Scott Listfield: Extinction Stories

Scott Listfield: Extinction Stories
August 2nd - August 23rd, 2025
- Scott Listfield
  Golden Gate, 2025
  oil on canvas
  20 x 30 in
  50.8 x 76.2 cm
Harman Projects is pleased to present Extinction Stories, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Scott Listfield.

Known for his long-running series of narrative paintings featuring his trademark Astronaut protagonist, Listfield once again delivers a biting, dystopian vision of our near future. Extinction Stories opens August 2nd at Harman Projects in San Francisco, marking the artist's return to the city since his last exhibition in 2018.
Set in a fractured landscape where the remnants of 21st-century consumerism have outlasted the customers they once served, Listfield's work depicts his iconic avatar navigating the now-forgotten tech utopia of the Bay Area. A crumbling Twitter bird sculpture sits derelict and abandoned, while across town a shattered Golden Gate Bridge crumbles before impending cosmic destruction. These are not post-human fantasies, but elegies for a world that tried, and failed, to innovate its way out of extinction.
Listfield's solitary explorer serves as a silent observer of technological excess, climate disaster, and the slowmotion unraveling of society. The paintings in Extinction Stories are underscored by the artist's characteristically deadpan humor as he draws from the aesthetics of retro-futurism, sci-fi cinema, and meme culture. Echoes of Giorgio de Chirico (Gare Montparnasse, 1914) and Edward Ruscha (Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire 1965-68) reverberate through the work, reinforcing Listfield's vision as being as universal and timeless as the very worlds he creates.
- Scott Listfield
  Megalodon, 2025
  oil on canvas
  10 x 10 in
  25.4 x 25.4 cm
- Scott Listfield
  Polar Bear, 2025
  oil on canvas
  10 x 10 in
  25.4 x 25.4 cm
Scott Listfield is a Los Angeles-based painter recognized for his evocative and cinematic series of astronaut-themed paintings. Having studied art at Dartmouth College, Listfield has developed a distinctive visual language that blends surrealism, pop culture, and subtle social commentary.

At the center of his compositions stands a lone astronaut, an observer navigating a familiar yet altered landscape, often littered with corporate logos, crumbling monuments, and dystopian hints of the everyday. Listfield's astronaut is both a stand-in for the artist and a surrogate for the viewer, disconnected yet curious, always surveying the strange world around him. Through this figure, Listfield reflects on themes of consumerism, identity, and the uneasy relationship between technology and humanity.

His work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States and abroad, and he has been featured in publications such as Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, and Wired. With a narrative style that invites reflection and dialogue, Listfield continues to capture the surreal beauty and underlying absurdity of the contemporary world.