Hollywood is Hell

A review James Franco's Exhibition at Galerie Gmurzynska

James Franco’s recent exhibition at Galerie Gmurzynska in Zurich is a surprising, unsettling, and oddly compelling exploration of personal and collective hellscapes. Walking into the gallery, I’ll admit, I hesitated. Franco’s leap from actor to artist had me bracing for derivative attempts—collages or pseudo-Basquiat knockoffs that often plague celebrity art filmmaking. Instead, what I encountered was something far more raw, evocative, and reminiscent of the San Francisco Assemblage Movement. For context, this mid-20th-century Bay Area movement, led by artists like Bruce Conner and Wallace Berman, repurposed discarded materials into surreal, emotionally charged works that challenged conventional art forms. It’s a fitting reference here, as Franco’s Palo Alto roots may have subconsciously drawn him toward this lineage.