Jesse Sugarmann: High, Low, and In Between
January 23rd – March 28th, 2026,
Reception: January 23rd, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Artist Talk: March 7th, 10:30 -11:30

RAM is pleased to present High, Low, and In Between, an exhibition of new works by artist Jesse Sugarmann.

Jesse Sugarmann spent the past year driving a kei truck throughout rural Japan in an effort to document Japan’s melody roads, stretches of grooved asphalt designed to play simple songs. Melody roads are constructed of thousands of carefully spaced asphalt strips that generate tone frequencies when driven over at a specific speed. These roads are designed to encourage drivers to slow down to safe speeds on risky patches of blacktop, using musical payouts of juvenile cuteness and cultural narrative themes to advance a public safety goal.

Comparing the melody roads of Central Japan’s Gunma Prefecture to the use of novelty musical car horns within California’s Central Valley, High, Low, and In Between explores the disparate political motivations with which drivers marry melody and mobility. Using sound sculptures, relief paintings, and video documentation of melody roads and automotive musical performances, Sugarmann aligns the audio frequencies found within both the pastoral drone of Japanese musical roads and the ambient urgency of American car horns. Juxtaposing field recordings with functional assemblages of compressors and pitched horns, High, Low, and In Between examines how melodies convey political meaning in public spaces and how drivers connect song and road to history and society.

Jesse Sugarmann creates objects, images, and videos that engage with the automotive industry and car culture as partners in human identity, drawing on automotive history as an index of both cultural progress and social development. Sugarmann has exhibited work in venues including the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Michael Strogoff, Marfa; el Museo de Arte Moderno de Santander, Spain; High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree; Southern Exposure, San Francisco; and both the Paris and Berlin exhibitions of Les Recontres Internationales. Sugarmann’s work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art Papers, the Atlantic, Hyperallergic, Art F City, Frieze Magazine, the Huffington Post and The New York Times. Sugarmann lives and works in Bakersfield, California, where he serves as Professor of Art at California State University, Bakersfield. This is Jesse Sugarmann’s second solo exhibition with Gallery RAM.