Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Vian Sora's painting 'Last Sound', by the Baltimore Museum of Art.  The gallery extends its most sincere gratitude to Jessica Bell Brown, Curator and Head, Department of Contemporary Art, Baltimore Museum of Art; Asma Naeem, The Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director and Chief Curator; Cynthia Hodge-Thorne, Meyerhoff-Becker Curatorial Fellow; and Helene Grabow, Senior Collections Development Manager; Shelby Merritt, Associate Registrar; as well as the Contemporary Accessions Committee and the Board of Trustees.

'Last Sound', a large mixed media painting on canvas, is a response to the displacement and oppression that migrants and immigrants confront — the hardships endured, their constant refusal, lost identity, and the last familiar sound that keeps resonating in their life.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce the Whitney Museum of American Art's acquisition of GRAFT, 2022, by Edra Soto. GRAFT was featured in the museum's landmark exhibition “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria," organized by the DeMartini Family Senior Curator, Marcela Guerrero. The gallery wishes to thank the museum and everyone who made this acquisition possible.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce the Museum of Modern Art's accession of The Wonder Gaze (St. James Park), 2006, by Ken Gonzales-Day, into the permanent collection.  The Wonder Gaze (St. James Park) is one of the most recognized photographic works by Ken Gonzales-Day. It depicts the lynching of Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes in St. James Park, San Jose, CA, in 1933. It is part of the Erased Lynchings series (2002-ongoing), which began with a focus on the history of lynching in California and has brought new scholarship and awareness to the history of lynching nationwide. 

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce The Art Institute of Chicago's accession of Ken Gonzales-Day's Erased Lynchings I, 2006, into the permanent collection.  The Erased Lynchings series (2002-ongoing) began with a focus on the history of lynching in California and has brought new scholarship and awareness to the history of lynching nationwide. The research specifically expanded the number of known cases in California, and the work now includes the lynching of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and Jews, in the American West and nationwide. 

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Vian Sora's painting Forest Remains, I, by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.  The gallery offers its deep appreciation to James Glisson, PhD, Curator of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Eik Kahng, Registrar; and Nicolas Mutton, Chair, Basil Alkazzi, who underwrote the acquisition, and the entire SBMA Board of Trustees.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce Evita Tezeno: The Moments We Share Are The Memories We Keep, large-scale mixed-media collage paintings.  As a continuation of My Life, My Story, Tezeno’s 2022 solo exhibition, this series of collage-paintings builds on visual narratives depicting soulful everyday scenes of Black life, introducing us to new friends, family and endearing moments from the artist’s life. Tezeno uses a combination of richly patterned hand-painted papers, acrylic paint, vintage buttons inherited from her grandmother, and other media to portray the intimacies and joys of growing up in South Texas.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce AARON MAIER-CARRETERO: a hundred peonies, the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.  Flowers are wonderful forms. Their petals of bright color resemble strokes of smeared paint. Their stems, leaves, and overall composition feels organic and abstract like paint. Flowers are reminders of Aaron Maier- Carretero’s connection to nature, to painting’s connection to nature, and to the alchemy of painting—turning raw materials into forms and emotions that take on a life of their own.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce ERIK OLSON: The Mountain and the Sea, a new series of striking and expressive landscape paintings. This will be the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. Calgary-based artist Erik Olson is known for his imaginative and innovative approach to painting. Recognized for his powerful portraiture as well as his deeply personal explorations of landscape and color, his work utilizes scale to express the larger context of the human experience.

Go out before it closes: Chris Engman’s exhibition at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles in downtown L.A. is coming to a close Saturday. “Prism” is a series of photographs Engman created in collaboration with his toddler. He observed his child’s lack of hesitation and abundant curiosity when making art, and decided to join in. The exhibit showcases their paintings and drawings filled with childlike joy and vitality.

“A prism breaks light into its constituent parts, revealing colors invisible to the human eye. It allows us to see, in other words, what is present but not perceived. This show is titled “Prism” in part for its vibrant colors. More importantly, because a camera is a prism. And most importantly, because my son is my prism. The world that I see through his eyes is new and strange, terrifying and beautiful. How wonderful is that?”

Evita Tezeno had a bucolic childhood, ensconced in a predominantly Black community in small-town Port Arthur, Texas, near the Louisiana border. Today the 62-year-old Dallas artist draws upon these fond memories in her exuberant collage paintings, employing elaborately patterned hand-painted papers and found objects to depict everyday scenes of Black life: prim ladies waiting at a bus stop, young girls nattering away, women hanging laundry, couples linking arms for a stroll, gazing lovingly at each other, or dressed in their finest for a night of dancing. 

