News
LAURA KRIFKA ARTIST TALK AND EXHIBITION WALK-THROUGH
RSVP REQUIRED
Saturday, May 14, 2022 at 2:00 PM
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to invite you to an artist talk and exhibition walk-through with Laura Krifka on Saturday, May 14th, at 2:00 p.m. This talk is presented in conjunction with "Still Point," the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, on view through May 28, 2022. This is an in person event. RSVP: gallery@luisdejesus.com.
LIA HALLORAN INSTALLATION AT THE EXPLORATORIUM
DOUBLE HORIZON
May 13 – August 7, 2022
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Lia Halloran's Double Horizon will be featured at the Exploratorium. Double Horizon is an immersive three-screen video installation that envelopes the viewer in artist Lia Halloran’s portrait of Los Angeles. The installation will be on view through August 7, 2022.
THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION ACQUIRES FEDERICO SOLMI'S "THE CHARMING STATESMAN"
April 20, 2022
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce that Federico Solmi's painting titled The Chaming Statesman (2019) has been acquired by the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. The drawing will be exhibition among other recent acquisitions until May 31st.
JUNE EDMONDS AWARDED 2022 GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIP
April 8, 2022
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce that June Edmonds has been awarded a 2022 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Fine Arts by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts."
LIA HALLORAN TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP EXHIBITION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
SEEING STARS
April 27 – June 30, 2022
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Lia Halloran will be participating in Seeing Stars, a group exhibition at the University of Leeds' Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery. Guest curated by Hondartza Fraga, a visual artist living in Leeds, the exhibition shines a light on contemporary artists who use and challenge the newest technologies for space imaging in their art practice. The artists in this exhibition bring the human sense of wonder back into sharp focus – blurring the line between fact and fiction.
LAURA KARETZKY SELECTED AS A FINALIST IN THE 2022 OUTWIN BOOCHEVER PORTRAIT COMPETITION
"TOAST" WILL BE ON VIEW IN THE EXHIBITION THE OUTWIN 2022: AMERICAN PORTRAITURE TODAY AT THE SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
April 30 - February 26, 2023
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Laura Karetzky is a finalist in the 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The National Portrait Gallery’s triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition celebrates excellence in the art of portraiture. The forty-two portraits were selected through an open call that garnered more than 2,700 entries from artists working across the United States and Puerto Rico. The portraits will be on view at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery through February 26, 2023.
KEN GONZALES-DAY TO GIVE LECTURE AT THE ANDERSON RANCH ARTS CENTER
PRESENTED BY THE ANDERSON RANCH ARTS CENTER
Sunday, June 12 | 7:00 PM
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be giving a lecture at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado with guest faculty member Benjamin Timpson. This free in person event will take place on Sunday, June 12 from 7–8 PM. Registration required.
AARON MAIER-CARRETERO & CURATOR ALMA RUIZ IN CONVERSATION AT LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES
REFRESHMENTS SERVED | LIMITED SEATING | RSVP REQUIRED
Saturday, April 2, 2022 at 2:00 PM
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles cordially invites you to attend Alma Ruiz and Aaron Maier-Carretero in Conversation, to be held on Saturday, April 2nd, at 2:00 PM. This talk is presented in conjunction with the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, currently on view through April 9, 2022. This is an in-person event. Seating is limited and reservations are required.
ANTONIA WRIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP EXHIBITION AT THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER, NEW ORLEANS
#FAIL
March 12 – June 19, 2022
The gallery is pleased to announce that Antonia Wright will participate in the group show, #fail, at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. The multimedia group exhibition, presented by the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans and Spinello Projects, brings together works by artists that expose the systemic failures facing our world. #fail explores a world in crisis and it is treated as social and poetic materials. Through a multidisciplinary presentation, the artists express existence as a failure worth narrating.
KEN GONZALES-DAY TO PARTICIPATE IN "THE NARRATIVE ARC OF LATINX PHOTOGRAPHY" PANEL
PRESENTED BY APERTURE AND THE LUCAS MUSEUM OF NARRATIVE ART
Zoom | Thursday, February 24, 2022 | 7:00 PM ET
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be participating in the Aperture Conversations "The Narrative Arc of Latinx Photography." The event will begin with an introduction by Pilar Tompkins Rivas (guest editor of the “Latinx” issue of Aperture, and chief curator and deputy director of curatorial and collections at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles) and will also feature artists Sofía Córdova and Perla de León moderated by professor and writer Jesse Alemán. The event will take place online via Zoom on Thursday February 24, 2022 at 7:00 pm ET.
RODRIGO VALENZUELA & KEN GONZALES-DAY ARTIST TALK
REFRESHMENTS SERVED | RSVP ENCOURAGED
Saturday, February 19, 2022 at 10:00 AM
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles cordially invites you to attend a Frieze Los Angeles Special Event featuring back-to-back Artist Talks with Rodrigo Valenzuela and Ken Gonzales-Day, on Saturday, February 19th, from 10 to 11 AM. The talks will be held in person at the gallery in Downtown LA, and are presented in conjunction with the artists current solo exhibitions: Rodrigo Valenzuela: New Works for a Post-Worker's World and Ken Gonzales-Day: Another Land. Refreshments will be served. Free admission; reservations are not required, but encourage. Masks will be required for this indoor event.
CARLA JAY HARRIS TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP EXHIBITION AT THE SPARTANBURG ART MUSEUM
BLACK ANATOMY
February 17 – June 30, 2022
The gallery is pleased to announce that Carla Jay Harris will participate in the group show, black anatomy, at the Spartanburg Art Museum in South Carolina. This dynamic exhibition features artists who bring intimate and charged bodies of work that represent their present-day voices while simultaneously keeping a toe dipped in the waters of their collective past experiences. Sculptures, installations, paintings, and drawings illustrate their shared understanding of the Black experience in contemporary culture and reveal work that unfolds in tones of universal truths.
CARLA JAY HARRIS TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP EXHIBITION AT LOS ANGELES UNION STATION
WE ARE...PORTRAITS OF METRO RIDERS BY LOCAL ARTISTS
January 1 – December 31, 2022
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Carla Jay Harris is participating in a group show at Los Angeles Union Station presented by Metro Los Angeles. Celebrating the diversity of Los Angeles County and the community of transit riders, We Are…Portraits of Metro Riders by Local Artists is an exhibition that features portraits presented throughout the Metro system and online. Each rider portrait has a story that is personal and universal, intimate and immediate—a single story among the many stories of 840,000 daily riders on Metro, and each told by an artist with ties to neighborhoods served by Metro. This multi-site exhibition and series of events is presented by Metro Art in collaboration with Metro’s Office of Civil Rights, Racial Equity & Inclusion and Communications departments.
KEN GONZALES-DAY TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP EXHIBITION AT THE BLOCK MUSEUM OF ART
A SITE OF STRUGGLE: AMERICAN ART AGAINST ANTI-BLACK VIOLENCE
January 26 – July 10, 2022
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be participating in a group exhibition, A Site of Struggle: American Art Against Anti-Black Violence, at Northwestern University's Block Museum of Art. This exhibition explores how artists have engaged with the reality of anti-Black violence and its accompanying challenges of representation in the United States over a 100 + year period.
