FERNBERGER

Fernberger is excited to announce 3 a.m., a solo exhibition of new and older paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Greta Waller. This marks Waller’s debut solo show with the gallery, bringing together works that span over a decade of her career. 3 a.m. will be on view from May 3 to June 28, 2025.

Waller’s work explores impermanence through still life, landscape, and observational realism—drawing connections between beauty, fragility, and time. Each work in this exhibition feels diaristic, as Waller allows the viewer insight into her everyday life balancing mundanity with the fracas and unpredictability of her alternate career as a first responder. 3 a.m. refers to the time Waller is working; whether on her canvases, or in the midst of a 48 hour shift as a paramedic.

A sweeping, panoramic painting of Los Angeles anchors the exhibition. A small version, painted en plein air from the vantage point of Runyon Canyon Park (prior to the recent fire) served as the study for this monumental painting. The pristine, rose-tinted city, free from human presence, presents the city as a still life: a series of objects on the brink of a change of state; from day to night or perhaps night to day; from utter stillness to activity; or, as Angelenos recently experienced, from safety to calamity. This is a vista in flux.

Waller’s metier is the still life. She has, since 2008, devoted her practice to the paradox of painting ephemeral subjects with enduring presence. Her signature works depict large chunks of ice placed on decorative porcelain plates—melting slowly and irrevocably—echoing the Dutch still life tradition. These paintings are as much about time as they are about form: solid becoming liquid, stillness holding movement.

In 3 a.m., Waller incorporates new subjects that reflect the dual nature of her life as both an artist and paramedic. Electrocardiogram readouts, a lost tooth spit into a porcelain basin, the shined boots of her uniform, and even the ambulance itself, appear as totems of urgency and control—objects of precision and care that hint at the precariousness of the human condition. With the same stillness and clarity found in her ice paintings, these objects are also charged with narrative, fragility, and human urgency.

Quieter works depicting robust bowls of cherries, and a hand taking the pulse of a wrist serve as grounding counterpoints, highlighting the artist’s ability to extract poetry from both the monumental and the mundane. Waller invites viewers to witness the thresholds between states and to consider how we measure the fleeting with eyes trained on the eternal.

Greta Waller (b. 1983, Indianapolis) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her BFA from Cooper Union and her MFA from UCLA, and also studied at the Pratt Institute, New York Academy of Art, Slade School of Fine Art, and Chelsea College of Arts in London. She has been awarded the Art Purchase Program at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (2017); Young Talent Award, Washington Art Association, Washington Depot, CT (2008); Art at the Bridge, The Pink House, West Cornwall, CT (2007-2008); among others.

For images, press requests or more information, please contact Fernberger Gallery at info@fernbergergallery.com or call 917-831-6931.

Greta Waller (b. 1983, Indianapolis) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her BFA from Cooper Union and her MFA from UCLA, and also studied at the Pratt Institute, New York Academy of Art, Slade School of Fine Art, and Chelsea College of Arts in London. She has been awarded the Art Purchase Program at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (2017); Young Talent Award, Washington Art Association, Washington Depot, CT (2008); Art at the Bridge, The Pink House, West Cornwall, CT (2007-2008); among others.