U-Haul Gallery, the roving art enterprise set up in the back of rental trucks, is presenting a new painting by the artist Alexis Rockman in Los Angeles this week. The work, The La Brea Tar Pits, was painted using tar from the titular paleontological site near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The material forms the darkest shades in the painting, which depicts sabre-toothed tigers, dinosaurs and a volcano. Visitors to the truck, parked on Thursday outside Post-Fair in Santa Monica, pass through a set of curtains to see the work. “We’re showing this as an homage to the event paintings of the 19th century, which were dramatically displayed in curtained rooms to inspire rail travel to the American West,” said U-Haul Gallery director Jack Chase.
