Deceptively clean, simple, and filled with Southern California light, Ed Templeton’s new exhibition “The Spring Cycle” explores life in a suburban Southern California beach. And it has a deeper context: a critique of the banal isolation that often permeates suburbia.

Templeton’s eighth show at Roberts Project narratively depicts and dissects Huntington Beach, his hometown. Doing so, he also takes on some of the politics of the area and goes deeply into the lack of connection that divides American life everywhere.

Both the larger acrylic on panel paintings and the smaller works on paper (all works created in 2020 and 2021) are strikingly awash in sun and ennui, realistic in execution, highly realistic with a flat style that still includes dimensional shadows. Despite their realism, they border on the absurd in subject.

In Newland Avenue, (48” x 48”) a young woman in a bikini waits to cross the street, oblivious to a young child reaching for an overturned toy car—the child seems steps away from the danger of running into the street. The denuded landscape has an ominous overtone of neglect—a tree stump, a discarded cup on an electrical box, a shopping plaza with a lone vape store and nail salon.

Installation view, “The Spring Cycle,” 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects Los Angeles, California. Photo: Paul Salveson.

In A Peak into the Rabbit Hole, (36” x 48”) there’s a similar sense of banality and danger. A boy peers through a hole in a concrete block fence where the area is taped off as the top of the wall is crumbling. Cutting through the alienation of suburban life seems to be a hazardous proposition.

That alienation is brought home with special poignancy in Pandemic Summer, Suburbia 2021, (12” x 16,” acrylic on paper). Clad in a bathing suit, a girl rides a bike past a man sitting alone at a bus stop; another man is collapsed on the ground. A nearby sign recommends “social distancing”—a caution that hardly seems necessary here.

Along with paintings and drawings, a showing of Templeton’s own photographs that inspired the painted work accompanies the show in another gallery.

Roberts Projects is located at 5801 Washington Blvd, Culver City. The exhibition runs January 22nd – March 5^th. Reception: March 5th 4-7 p.m.