Rob Grad makes 3D photo-based assemblages and sculptures that layer fragments of natural landscapes with urban marks—drawing, painting, text. The work doesn't explain itself. It presents a collision: desire against fulfillment, digital isolation against physical presence. Two decades in Venice Beach and a formation in the pre-social media MTV generation surface in the work not as nostalgia but as lived contradiction. The assemblages function as visual disruptions. Photographic vignettes break against gestural elements. Natural forms meet urban decay. What emerges isn't resolution but sustained tension—the gap between what we want and what we encounter. Grad approaches this the way one observes a crack in concrete or light through a freeway underpass: without sentimentality, looking for the authentic gesture beneath surface phenomena. Recent work expands into performance, integrating his early career as a signed musician with RCA Records. These multimedia presentations—visual art, live poetry, sound—create immersive environments that function less as theater than as activated space. The work asks viewers to look, then look again, to locate themselves within the friction. Grad's work has been exhibited globally including Basel, Miami and Los Angeles. He also exhibited at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, California, as part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time initiative. He has created large-scale installations at San Francisco Airport, the LA Clippers' Intuit Dome, and corporate sites including the Zildjian Corporation and Wells Fargo's Brentwood building. He also did a TEDx Talk about the significance of following creative instincts and his journey from successful musician to visual art.