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce that Dallas-based artist Evita Tezeno has been named a 2023 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Her fellowship is supported in part by the Joel Conarroe Fund, named for the former President of the Foundation who was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1977.

“Prolific” understates the artworks artist Edra Soto has contributed to the cultural scene, radiating from Chicago and stretching to New York, California, Brazil, and beyond. Born in Puerto Rico, Soto treats her roots as a blueprint, building expansive bodies of work upon the boundless inspiration she finds within them. 

Through a research-based praxis engaging art history and the everyday, collecting snapshots spanning centuries and cultures, Los Angeles-based artist Edie Beaucage engages in autofictive explorations. She redefines personal histories by creating iconic portraits at a larger-than-life scale.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Phung Huyn has been named the 2023 honoree in art for the Women of Impact Awards.

The Women of Impact Awards was created in honor of Women’s History Month to spotlight the efforts of our extraordinary women in the 77th Assembly District.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce June Edmonds was awarded a MacDowell spring-summer fellowship.

MacDowell will welcome 142 artists from 23 states, Washington D.C., and 11 countries for spring and summer residencies.  These fellowships at the nation’s first artist residency program in Peterborough were granted from a pool of 1,822 applications from 54 countries and every state except Hawaii. Fifty-two percent of the incoming artists-in-residence self-identify as artists of color and 76 percent will be first-time fellows.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles presents Mimi Smith’s first West Coast solo exhibition, “Head-On,” which includes sculptures, paintings, and drawings that span the pioneering artist’s six-decade career. 

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is please to announce Zackary Drucker winner of 2023 sundance film festival U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Clarity of Vision for Film "The Stroll".  This is the definitive history of New York City’s Meatpacking District, told by the transgender women of color who created its history.  “The Stroll” was where trans women of color, shunned out of the workforce, turned to for a means of survival. Women of the Stroll past and present are brought together by co-director Kristen Lovell (for whom this is a stunning directorial debut), who worked alongside them for a decade, and Zackary Drucker (Transparent producer and The Lady and the Dale director).

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce Hector Dionicio Mendoza as a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2022 Biennial Grant.  Hector is one of twenty artist to receive $20,000 of unrestricted grant funds for the purpose to give artists the opportunity to produce new work and push the boundaries of their creativity.

The Bemis Center's Ree Kaneko Award was created to award $25,000 unrestricted, by nomination to an alum of the program to provide financial support to increase the capacity of an artists practice.

Conceptually positioned in the borderlands between the United States and Mexico, ‘Hugo Crosthwaite: Caravan’ at Luis De Jesus deploys the languages of artistic and popular media to portray both the perils of the border and the humanity of those who must traverse it.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, Iowa recently acquired four works by artist Vian Sora.  The works included Eden I,2022, Eden II, 2022, River Bed, 2022, and Thirst, 2021.  Sora's work utilizes a synthesis of styles and iconography taken from both her native, modern and ancient Iraq and adopted cultures, along with a variety of techniques.

Hugo Crosthwaite's paintings, sculpture, and stop-motion videos in Caravan speak to the reality faced by migrants as they make the treacherous journey to the border in search of the American Dream.

"CCF is proud to support our Fellowship for Visual Artists fellows in their artistic careers and we celebrate their commitment to transforming communities through their work. Each of our fellows embody the future of arts in LA."

“Proud is a funny word because it can be taken out of context. I am proud of the things we’ve done. But what Hugo did was to show, in a very interesting, subtle way, how complicated it all was.”

“By relinquishing control of the paint itself and allowing it to work on the canvas, my work attains a measure of hope: if nothing is settled and determined, any outcome is still possible, thus I utilize vibrant contrasting colors set often on burnt or earth tones,”  she says.

Luis De Jesus is known for showing multiple qualitative exhibitions in one go; this gallery should be on your weekend must-sees. 

"November in Los Angeles brings us shows that highlight art’s role as both a reflection of everyday life and a force to help change our reality. An exhibition at Angels Gate Cultural Center showcases the multifaceted programs of the community-based Slanguage Studio."

"The spirograph galaxy of Rhythmic Inquisitions, an exhibition of works by June Edmonds at the Riverside Art Museum, unmercifully hypnotizes. Expanding boundaries, this 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship Recipient injects Aretha Franklin’s Respect (1967) into Abstract Expressionism."

