Open studio sessions Monday evenings from 5-8pm October 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th, & November 3rd

Reception on Saturday, November 8th, 6-8pm

“I want to challenge myself to make new images and to move through subject matter that reflects on my life as an artist. I want the works to surround the viewers like a storyboard. I want to put them in a scenography, a working studio and set with cameras and prints in various stages of development. I imagine they are watching a film unfold and at the same time they are characters within that film. They are disappearing into the black box within the white cube. This is an invitation to join me in the darkroom and see the images surface from the hydroquinone.” – Peter Tomka, 2025

For two exhibitions opening this October at the Hammer museum and at Bel Ami, artist Peter Tomka transforms social spaces into working photography studios, developing images that are both intimate and theatrical. 

At Bel Ami, the gallery becomes a set and a darkroom. As the artist shoots, develops and prints and frames, all on site, the exhibition accumulates images week by week. Visitors are invited to participate as viewers and as photographic subjects. While the gallery will be open during regular hours, Tomka will also host a series of public gatherings on Monday evenings in which willing participants may be captured on film. The exhibition will conclude with a reception on the last day, displaying the final stage of an unfolding project.

Concurrently, Tomka presents a new series of photographic prints for Made in L.A. at the Hammer museum, entitled Motion Pictures. To create this work, the artist blacked out the windows of his bachelor suite in the Gaylord building, turning the living area into a room-size photo enlarger. Repurposing the apartment’s modest furnishings, he tilted his mattress to a vertical position and embedded a projector within its springy structure. From video footage of friends and local surroundings, he caught subtle movements on light-sensitive silver gelatin paper. The wet procedure of developing in the bathroom invited in a level of messiness and chance, allowing for unexpected chemistry to influence the unique prints. 

The resulting images transposed from the bedroom studio to museum walls are both granular and grandiose. The compositions are obscure crops from wider scenes, hinting at mysterious happenings beyond the frame. Printed at life-scale, the works give the impression of accidentally seeing something from the corner of your eye, an intimate exchange in public not intended to be witnessed; however highly filtered, they carry a presence. Tomka’s Motion Pictures reveal the indexical and mythical nature of photography, and how through screens and lenses we entertain a voyeuristic viewing of our own lives. 

Peter Tomka’s works deliberately experiment with shadow and exposure, hiding as much as they convey. Together, the two exhibitions share what it feels like to live and work among others in image conscious Los Angeles.

Peter Tomka was born in 1989 in Des Moines. A photographer and the founder of the exhibition program No Moon LA, Tomka manipulates rigorous technical and material processes to create largescale—partial, blurred, cropped, and grainy—images that are queer in form and content. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Webber Gallery, London (2025); O-Town House, Los Angeles (2024); Fulcrum Press, Los Angeles (2023); and No Moon LA, Los Angeles (2021). Tomka earned a BA at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (2011), and an MFA at the University of California, Riverside (2020).

Peter Tomka’s first monograph Double Player is to be published this fall with TBW Books on the occasion of his inclusion in Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum opening Oct 4 2025.