towards the “promised land”. The artist reconstructed institutional flagpoles made of aluminum to form delicate human subjects. “Ostensibly taken from anonymous support structures that are fixed to sites and utilized in the service of a tyrannical, prideful flag, these three diminutive figurative sculptures, Flagpole Person One, Two and Three, have seemingly been released from this fate, becoming animated and walking the land. Caught in mid step, these People, one hopes, are walking toward a bright new future, free from the barbarity inflicted by “great leaders” under waving flags.”

See the works down below. Visit the Promised Lands’ online viewing room and schedule the appointment on Night Gallery’s website.