EDRA SOTO & JOEY LICO IN CONVERSATION AT LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES
WINE & REFRESHMENTS | RSVP ENCOURAGED
Wednesday, December 15, 2021 at 7:00 PM
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to invite you to an exhibition walk-through and conversation between artist Edra Soto and curator Joey Lico in conjunction with EDRA SOTO: The Myth of Closure / El Mito del Cierre, on Wednesday, December 15 at 7:00 p.m. This is an in-person event. Reservations are not required, but encouraged.
KEN GONZALES-DAY FEATURED IN UPCOMING LECTURE, "THE POETICS OF ART AND INTERVENTION"
PRESENTED BY THE GETTY
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be featured in an upcoming lecture with Getty curator LeRonn Brooks, Claudia Rankine, Monica Youn, and Jess Row. The event will take via webinar on November 17, 2021 from 5:00-6:00 p.m. PST / 2:00-3:00 p.m. ET.
JUNE EDMONDS SOLO EXHIBITION AT CAL POLY UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY
November 17 - December 10, 2021
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that June Edmonds will be having a solo exhibition at Cal Poly University San Luis Obispo. The exhibition will take place from November 17 through December 10, 2021.
CROCKER ART MUSEUM ACQUIRES JUNE EDMONDS "STILL SAYING HER NAME"
November 6, 2021
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce that June Edmonds' painting Still Saying Her Name, 2020, has been accessioned into the collection of the Crocker Museum of Art in Sacramento, CA. We are grateful to Simon K. Chiu, Chair of the Collections and Acquisitions Committee, and Scott Shields, Associate Director and Chief Curator, for making this acquisition possible.
LIA HALLORAN FEATURED IN DEPARTURES
"SPACE: A LETTER FROM DEPARTURES EXPLORING THIS MONTH'S THEME"
October 19, 2021
I THINK ABOUT SPACE, and my place in it, obsessively. As a 26-year-old non-white woman, I aim to take up space, as the mantra goes, yet bump against the barriers of a world and a mind socialized against that. As a born-and-raised New Yorker, I’ve only ever known erratic stimulation from spaces: awe-inspiring one minute, horrifying the next. I now share space with someone I love. For many, it's an endlessly relatable experience in its contradictions, clothing-pile politics, and navigation. My side/your side. Please get away from me/please come closer. Who takes what call from where.
JUNE EDMONDS TO GIVE RUSSELL FOUNDATION LECTURE
PRESENTED BY UC SAN DIEGO VISUAL ARTS DEPARTMENT AND MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that June Edmonds will be giving a Russell Foundation Lecture presented by the UC San Diego Visual Arts Department and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. The event will take place via webinar on October 27, 2021 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. PST / 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET.
KEN GONZALES-DAY TO GIVE ARTIST LECTURE ON "ERASED LYNCHINGS"
PRESENTED BY USC FISHER MUSEUM OF ART
Thursday, October 21, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be giving an artist lecture on his ongoing Erased Lynchings series at the USC Fisher Museum of Art. The event will take place on Thursday October 21, 2021 from 2:00pm to 3:00pm
ARTIST TALK: JUNE EDMONDS, CARLA JAY HARRIS & KARLA DIAZ AT LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES
MODERATED BY SHANA NYS DAMBROT | RSVP REQUIRED
Saturday, October 23, 2021 at 11:00 AM
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to invite you to an artist talk with June Edmonds, Carla Jay Harris, and Karla Diaz in conjunction with the artists' current solo exhibitions. The talk will be held on Saturday, October 23rd, from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm, followed by a Q&A. This is an in-person event. Seating is limited and reservations are required.
LIA HALLORAN SELECTED AS AN EXHIBITOR FOR THE LAX ART PROGRAM
LAX TERMINAL 1 | GATE 9 | POST-SECURITY
November 2021 – November 2022
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Lia Halloran has been selected to partipate in the LAX Art Program. The LAX Art Program presents up to 20 exhibitions a year in collaboration with our partner, the City of Los Angeles’ Department of Cultural Affairs, to create vibrant public spaces at the airport.
JUNE EDMONDS 40 YEAR SURVEY AT LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY LABAND ART GALLERY
FULL SPECTRUM
September 25, 2021 - February 20, 2022
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is delighted to announce June Edmonds: Full Spectrum, a 40-year survey exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist June Edmonds, presented by Loyola Marymount University’s Laband Art Gallery from September 25 through December 11, 2021. The exhibition has been organized by Laband Art Gallery director and curator Karen Rapp.
CHRIS ENGMAN, KEN GONZALES-DAY, AND LIA HALLORAN TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP EXHIBITION AT USC FISHER MUSEUM OF ART
ART AND HOPE AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
September 10 - December 9, 2021
The gallery is please to announce that Chris Engman, Ken Gonzales-Day and Lia Halloran are participating in a group show, Art and Hope at the End of the Tunnel, at the USC Fisher Museum of Art in Los Angeles curated by art critic Edward Goldman. The concept of the exhibition emerged out of the bleakness and ambiguity in the initial stages of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Goldman, who was still able to visit artists in their studios, asked the question “how has this difficult time affected your art-making?” To his delight, the artists responded that it had allowed them to spend more time in their studio, creating art that had more focus and deeper meaning, giving Edward hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
JUNE EDMONDS INCLUDED IN GROUP EXHIBITION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LA VERNE HARRIS ART GALLERY
NEW HISTORIES
September 7 - October 28, 2021
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce June Edmond's partipation in a group show, New Histories, curated by Dion Johnson at the University of La Verne's Harris Art Gallery. With an idiosyncratic use of images, and signifiers, the exhibition offers access into rich visual worlds of personal reflection, layered symbolism, and prophetic vision. The exhibition will be on view from September 7 through October 28, 2021.
THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM ACQUIRES WORK BY KEN GONZALES-DAY
August 30, 2021
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce the accession of six photographs by Ken Gonzales-Day (American, 1964) into the collection of The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. This significant group of works includes three photographs from the Searching for California Hang Trees series and three photographs from the Memento Mori series. The works were chosen by Paul Martineau, Curator of Photographs and Karen Hellman, Assistant Curator of Photographs, and made possible through the support of Dr. Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director and the J. Paul Getty Trust.
MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART ACQUIRES WORK BY KEN GONZALES-DAY
August 30, 2021
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce the acquisition of Ken Gonzales-Day's Next morning when Jimmy woke, the cowboys were gone, Livermore, CA, 2003, by the Middlebury College Museum of Art in Middlebury, Vermont. The photograph will be included in Art & Protest: Artists as Agents of Social Change, on view from September 14 - December 12, 2021. The exhibition was curated by María Ramirez ’21 (2020–2021 Simonds Curatorial Intern) and Jason Vrooman, Ph.D, Chief Curator and Director of Engagement, Middlebury College Museum of Art. Art & Protest unites examples of socially engaged art—produced primarily in the United States but in a few instances around the world—from the 19th century to the present to showcase the artistic and ideological patterns that occur across different eras and social movements, and the aesthetic or conceptual strategies artists use to demonstrate the need for social change.
KEN GONZALES-DAY TO PARTICIPATE IN ARTIST TALK, "ART BREAK: PORTRAITURE"
PRESENTED BY THE GETTY
Friday, July 30, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will particpate in a discussion of ancient portraiture with Getty antiquities curator Jens Daehner. The event will take place via webinar on July 30, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 a.m. ET.