Adornment | Artifact is a multi-venue art experience that celebrates ancient Nubia through contemporary art, events, and conversations. Housed at five sites across the city, Adornment ⏐ Artifact investigates how contemporary artworks made in Los Angeles by LA-based artists engage and express the traditions, objects and materials that shaped the cultures of the Nile River Valley. In conjunction with the Getty's exhibition Nubia: Jewels of Ancient Sudan, four contemporary artworks by Lauren Halsey, June Edmonds, Melvin Edwards, and Umar Rashid will be on view at the Getty Villa.

Lansdowne explores the various traditions of framing within the art historical canon – from the illusionism found in the murals of Pompeii, the realism of Flemish Renaissance painting, the techniques of American neoclassicism, and others.

Originally created by Chris Engman between 2002-2006, this is the first time this series of black and white photographs is being presented in Los Angeles. These works read differently now than when they were produced 15-20 years ago.

"Luis De Jesus Los Angeles began The Armory Show with a bang. With a compelling booth of newly created paintings by artists June Edmonds, Evita Tezeno, Vian Sora, Laura Krifka, and Nicolas Grenier, the gallery appeared to have one of the most visited booths at the fair. Within minutes of the opening, the gallery had sold work by Sora, Edmonds, and Tezeno."

"This makes an upcoming exhibition at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum at Pepperdine University in Malibu (an area well acquainted with fire) particularly poignant. “To Bough and to Bend,” a group show that takes the tree as its binding theme, opens at the museum later this month. Included in the exhibition is an image by Ken Gonzales-Day, a Los Angeles artist who has long tracked the history of Mexican American lynchings in the West, a history that leads him to the trees on which these murderous actions took place."

Over the past two decades, Engman has dedicated his art to understanding how images deceive the eye and the human need to make sense of visual perception. Engman’s photography, at first glance, appears normal, yet, under careful examination, viewers become aware of the optical illusion and begin to question the constructed image. Engman’s twenty-year practice is grounded in research and conceptual thought. He documents remnants of labor and the juxtaposition of human material and vast landscape through sculpture and photography.

Trees feature prominently in the origin stories of many world religions. Ancient history recounts how their shade and branches have been sites of contemplation, suffering, and renewal. Today, trees still speak: deep root systems form tangled webs of communication, blunt stumps nod to deforestation, and charred limbs attest to fires started by our own hands. First curated by Bridge Projects, a gallery that catalyzes interdisciplinary explorations of contemporary art, spirituality, and religious traditions, To Bough and To Bend explores these ecological issues through the work of 30 artists who look to religious and historic art practices to guide us back into fellowship with these old friends and the living world we share.

"It had everything in it, those shoes," said Huynh. "It's beautiful. It's strong. I wondered, 'Who walked in those shoes? Who were these women?' Leather was so symbolic of skin, of transforming suffering and scarring. The beautiful patterns and details of flora and flowers — I think flowers are very symbolic of women and fertility and also like an offering of apologies to the mothers."

The work consists of a slender disc of corten steel laid flat on the ground that bears the outlines of roses and a pair of praying hands. At night, it is illuminated from below. A pair of low benches offer a space for contemplation, and a low, curved wall features texts inspired by the women’s experiences: “If you speak English, they treat you one way,” reads one inscription. “If you don’t speak English, they treat you another way.”

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to present a virtual talk between New York artist Liz Collins and art historian Lex Morgan Lancaster. Liz Collins is a multi-media artist whose practice converges at the intersection of textile and fiber arts, painting, installation, and design. Lex Morgan Lancaster is a scholar, professor, and curator who focuses on queer, feminist, trans, and anti-racist visual and theoretical contributions to the field of contemporary art.

The National Portrait Gallery’s triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition celebrates excellence in the art of portraiture. As the realization of a gift made by Virginia Outwin Boochever to the Smithsonian, both the competition and this exhibition demonstrate the power of one individual to make a transformative impact. The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today presents 42 portraits selected through an open call that garnered more than 2,700 entries from artists working across the United States and Puerto Rico. Karetzky's painting Toast, 2019 is currently on view in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery for The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today exhibition through February 26, 2023.

“This body of work is really meant to honor the invaluable work that female astronomers contributed to their field," Halloran said. "Without these discoveries we would be nowhere near where we are now in terms of being able to measure and understand the universe.”