Montrel Beverly

Megan Mulrooney is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Montrel Beverly in collaboration with SAGE Studio, on view from January 10 - February 14, 2026.

In this exhibition, Beverly presents a series of wall works made entirely from pipe cleaners. Familiar scenes pulled from the iconic artworks referencing Los Angeles’ streets, storefronts, social gatherings are rendered with playfulness throughout the exhibition. Figures, cityscapes, signage, automobiles, and architectural fragments emerge through dense, tactile compositions that ripple with loops, bends, and knots. For this body of work, Beverly reinterprets images that have come to pictorially represent Los Angeles, drawing from the visual language of artists such as David Hockney and Ed Ruscha alongside vernacular landmarks like Pink’s Hot Dogs. These references are treated as raw material, filtered through the artist’s distinctive tactile sensibility. Pipe cleaners translate painted space into relief, turning iconic images into textured constructions that are plush, irregular, and animated.

Beverly’s practice is driven by his chosen material: pipe cleaners allow for rapid manipulation through bending, twisting, detaching, and reconfiguring in real time, adding up to a process that is intuitive and responsive rather than premeditated. This flexibility reflects the artist’s long-standing relationship to making: he began sculpting at a young age using household materials, later turning to pipe cleaners. Their responsiveness continues to shape his working method, allowing him to “solve” each sculpture through touch and adjustment.

Throughout the exhibition, Beverly’s sculptures retain a sense of wonder, their charm inseparable from their construction. By translating widely recognizable images into densely worked, tactile forms, Beverly offers a reimagining of Los Angeles that is at once personal, playful, and materially grounded.

Montrel Beverly (b. 2003) is an Austin-based artist whose practice focuses on sculptures made out of pipe cleaners. His work has been featured in Artnet, Hyperallergic, and Juxtapoz and exhibited at SAGE Studio, Austin, Bravin Lee, New York, Circle Contemporary, Chicago, Felix Art Fair in Los Angeles, and at New York City’s Outsider Art Fair.