OOLITE ARTS ANNOUNCES 2021 ACQUISITION OF ANTONIA WRIGHT ARTWORK
PIECE TO BE DISPLAYED IN 2023 UPON THE OPENING OF NEW CAMPUS IN MIAMI
June 23, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Antonia Wright will be one in seven artists to have artwork aquired as part of Oolite Art's renewed acquistions program. These pieces will be on display at the Oolite Arts' new campus in the City of Miami opening in 2023. The program was launced last year by Oolite's Board of Directors in an effort to ensure that more Miami artists are represented in major collections. A jury comprised of Miami and nationally-based curators, Tami Katz-Freiman, Omar Lopez-Chahoud and Larry Ossei-Mensah, helped select the diverse group of both established and emerging artists from a pool of more than 500 artists who are current residents or alumni of Oolite’s programs.
ZACKARY DRUCKER TO PARTICIPATE IN ARTIST PANEL
RADICAL TENDERNESS: TRANS FOR TRANS PORTRAITURE
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Radical Tenderness: Trans for Trans Portraiture, on view at the Alice Austen House Museum, highlights photographic work from four trans and non-binary artists whose portrait photography exudes tender intimacy and calls for a radical shift in visibility politics. Guest curator, Dr. Eliza Steinbock, will be joined by participating artist Zackary Drucker for a dialogue about the ways that trans and queer people use artwork to connect with one another, historically and today. The discussion will be preceded by a guided virtual tour of the exhibition by the Alice Austen House’s Executive Director Victoria Munro.
ANTONIA WRIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP EXHIBITION AT OOLITE ARTS
"NATURAL TRANSCENDENCE" FEATURES WORK INSPIRED BY RE-INGEGRATING WITH NATURE DURING THE PANDEMIC.
June 15, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Antonia Wright is participating in a group show, Natural Transcendance at the Oolite Arts in Miami. This group show presents works that reflect an ethereal sensibility toward nature manifested during the pandemic. It is a reaction to urban culture and the segregation of humanity from nature. The artists included in the show react to how the pandemic opened up opportunities for re-integragrion into nature; both literally and spirtually. Antonia Wright will be presenting a cyanotype portrait in this show, which blurs the lines between human and plant.
KEN GONZALES-DAY TO PARTICIPATE IN TRAVELING GROUP EXHIBITION "MANY WESTS: ARTISTS SHAPE AN AMERICAN IDEA"
PRESENTED BY THE SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM AS PART OF THE ART BRIDGES INITIATIVE
2021 – 2024
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be participating in Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea, a group exhibition that examines the perspectives of 48 modern and contemporary artists who offer a broader and more inclusive view of this region, which too often has been dominated by romanticized myths and Euro-American historical accounts. Many Wests features artwork from the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and four partner museums located in some of the fastest-growing cities and states in the western region of the United States. It is the culmination of a multi-year, joint curatorial initiative made possible by the Art Bridges Foundation. The collaborating partner museums are the Boise Art Museum in Idaho; the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene, Oregon; the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City; and the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington.
IN DIALOGUE: SMITHSONIAN OBJECTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
KEN GONZALES-DAY'S PHOTOGRAPH FEATURED IN TALK CO-HOSTED BY THE SMITHSONIAN AND THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
June 1, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that The Smithsonian and The National Museum of Natural History are co-hosting a talk about historical objects from their respective collections. This talk will focus on civic awareness about the conservation of art history and material culture. For the talk Ken Gonzales-Day’s photograph of Osage leader, Shonke Mon-thi^ and a 3D printed replica of a Tlingit clan crest hat will be starting point of the discussion. Both objects offer insight into the ways museums have used Indigenous objects to further colonialism as well as the Smithsonian’s recent efforts at cultural restoration.
JIM ADAMS TO PARTICIPATE IN TRIENNIAL AT THE VANCOUVER ART GALLERY
VANCOUVER SPECIAL: DISORIENTATIONS AND ECHO | OPENING MAY 29, 2021
May 27, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Jim Adams is presenting a series of paintings as part of Vancouver Special, the triennial presented at Vancouver Art Gallery. These paintings inspired by mythology and the black experience are portraits that merge storytelling of the ancient world and contemporary politics. Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo will be the second in what is envisioned as a series of exhibitions intended to provide an expansive look at contemporary art in the Greater Vancouver region.
KEN GONZALES-DAY PART OF GROUP EXHIBITION AT THE GETTY
PHOTO FLUX: UNSHUTTERING LA
May 25 - October 10, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be participating in group exhibition, Photo Flux: UnShuttering LA at The Getty. The exhibit features photographs by 35 Los Angeles-based artists challenge ideals of beauty, representation, cultural capital, and objectivity. The artists in this exhibition, primarily people of color, have radically transformed photography to express their own aesthetics, identities, and narratives. Their work is foundational for an emerging generation of artists participating in the Getty Unshuttered program, which engages teens to seek photography as a platform to amplify social topics that resonate in their own lives. Guest curated by jill moniz.
FEDERICO SOLMI AND LAWRENCE WESCHLER IN CONVERSATION AT LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES
RSVP REQUIRED: SATURDAY, MAY 22, 2021
5/13/2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Federico Solmi will be in conversation with Lawrence Weschler on Saturday, May 22, at 11:00 a.m. in conjunction with Solmi's solo exhibition The Bacchanalian Ones. This conversation will be the gallery's first in-person event at the new 1110 Mateo Street location. Due to social distancing seating will be limited, so an RSVP will be required. Please RSVP at gallery@luisdejesus.com with the names of the people in your party.
KEN GONZALES-DAY'S WORK ON PUBLIC DISPLAY AT THE WENDE MUSEUM
TRANSFORMATIONS: Living Room -> Flea Market -> Museum -> Art
May 5, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that a photograph by Ken Gonzales-Day is now currently on display as part of group show TRANSFORMATIONS: Living Room -> Flea Market -> Museum -> Art at the Wende Museum. While the show opened October 4, 2020, the museum was closed to the public as part of an effort to protect the community from the COVID-19 epidemic. On May 1st, the Wende opened its collection and exhibitions back up to public viewing and the dates for the exhibition have been extended to October 24, 2021.
STANIAR GALLERY TO HOST VIRTUAL ARTIST TALK WITH KEN GONZALES-DAY
MAY 11, 2021 at 1:30 p.m. PST and 5:30 p.m. ET
April 30, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be doing an artist talk and walk through of his solo show Profiled which is currently installed at the Staniar Gallery located on Washington & Lee's campus in Lexigton, Virginia. Due to COVID-19 the show is currently only accessable to W&L community members, however, a virtual walkthrough of the show is available to all on their website. Ken will be speaking about his work via zoom on May 11, 2021 at 1:30 p.m. PST/ 5:30 p.m. ET.
LIZ COLLINS PARTICIPATING IN GROUP EXHIBITION GOODNIGHT ROOM
INSPIRED BY BELOVED CHILDREN'S STORY BOOK, GOODNIGHT MOON
March 25, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Liz Collins is participating in a group exhibition in New York, Goodnight Room, inspired by children's book, Goodnight Moon. For the exhibition she created a softsculpture interpretation of a fireplace as well as a floor rug. Her brightly-colored pieces are shown alongside other artists working within the home decor, design and art communities. The vibrant work is getting a lot of attention from press from Smithsonian Mag to Wallpaper. Appointments are available via Fort Makers, the artist collective behind the exhibition.
