Fish, snakes, bears, and crocodiles run through Frank Gehry’s work as a counterpoint to architecture: a repertoire of forms, materials, and movements brought together in the first posthumous exhibition dedicated to the architect, on view at Gagosian in Beverly Hills.

Organized in collaboration with the Gehry family and designed by Gehry’s studio, the exhibition runs through June 27.

The presentation focuses on animal-themed works, including sculptures, works on paper, and video, composing a less monumental and freer reading of Gehry’s imagination.

Among the works on view is Bear with Us (2014), a life-size sculpture in 316L stainless steel on loan from the artist’s family. Its gleaming, irregular surface transforms the figure of the bear into a reflective, almost abstract volume, resembling a crumpled sheet of metal and recalling the material experiments of Gehry’s architecture.

Alongside the bear are Untitled (Black Crocodile New York) (2023), made of ColorCore Formica and silicone, and Fish on Fire (2023), Gehry’s last fish sculpture to be produced in copper. The fish is one of the key figures in his repertoire: an autonomous subject, but also a formal motif that resurfaces in the curves and contours of many of his buildings, from the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles to the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

The exhibition also includes A Pair of Snake Lamps (1989), gouache-painted papier-mâché lamps in which the serpentine form becomes a functional object, and ten works on paper in ink, watercolor, and acrylic, tracing the movement of fish through lines and fields of color.

More than a retrospective, the Beverly Hills appointment presents itself as a concentrated reinterpretation of a less institutional, more experimental, and lesser-known side of Gehry's work-perhaps the first of many opportunities to return to grapple with the extraordinary variety of his oeuvre.