L.A.’s top artists were tasked to reimagine the Oscar trophy for the third year in a row by The Hollywood Reporter. An exhibition featuring these pieces will be on display at West Hollywood’s Megan Mulrooney Gallery through March 21.

Eddie Ruscha and Francesca Gabbiani

An L.A. art world power couple, Ruscha and Gabbiani have their own artistic practices: he makes airbrush paintings while she crafts collages. They have recently been collaborating together, however, which they did to create a painting of an Oscar statuette that pairs the silhouette with agave plants. These are spiky SoCal roadside staples that spend years building toward one large bloom.

“The agave’s final act feels more like a culmination than an ending,” says Gabbiani. “The Oscars always give this feeling, too — an annual flowering in our creative community before we begin again.”

Kelly Lamb

Artist Kelly Lamb has previously had her work shown at MOCA, the New Museum, Art Basel, and the Armory Show. For the portfolio, the artist created a blown-glass, mirrored baby doll sculpture titled This Is Spinal Tap, which is a reference to Rob Reiner’s mockumentary about artists. The piece is meant to be a reflection of the viewer. “The absurdity and spectacle of the art world” is how Lamb describes what she was trying to capture.

Jessie Homer French

Wife of late husband Robin French, an agent who represented notable celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando before becoming head of production at Paramount, artist Jessie Homer French was inspired to paint an Oscar lying among the King Clone creosote, an 11,700-year-old plant considered to be one of the oldest living organisms on Earth.

“It’s ancient, so I thought about what’s old and what lasts,” French said. “Gold lasts, but do Oscars last?”

Nicki Green

This artist’s cerebral ceramics have previously been shown at the New Museum, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, with pieces in the permanent collections of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and LACMA. Green’s contribution to the portfolio is a miniature candelabra, imbuing the item with biblical symbolism.

“I was thinking about beeswax as gold, a biblical material — oil lamps in the tabernacle,” says Green. “As a lamp with candles, this form will ideally accumulate more and more beeswax, becoming more and more gold over time.”

E. Barker

The 2025 Guggenheim fellow, Barker, has been a wheelchair user since she was 19 and diagnosed with paraplegia after an accident. Since then, her disability has inspired her art in many ways, including this most recent piece, which is a painting depicting the Oscar award in a wheelchair. The painting calls out what Barker says is a “frightening lack of wheelchair users in Hollywood.”