ZACKARY DRUCKER TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP SHOW, "RADICAL TENDERNESS: TRANS FOR TRANS PORTRAITURE"
THE ALICE AUSTIN HOUSE MUSEUM
March 19- June 1, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Zackary Drucker is participating in group show Radical Tenderness: Trans for Trans Portraiture. Timed to coincide with the International Day of Transgender Visibility on March 31, Radical Tenderness: Trans for Trans Portraiture highlights photographic work from four trans and non-binary artists whose portrait photography exudes tender intimacy and calls for a radical shift in visibility politics.
HUGO CROSTHWAITE RECEIVES SAN DIEGO PRIZE
March 13, 2021
We are delighted to announce that Hugo Crosthwaite was recently awarded the 2021 SD Art Prize. This year the prize focused on binational artists and he along with Beliz Iristay, PANCA Paola Villaseñor and Perry Vasquez were recognized for their tireless work to bring creativity and passion for their art to the San Diego Arts Community. These artists will be showcased in a group show opening in October. Founded and supported since 2006 by the San Diego Visual Arts Network, the SD Art Prize was conceived to promote visibility and public interest in talented local artists, and encourage community engagement and critical dialogue with San Diego’s contemporary art scene.
FEDERICO SOLMI TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP SHOW AS PART OF THE CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION AT THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION
"SEEING DIFFERENTLY", MARCH 6 - SEPTEMBER 12, 2021
March 3, 2021
The gallery is excited to announce that Federico Solmi will be participating in the centennial exhibition of The Phillips Collection in Washington DC. His piece, The Great Farce, in a Portable Theater edition, will be part of this incredible show that celebrates the impact of artists from the 19th century to the present, including Simone Leigh, Sam Gilliam, Anselm Kiefer, Frank Stella and Howard Hodgkin, amongst other iconic historical works by Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Pierre Bonnard, Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, and Jacob Lawrence.
LIA HALLORAN TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SAN FRANCISCO EXPLORATORIUM'S 'AFTER DARK' WEB SERIES
WILL AIR ON YOUTUBE AND FACEBOOK ON THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 2021 at 7:00 P.M. PST.
February 27, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Lia Halloran will be a guest speaker for the San Francisco Exploratorium's After Dark Online: Art + Science digital programming. This event will be streamed via YouTube and Facebook on Thursday, March 4, 2021 at 7:00 p.m. PST.
Explore the intersections of art and science through the practice of individual artists who weave science, technology, and methods of discovery in their practices. The artistic process, much like the scientific process, is a form of inquiry vital to learning—an open-ended process of investigation, speculation, imagination, and experimentation. The Exploratorium highlights artists who clarify the reciprocal relationship between art and science and how it can inspire a deeper understanding of the world.
JUNE EDMONDS- VIRTUAL | EQUITY & REPRESENTATION IN CONTEMPORARY ART
A PANEL DISCUSSION FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH
February 25, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that June Edmonds will be part of a panel, Virtual | Equity & Represenation in Contemporary Art- A Panel Discussion for Black History Month.
Over the course of time in America, large swaths of art history have been omitted, erased, or ignored. This absence has created a significant void in the narrative around how people of African descent and people of color have contributed to the artistic canon.
The impact presents significant disadvantages for artists of color. From artists that have difficulty gaining representation, to art historians overlooking Black and Brown artists’ contributions, to collectors that do not have access to works they would like to acquire, the playing field has never been level. Bias shows up in art schools, in institutions, in hiring practices, in the primary and secondary art market, and in the critical voices that influence all of the above.
Recent news of high-profile curatorial appointments are a move in the right direction. However, there is significant work that remains to be done. What kind of new and inclusive art world can we as art professionals help to create?
ANTONIA WRIGHT TO PRESENT INSTALLATION WORK AS PART OF ILLUMINATE CORAL GABLES
WORK WILL BE ON DISPLAY FROM FEBRUARY 12 - MARCH 14
February 12, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Antonia Wright will be participating in an outdoor public art initiative in Coral Gables, Florida. Illuminate Coral Gables (ICG) focuses on the intentional use of light and technology to transform public art by day into magical and mysterious work at night. Her piece Yes/No uses barricades as a symbol of global climate of resistance. By lighting the barricades being used by the Illuminate exhibition throughout Coral Gables, her intention is to highlight the ubiquitous nature of these objects and their ambiguous intent to protect and control. By transforming a utilitarian object into a light work, the glowing objects will create a line throughout the streets of the city, evoking the divide and connection between bodies.
KEN GONZALES-DAY TO PARTICIPATE IN ARTIST TALK, "PHOTOGRAPHY AS REVOLUTIONARY AESTHETIC: AN LA ARTIST CONVERSATION"
HOSTED BY THE GETTY
February 17, 2021
Thursday, February 25, 2021, at 5 pm
ONLINE ONLY
Artists Todd Gray, Cauleen Smith, and Ken Gonzales-Day, each with distinct approaches to photo-based practices, discuss how they integrate concepts of identity and explore the tensions between refusal and inclusion. These artists are all native to California and their experiences as professors and artists reinforce the importance of place and community. Addressing themes from the forthcoming exhibition Photo Flux: Unshuttering LA, they’ll discuss their commitment to creating and expanding opportunities for emerging artists to stand, flex, and grow.
'WE ALL HAVE TO CREATE OUR OWN UNIVERSE.' DIRECTOR, PRODUCER AND ARTIST ZACKARY DRUCKER ON TELLING NUANCED TRANS STORIES
VIA TIME
February 8, 2021
The common thread that runs through the work of multimedia artist, director and producer Zackary Drucker is a commitment to telling stories of trans resilience, whether that’s through her photography, her work as a producer on the award-winning series Transparent, or as co-director of the new HBO docuseries The Lady and the Dale. “I never want to do the same thing twice. I am led by curiosity, by anything that I don’t understand,” Drucker says.
LIA HALLORAN'S ART FEATURED AS ILLUSTRATIONS IN JANNA LEVIN'S BLACK HOLE SURVIVAL GUIDE
February 5, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Lia Halloran recently created the illustrations that went along with Janna Levin's book Black Hole Survival Guide.
"Janna Levin, as a professor of physics and astronomy at Columbia University, US, is the perfect tour guide to shepherd us through these topics in Black Hole Survival Guide. Over the course of only 160 pages – beautifully illustrated by Lia Halloran in a natural marriage of art and science – she takes us on a breakneck journey through the cosmos. We travel alongside a fellow astronaut named Alice, against whom we are compared and contrasted on various occasions, all in the spirit of learning and good natured competition."
- Emma Jones
EDRA SOTO'S EXHIBITION SPACE, THE FRANKLIN, TO RECEIVE GRANT MONEY AS PART OF HYDE PARK ART CENTER'S ANONYMOUS DONATION
February 2, 2021
In a suprise announcement from Hyde Park Art Center this last Monday it was made known that the center had received an anonymous donation of $560,000 to be distrubuted to artist run spaces and curatorial ventures in Chicago. With this grant money they have decided to award $8,000 to each of their participants of "Artist Run Chicago" and the rest will be disbursed into 20 additional grants. Amongst the grant reciepients is Edra Soto's space, The Franklin. The Franklin, which is run out of her home, is a beloved community-oriented show space in East Garfield Park.
