Art inspired by horror films is chilling and thrilling in LA

‘For me, the attraction of horror lies in its power as a controlled confrontation with chaos,’ says artist and curator Jill Mulleady, who has considered the influence of horror cinema for Sprüth Magers Los Angeles. ‘We don't enjoy the terror because we're masochistic; we enjoy it because it’s profoundly cathartic. It functions as a necessary psychological pressure release for the viewer, and, for me as an artist, it’s a strategy to talk about real-life forces that are too hard to digest directly.’

Horror films have long attracted artists, who are drawn to the genre’s cortisol-spiked bold aesthetics, and appreciate its ability to express an omnipresent state of unease. The monster at the door – or inside us – and themes of repression, political instability and horrifying dystopias all have their roots in culture. In ‘Horror’, Mulleady considers cinematic typologies from German expressionism to Cold War tension and Italian Giallo, tracing their translation into contemporary art.

‘Horror is never static: the “monster” changes,’ she adds. ‘Film history gives us clear cultural markers to illustrate this. As societies modernised, the focus shifted to the psychological and the existential, reflecting the anxieties of industrialisation and war. We can see this directly reflected in film history: German expressionism (for example, films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Nosferatu) used distorted architecture and one predator-type monster to visualise a psychological collapse and the growing sense of societal dread. While the movement preceded the rise of the full authoritarian regime, its aesthetic certainly mirrored the crushing, authoritarian dread of the era.’

In the exhibition of 30 artists and filmmakers, we follow this mood as it morphs into the very real fears around the nuclear age, encompassed in Japanese monster films, and the unease surrounding the Cold War, which underlined American alien invasion films.

‘In Italy, the stylish, psychological terror of Giallo films used murder mysteries to dissect societal corruption and decadence,’ Mulleady adds. ‘Today, the focus is squarely on systemic and institutional breakdown. This is epitomised by filmmakers like Jordan Peele in the US, who use horror to dissect specific issues like racial gaslighting and the horror of assimilation (for example, Get Out), highlighting how alienation is built into the social structure itself.’

For the artists featured in the show, who include Cindy Sherman, Pol Taburet, Kara Walker, Mike Kelley, Arthur Jafa, Mike Kelley, Ottessa Moshfegh and Precious Okoyomon, the medium offered an irresistible entry into worldbuilding, creating societies devoid of rules and normal expectations. ‘The artists use the fantastic, symbolic or the allegorical not to escape the real world, but to give physical form to intangible dread. By displacing the horror onto a parallel reality, they offer viewers a momentary, fictional release from the pressure of the real, only to reveal that the source of the terror was the human condition all along.’

‘Horror’ is at Sprüth Magers Los Angeles until 14 February 2026, spruethmagers.com