He became a mainstay in the L.A. art world for his riffs on David Hockney’s pool paintings back in 2014. While Hockney painted an immaculate world of modernist bliss, Gomez’s work called attention to the dark-skinned workers whose labor is required to maintain it. He re-imagined Hockney’s A Bigger Splash with No Splash, a version that includes workers raking the crystal-clear water for impurities. There were other powerful subversions: Hockney’s Beverly Hills Housewife became Gómez’s Beverly Hills Housekeeper and American Collectors manifested in American Gardeners.