KEN GONZALES-DAY AND LIA HALLORAN TO PARTICIPATE IN PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
January 28, 2021
In preparation for the upcoming Pacific Standard Time which focuses on the intersection of Art and Science, The Getty Foundation has recently awarded southern Californian institutions with the first round of grants. We are pleased to announce that two of our represented artists, Lia Halloran and Ken Gonzales-Day will be presenting works as part of the programing. This 3rd iteration of Pacific Standard Time will present an ambitious range of exhibitions and public programs that explores the connections between the visual arts and science, from prehistoric times to the present and across different cultures worldwide. From alchemy to anatomy, and from botanical art to augmented reality, art and science have shared moments of unity, conflict, and mutual insight. The next PST theme connects these moments in the past with the most pressing issues of today. By examining such critical issues as climate change and the future of artificial intelligence, PST will create an opportunity for civic dialogue around the urgent problems of our time.
HUGO CROSTHWAITE AND FEDERICO SOLMI'S WORK IN THE OUTWIN: AMERICAN PORTRAITURE
NOW ON VIEW AT D'AMOUR MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
October 30, 2020 - April 4, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Hugo Crosthwaite and Federico Solmi's work will be included in The Outwin: American Portraiture show, which has now traveled to D'amour Museum of Fine Arts. The Outwin: American Portraiture Today premiered at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in the fall of 2019. Every three years, artists living and working in the United States are invited to submit one of their recent portraits to a panel of experts chosen by the museum in the call for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The works of nearly 50 finalists were selected from over 2,600 entries. For the first time in the triennial’s history, the museum specifically asked that submissions respond “to the current political and social context,” and this resulting presentation offers perspectives on some of today’s most pressing issues.
CARLA JAY HARRIS TO PARTICIPATE IN NORTON MUSEUM OF ART'S 80th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION AND AUCTION
January 19, 2021
The gallery is pleased to annouce that Carla Jay Harris' work will be part of the Norton Muesum of Art's 80th Anniversary Virtual Celebration. This year in order to celebrate the anniversary there will be two events, both online and accessible from home. On Febrauary 6, there will be a virtual celebration which will lightlight the museum and community and will feature artists, special guests, behind-the-scenes glimpses and more.
From January 25- February 8th, there will be an online auction that will be presented via Sothebys.com.
TRACTION: ART TALK WITH KEN GONZALES-DAY, JANUARY 14, 2021
PRESENTED BY INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES
January 12, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be doing an online art talk in conjunction with The Insitute of the Arts and Sciences. Ken Gonzales-Day's interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems ranging from the lynching photograph to museum display. For Traction: Art Talk, Gonzales-Day will be joined in conversation by Professor Karolina Karlic.
TRACTION: Art Talk with Ken Gonzales-Day and Karolina Karlic
January 14, 2021
5-6:30 p.m. PT
LIA HALLORAN NAMED A 2020- 2021 C.O.L.A. MASTER ART FELLOW
December 30, 2020
The gallery is very honored to announce that Lia Halloran has been named a 2020-2021 City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) Individual Artist Fellow. As a C.O.L.A. Fellow, Halloran will be awarded a $10,000 grant to produce a new body of work which will be premiered by the City of Los Angeles in Spring 2021.
The 2020/21 C.O.L.A. Master Artist Fellows in literary, performing, and visual arts are: Neel Agrawal, Noel Alumit, Edgar Arceneaux, Maura Brewer, Nao Bustamante, Jedediah, Caesar, Neha Choksi, Michael Datcher, Sarah Elgart, Lia Halloran, Phung Huynh, Farrah Karapetian, Ruben Ochoa, and Umar Rashid.
FIVE WORKS BY ERIK OLSON ACQUIRED BY THE ART GALLERY OF ALBERTA, CALGARY, CANADA
The gallery is pleased to announce that five paintings by Erik Olson were recently aquired by the Art Gallery of Alberta, Calgary, Canada. Working across different mediums, inclulding painting, sculpture, printmaking, and video, Erik Olson balances the scientific with the poetic in a dynamic visualization of his personal life. People, places and experiences become the subject of works that question our presumptions and our perception of the world. The figures and portraits that populate his canvases can be likened to characters in mystery plays, each flaunting their own constructed personas and exuberant color. Olson's playful curiosity often leads him to explore a variety of content across multiple scales: from the subconscious psychology of the sitter, to the windswept landscapes of America, to the scale of the planets and the vast cosmos.
EDRA SOTO'S "OPEN 24 HOURS" ACQUIRED BY DEPAUL ART MUSEUM AT DEPAUL UNIVERSITY, CHICAGO, IL
December 30, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Edra Soto's Open 24 Hours (Albright-Knox ), was recently aquired by the DePaul Art Museum at DePaul University, Chicago. Soto, who recently participated in group show Unreachable Spring also became affliated with the gallery this year. Her work is an unrelenting love song of purserverance and community action through the challenges of socio-economic disparity and institutional racism. Her work Open 24 Hours was conceived on her daily dog walks through Chicago's East Garfield Park neighborhood where she would collect discarded liquor bottles that she would come across in vacant lots.
CARLA JAY HARRIS'S "THE PATH " ACQUIRED BY CROCKER ART MUSEUM
December 16, 2020
The gallery is delighed to announce that the Crocker Art Museum has acquired Carla Jay Harris's The Path. The Path is one of more than 20 works in Carla Jay Harri's ongoing series Celestial Bodies which she began in 2018. In Celestial Bodies, Harris uses narratives of kinship, creation, and myth as tools to understand, undo and build anew. Cloaked in a firmament of stars and sumptuous red fabrics evocative of Mt. Olympus, the protagonists in Celestial Bodies exist in a contemplative and meditative dimension outside of our own reality- a utopian black society that we can look to for inspiration. Celestial Bodies began with black bodies floating ro flying through space, but has become grounded in the landscape- a transition and evolution that Harris relates to her own spiritual growth, becoming politically and socially reengaged as the foundations of her practice have been firmly established. In the tumult of 2020, creation has become a refuge for Harris.
BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART ACQUIRES FIVE PHOTOGRAPHS BY ZACKARY DRUCKER
December 16, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that the Baltimore Museum of Art has acquired five photographs by Zackary Drucker for it's permanet collection. The acquistion includeds three self-portraits from the "Relationship" series (produced in collaboration with Rhys Ernst from 2008- 2014 and debuted at the 2014 Whitney Biennial) and two photographs from the "Before and After" series (produced in collaboration with A. L. Steiner in 2010- 2011). The acquision is an outcome of BMA's "2020 Vision," a year of exhibitions and programs dedicated to the presentation of the achievements of female-identifying artists. 2020 Vision builds on the BMA's efforts over the last several years to expand its presentations of women artists and artists of color, and to more accurately reflect the community in which it lives.
ARTIST TALK: UNREACHABLE SPRING | SATURDAY, DEC. 19, 1:00 PM PST / 4:00 PM EST
MODERATED BY LINDSAY PRESTON ZAPPAS & LUIS DE JESUS
December 15, 2020
In conjunction with the final week of the Unreachable Spring, the gallery will host an artist talk on Zoom, December 19th, 1:00 PM PST / 4:00 PM EST moderated by Luis De Jesus and Lindsay Preston Zappas. This conversation will serve as a summation of the exhibition and provide insight and dialogue towards the socio-political atmophere in which these works were created. From isolation and death, to social activism, to personal responses to systemic oppression, we speak with our artists about making art during a year unlike any other.
