CTRL / CITY is a curated digital art exhibition that transforms one of the most powerful urban screens in the world into a cultural and critical device. The exhibition unfolds on The Reef, a monumental digital out-of-home installation located in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles, redefining the relationship between art, technology, and the metropolitan landscape.
Stretching 736 feet in length, featuring three display faces oriented North, East, and West, and totaling over 40,000 square feet of screen, The Reef is the largest digital billboard in America. Positioned E/O between the 1-10 Expressway and the 110 Freeway, it dominates two of the busiest traffic corridors in the United States, delivering millions of weekly impressions and engaging a constant, global, in-motion audience.
Within this spectacular context, CTRL / CITY examines the power of digital imagery in public space, addressing themes of control, visibility, identity, data flows, and screen culture. The selected works do not simply occupy the urban environment—they rewrite it, subverting the codes of commercial communication and transforming the billboard into a monumental curatorial gesture.
The exhibition features works by Ariadna Canaan and .ART Registry, whose practices operate at the intersection of digital culture, technology, and contemporary visual language. Their contributions are conceived specifically for large-scale urban display, leveraging motion, scale, and repetition to engage the city as both subject and medium.
Programmed during Frieze Los Angeles, CTRL / CITY strategically aligns with the period of highest concentration of collectors, curators, artists, brands, and international media in the city. As Downtown LA becomes a global cultural epicenter, the exhibition positions itself as a public-facing intervention that expands the geography of contemporary art beyond fairgrounds and institutional venues.
Visible throughout Downtown Los Angeles, The Reef sits within a high-density cultural ecosystem that includes key landmarks such as the Los Angeles Convention Center, Crypto.com Arena, and LA Live—together welcoming tens of millions of visitors annually from around the world.
CTRL / CITY is not simply an exhibition, but a radical curatorial act: a temporary occupation of collective visual space that redefines contemporary exhibition-making, bringing digital art beyond traditional institutions and into the living, continuous, and global flow of the city.