FEDERICO SOLMI’S THE GREAT FARCE ACQUIRED BY THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce that a seminal work by Federico Solmi (b. 1973) has been acquired by The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. The Great Farce “Portable Theater” (2020) is a translation of Solmi’s most ambitious work to date, The Great Farce (2017-2019)—a monumental, multi-channel video installation that presents a sprawling send-up of empire-building as an enterprise. Past and present, history and amusement, reality and spectacle are conflated and distorted in The Great Farce—a scathing commentary on contemporary culture, where spectacle and celebrity may be distractions from sinister machinations and speed contributes to the blurring of myth and truth.
KAMBUI OLUJIMI AND EDRA SOTO'S WORK SELECTED AS LEILANI LYNCH'S TOP PICKS FOR UNTITLED, ART MIAMI BEACH 2020
December 3, 2020
Leilani Lynch, curator at The Bass Museum of Art in Miami selected a group of works to highlight as part of the virtual UNTITLED, ART Miami Beach art fair. Within her selection both Edra Soto and Kambui Olujimi's installation works were featured.
KAMBUI OLUJIMI TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP SHOW AT SECCA
DRAWN: CONCEPT & CRAFT
November 26, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Kambui Olujimi has work part of a group show at Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, SECCA. His piece, Under Tarped is part of a group exhibition, DRAWN: Concept & Craft. DRAWN brings together the diverse works of over 60 artists from around the world in an exhibition that provides a rare, revealing look into the creative process and artists' unique relationship with the art of drawing.
MUSÉE D'ART CONTEMPORAIN DE MONTRÉAL RECENTLY AQUIRED PIECE BY NICOLAS GRENIER
WORK WILL ALSO BE INCLUDED IN GROUP SHOW, DES HORIZONS D'ATTENTE
November 25, 2020
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Nicolas Grenier's painting From Our Position, Yours is a Mystery (2017), was acquired by the Musée D'Art Contemporain De Montréal, Canada. This work will also be show in upcoming group show, Des Horizons D'Attente, which will showcase the museum's 21 new aquisitions.
NICOLAS GRENIER CURRENT FELLOW AND INTERNATIONAL RESIDENT AT ZK/U CENTER FOR ART AND URBANISTICS
November 25, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Nicolas Grenier is a fellow and part of the international artist residency at ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanistics. While he is there he will be working on a project based on a system allowing a paradigm shift toward a post-capitalist economic culture. At this stage he is working with a programmer to build a non-monetary exchange mechanisms, while also designing the architecture for a common pool of resources that could be shared between people in a small group, a neighborhood or a city.
ARTIST TALK: EDRA SOTO SPEAKS WITH ART HISTORIAN, ROBERT R. SHANE
ZOOM CONVERSATION IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE CENTER FOR ART AND DESIGN AT COLLEGE OF SAINT ROSE
Thursday, November 19, 2020 at 4pm PT / 7pm ET via Zoom
The gallery is pleased to announce that Edra Soto will be in conversation with art historian and critic Robert R. Shane organized for the Center for Art and Design at College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY. The talk will focus on Soto's interdisciplinary work around themes of colonization, family, and social justice and will conclude with a poetry reading by Spencer Diaz Tootle.
KAMBUI OLUJIMI RECEIVES COLENE BROWN ART PRIZE
BRIC AWARDS $100,000 to 10 NEW YORK CITY-BASED ARTISTS
November 11, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Kambui Olujimi has received a 2020 Colene Brown Art Prize, which awards $10,000 to New York-based artists via BRIC.
Now in its second year, the award is underwritten by artist and former BRIC Board Member Deborah Brown and her sister Ellen Brown in memory of their late mother, Colene Brown, and is funded through the Harold and Colene Brown Family Foundation.
Drawings from Kambui Olujimi's series When Monuments Fall is currently on view at the gallery as part of the group exhibition Unreachable Spring through December 19, 2020.
KEN GONZALES-DAY TO BE KEYNOTE SPEAKER AT UCLA
SPECULATIVE FORENSICS: THE 5th ANNUAL UCLA ART HISTORY GRAD SYMPOSIUM AND WORKSHOP
November 7, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be a keynote speaker for the UCLA Art History Graduate Symoposium and Workshop. The annual UCLA Art History Graduate Student Symposium is the longest running symposium of its kind in North America. Initiated in 1965, the symposium provides a forum for graduate students to present original research in a scholarly format. Organized collectively by a cohort of students, the symposium is organized around critical themes and issues addressing the history and current state of art historical scholarship.
HUGO CROSTHWAITE TO PARTICIPATE IN VIRTUAL FIRST FRIDAY
ARTS DISTRICT AT LIBERTY STATION
November 6, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Hugo Crosthwaite will be participating in a virtual first friday put on by the ARTS DISTRICT Liberty Station and the NTC foundation from 4:00-7:00 PM PST. This event will be free with registration and highlights 7 unique artists, performances, walkthroughs and talks. Hugo Crosthwaite will be discussing his installation at the Station mural Column A and Column B: A continual mural narrative performance.
This mural was created in 16 days and was a performance about creative process and nature of art. He'll also be showcasing his video Tzompantli, a stop-motion animation that draws from the motifs from the installation. There will be a subsequent Q & A.
FEDERICO SOLMI TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP EXHIBITION "EVERYTHING IS ART, EVERYTHING IS POLITICS"
ONLINE EXHIBITION BY ELGA WIMMER AND BERTA SICHEL
October 1 - November 31, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Federico Solmi will be included in Everything is Art, Everything is Politics curated by Elga Wimmer and Berta Sichel as an online exhibition. Appropriately curated during the 2020 election, this work features artists grappling with social and political motifs. In particular, artists who have had the politcal turn personal with how their work has been viewed by onlookers.
KEN GONZALES-DAY TO DESIGN METRO LINK WILSHIRE/FAIRFAX PURPLE LINE EXTENSION
October 29, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be working with Los Angeles' Metro to create work for the new Whilshire/Fairfax purple line extension entitled, Urban Excavation: Ancestors, Avatars, Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, Casts, Copies, Deities, Figures, Funerary Objects, Gods, Guardians, Mermaids, Metaphors, Mothers, Possessions, Sages, Spirits, Symbols, and Other Objects. Inspired by the idea of transporting the body and mind, and by the station as an excavation site, Ken Gonzales-Day‘s glass-tile mural for the north and south concourse level walls aims to transport transit customers across time and place by immersing them in an environment where images of objects—spanning many cultures, continents and eras—mined from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s permanent collection are reproduced at an enormous scale. Gonzales-Day’s artwork will invite viewers to think about museum collections and their connection to the outside world in unexpected ways.
LIZ COLLINS VIRTUAL OPENING + CONVERSATION WITH CURATOR GLENN ADAMSON
October 27, 2020 at 1pm PT / 4pm ET via Zoom
The gallery is pleased to announce First Look: Dynamic Expansion, a virtual opening for Liz Collins' new installation located at the Ligne Roset flagship store located at 250 Park Avenue South in New York. Created in collaboration with Ligne Roset Contract, Pollack, and Sunbrella Contract, Collins' installation features 7 new paintings and will be accessible daily during store hours (Mon-Sat 10am-6pm and Sun 12-5pm) through November.
The virutal opening will offer a behind the scenes look at Collins’ latest idiosyncratic and unconventional textile-based artwork - a surrealist lounge where the art and furniture are literally cut from the same cloth of vibrating geometric patterns. An intimate conversation between the artist and Curator and Writer Glenn Adamson will follow.
EDRA SOTO RECEIVES JOAN MITCHELL FOUNDATION GRANT
October 22, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Edra Soto has received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant is an unrestricted award in which $25,000 is granted to 25 different artists from throughout the United States. Selected artists are first nominated by artist peers and arts professionals from throughout the United States and then chosen through a multi-phase jurying process, which this year was conducted virtually. The 2020 artist cohort represents a wide range of creative approaches and backgrounds as well as ethnicities, ages, and geographic locations—further enumerated below. In addition to the financial award, grantees also gain access to a network of arts professionals, who can provide consultations on career development and financial management.
Edra Soto is currently part of group show, Unreachable Spring, currently on view.
CARLA JAY HARRIS PARTICIPATES IN ARTIST TALK, WOMEN AND THE VOTE, IN CONJUNCTION WITH EXHIBITION, A YELLOW ROSE PROJECT
COLORADO PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS CENTER
October 27, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Carla Jay Harris will be participating in an artist discussion "Women and The Vote" in conjunction with exhibition A Yellow Rose Project.
This talk will take place at 5pm GMT on Colorado Photographic Art Center's Instagram Live.
A Yellow Rose Project is a large scale photographic collaboration made by women all across the country. A year ago, artists were invited to make work in response, reflection, or reaction to the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The goal of this project was to provide a focal point and platform for image makers to share contemporary viewpoints as we approached the centennial. Our mission in researching the complication of this anniversary was to gain a deeper understanding of American history and culture, from this moment in time, to build a bridge from the past to the present and on to the future.
JUNE EDMONDS FEATURED IN FORD FOUNDATION EXHIBITION, "FOR WHICH IT STANDS"
PRESENTED BY ASSEMBLY ROOM
October 8, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that June Edmonds will be included in For Which It Stands curated by Assembly Room at the Ford Foundation Gallery. For Which It Stands is an evolving physical and online exhibition platform featuring over thirty-five contemporary artists who use the iconic American flag, loaded with centuries of convoluted history and exclusion, to create new symbols of national identity. Amid a highly volatile political climate and rise in white nationalism, these artists assert their place and affirm the multiplicity of the American experience while addressing issues of police brutality, systemic racism, socioeconomic disparities, alternative facts, and a patriarchal society, among others.
June Edmonds will participate in an artist talk on October 24th, 2020.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION OPENING + ARTIST PANEL: KEN GONZALES-DAY
PRESENTED BY WENDE MUSEUM
October 4, 2020 from 12-2pm PT
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will participate in a panel discussion with Chelle Barbour, Farrah Karapetian, Richtje Reinsma, Daphne Rosenthal, Jennifer Vanderpool, and Bari Ziperstein on the occasion of the opening of the digital group exhibition Transformations: Living Room -> Flea Market -> Museum -> Art viewable through the Wende Museum website.
The event will take place on the Wende Museum website on Sunday, October 4, 2020 from 12-2pm PT.
HUGO CROSTHWAITE TO PARTICIPATE IN FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE CINE DE MORELIA
CINÉPOLIS MORELIA CENTRO | CINÉPOLIS LAS AMÉRICAS | ONLINE VIEWING
October 28- November 1, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Hugo Crosthwaite will be included in film festival, Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia. He will be screening his new film, A Home for the Brave as part of the Mexican Short Film Section and it will be screened at the Cinépolis Morelia Centro, Cinépolis Las Américas as well as concurrent online screenings for an international audience.
The festival will take place between October 28- November 1, 2020
ARTIST TALK: KALEIDOLA GUEST SPEAKER SERIES- JUNE EDMONDS
PRESENTED BY LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY
September 11, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that June Edmonds will be speaking at Loyola Marymount's Department and Art History's guest speaker program, KaleidoLA. The event will take place via Zoom on Friday, September 11 at 12:15 to 1:15 pm.
CARLA JAY HARRIS TO PARTICIPATE IN SF CAMERAWORK BENEFIT
September 10 - 25, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Carla Jay Harris will participate in See How Beautiful I Am, the 2020 SF Camerawork Benefit Auction, to be hosted by Artsy. Harris has donated a print from her Snake Bearer series.
Over its 46-year history, SF Camerawork has provided early career opportunities for artists. SF Camerawork’s mission and programs are dedicated to engaging and enriching local artists and their creative work.
ARTIST PANEL DISCUSSION: HUGO CROSTHWAITE
PRESENTED BY THE PATRIA & PHILLIP FROST ART MUSEUM AT FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
September 16, 2020 from 5-6 pm ET via Zoom
The gallery is pleased to announce that Hugo Crosthwaite will join Judithe Hernández and Itzel Basualdo for an Artist Panel Discussion moderated by Maryanna G. Ramirez and Amy Galpin of the Frost Art Museum. Featured in the Frost Art Museum’s exhibition, Otros Lados, these artists bring distinct perspectives to Mexican and Mexican American experiences.
ARTIST TALK: LIZ COLLINS
PRESENTED BY STONEWALL NATIONAL MUSEUM & ARCHIVES
September 16, 2020 at 6:30 pm ET / 3:30 pm PT via Zoom
The gallery is pleased to announce that Liz Collins will be in conversation with Stonewall National Musuem & Archives Executive Director Hunter O’Hanian about her recent book Energy Field.
JUNE EDMONDS INCLUDED IN "FOUNDING NARRATIVES" AT THE MEAD ART MUSEUM AT AMHERST COLLEGE
August 25, 2020 - July 18, 2021
Founding Narratives presents artworks produced in the United States between 1800 and today that offer opportunities to consider the role of art in creating, reinforcing, and challenging stories about national identity. Drawn entirely from the Mead Art Museum’s extensive collection of American art, the exhibition raises questions about representation and the absence of representation in national narratives and in the establishment of a national art, about the significance of “firsts,” and about the interpretative frameworks that museums offer about artists and artworks.
KEN GONZALES-DAY INCLUDED IN GROUP EXHIBITION "THIS IS AMERICA | ART USA TODAY"
KUNSTHAL KADE AMERSFOORT, THE NETHERLANDS
September 26, 2020 - January 03, 2021
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be included in the group exhibition This Is America | Art USA Today at Kunstal KaDE in the Netherlands, September 26, 2020 through January 03, 2021. In This Is America | Art USA Today almost forty American artists bring the United States to the Netherlands in the form of paintings, photographs, murals, documentation and installations. Their work addresses current issues like identity, city culture, climate change, and ‘Trump’.
SEMINAR AND ARTIST PANEL DISCUSSION: LIA HALLORAN
PRESENTED BY LUMEN AND ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN VIA ZOOM
August 25, 2020 from 8-10 pm BST / 12-2 pm PT
The gallery is pleased to announce that Lia Halloran will be participating in a seminar hosted by art collective Lumen and curator Stephen Nowlin focused on the current group exhibition, SKY, at the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California.
FEATURED: CARLA JAY HARRIS IN PÓLISART
"CARLA JAY HARIS: DESERT COTTON"
August 22, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Carla Jay Harris has been honored with the cover of the 100th Issue of PólisArt Magazine, including a twenty-two page editiorial feature on her Desert Cotton series.
"My nomadic childhood is what, in part, attracted me to photography. The camera is a way for me to connect to permanence. Memory, heritage, and loss are major themes in my work."
—Carla Jay Harris
HUGO CROSTHWAITE INCLUDED IN THREE-ARTIST EXHIBITION "OTROS LADOS"
PATRICIA & PHILLIP FROST ART MUSEUM AT FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
August 22 - December 13, 2020
Hugo Crosthwaite will participate in a three-artist exhibition Otros Lados at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami, FL. "Al otro lado" is a phrase used in Mexico to describe areas of the United States populated by Mexican immigrants. The fluid nature of migration, exile, labor, and cultural exchanges between Mexico and the U.S., resonate in the daily lives of people in both countries.
ARTIST PANEL DISCUSSION: KEN GONZALES-DAY
PRESENTED BY MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART LOS ANGELES
August 13, 2020 AT 4PM PT via Zoom
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be participating in the first of several virtual discussions about the project In Plain Sight. Program 1: The Los Angeles Orbit panel will be moderated by rafa esparza and Cassils and introduced by MOCA.
In Plain Sight (IPS) lead artists rafa esparza and Cassils present an overview of IPS followed by a panel discussion with Bamby Salcedo, Beatriz Cortez, Yosimar Reyes, and Ken Gonzalez-Day. Artists featured in this panel generated the phrases that formed the ring, or “shared orbit path,” around downtown Los Angeles over the July 4 weekend. Artists will show IPS images and discuss their individual practices as artists and organizers in relation to their involvement in IPS. Panel includes discussion of Los Angeles as the second largest city of immigrants in the United States and explores how the multicultural conditions of the city have generated experimental collaborative practices by artists and activists alike.
ARTIST TALK: CARLA JAY HARRIS AND BRENDA E. STEVENSON IN CONVERSATION
HOSTED BY SF CAMERAWORK
August 12, 2020 at 4:30pm PT via Zoom
The gallery is pleased to announce "Making Bitter Earth," an online conversation between artist Carla Jay Harris and historian Brenda E. Stevenson, Ph.D., moderated by SF Camerawork Board President Michelle Branch on Wednesday, August 12, 2020. Harris and Stevenson will discuss their recent collaboration, Bitter Earth, a site-specific installation whose title is taken from the 1960s blues track “This Bitter Earth,” written by Clyde Otis and sung by legendary blues women and rhythm and blues singers Dinah Washington, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, and Mikki Howard.
KEN GONZALES-DAY INCLUDED IN "THE SPREAD," CURATED BY MARK VERABIOFF
DE BOER GALLERY
August 1- September 5, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will exhibit previously unseen work in the group exhibition, THE SPREAD, curated by artist Mark Verabioff at de boer gallery.
THE SPREAD, which explores themes of civil war, protest, cultural and racial insurgency, climate change and sanctioned travel will follow a similar logic to Verabioff’s installations to disrupt the authority associated with authorship by acknowledging the complex interplay between object, creator, viewing context and audience through the lens of queer feminist discourse.
ARTIST PANEL DISCUSSION: JUNE EDMONDS
PRESENTED BY FLUX ART SPACE
July 26, 2020 at 1 pm PST via Zoom
The gallery is pleased to announce that June Edmonds will be participating in "Conversations About Abstraction with Six Black Women Abstract Artists in Los Angeles," a panel discussion featuring Sharon Barnes, Adrian Culverson, Adrienne DeVine, Holly Tempo, and Lisa Diane Wedgeworth and moderated by jill moniz and Isabelle Lutterodt.

ARTIST TALK: LIZ COLLINS' ENERGY FIELD
VIRTUAL BOOK RELEASE PARTY PRESENTED BY THE TANG TEACHING MUSEUM
July 24, 2020 at 4pm ET / 1pm PT via Zoom
The gallery is pleased to announce that the Tang Teaching Museum will host a virtual gathering to celebrate the publication of Energy Field and Liz Collins’ birthday! Liz will be the guest of honor with a performance by Mike Albo and other special guests.
Register here. For questions about this event, please contact Olivia Cammisa-Frost at ocammisa@skidmore.edu.
FEATURED: ZACKARY DRUCKER IN VOGUE
"LOOK UP: 80 ARTISTS ARE SKYWRITING TO HIGHLIGHT THE INJUSTICE OF IMMIGRATION DETENTION IN AMERICA"
July 7, 2020
"Nosotras te vemos means 'we see you' in the feminine version of the phrase, a subtle way of recognizing one femme to another. I want to convey a message of unity to the transgender women and to all the people living in forced detention at South Texas ICE Processing Center.
During the Obama administration, while addressing the proposed legislation of North Carolina to bar trans students from restrooms that correlated with their gender presentation, then attorney general Loretta Lynch said to transgender Americans, 'We see you, we stand with you, and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward.' It was an incredible moment historically because trans people had never been spoken to so publicly. To have a person from the president’s cabinet speak directly to a community that had been ignored and silenced was such a powerful paradigm shift and validation. "
—Zackary Drucker

ARTIST RESIDENCY: EDIE BEAUCAGE
SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS' ARTIST RESIDENCY PROJECT
July 7 - August 7, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that Edie Beaucage will participate in the inaugural session of the School of Visual Arts' Artist Residency Project. This new, fully online residency program has been designed for fine artists working across discipline, medium and platform. While the ability to travel and gather in person remains an uncertainty for many, the Artist Residency Project aims to deliver a robust residency experience to participants all over the world directly through online platforms. Working with SVA’s distinguished faculty, participants will be encouraged to develop their practice without regard to limitations of location or the necessity for travel. The goal of the program is to create an inclusive online space where artists can thrive, nurture their practice and build an active, engaged community across borders.
ZACKARY DRUCKER AND KEN GONZALES-DAY TO PARTICIPATE IN #XMAP: IN PLAIN SIGHT
July 3, 2020
In Plain Sight is a coalition of 80 artists united to create an artwork dedicated to the abolition of immigrant detention and the United States culture of incarceration. A highly orchestrated mediagenic spectacle and poetic action, this project is conceived in five parts -- a poetic elegy enacted on a national scale, an interactive website, an anthology docuseries, accessible actions for the public to take to join the movement against immigrant detention, and cultural partnerships producing arts-related education and engagement.
FEATURED: LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES ON KCET'S SOUTHLAND SESSIONS
"FORCED TO CLOSE THEIR DOORS, ART GALLERIES EMBRACE ONLINE EXHIBITIONS"
June 30, 2020
For Luis De Jesus of the eponymous gallery on South La Cienega Boulevard, moving online has been an expansion rather than a limitation. When lockdown began, his staff was already redesigning the gallery’s website, so they added an “online viewing room.” “It’s like the second gallery that we don’t have,” De Jesus said, “It functions like an alternative space, a project space, and that to me is very exciting.”
ARTIST TALK: ZACKARY DRUCKER
VIOLET HOUR PRESENTED BY BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART
June 24, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that the Baltimore Museum of Art will present Zackary Drucker in conversation with her personal muse and mentor Rosalyne Blumenstein, LCSW, a legendary trans rights activist whose portraits and archival photographs comprise an important part of the BMA’s exhibition Zackary Drucker: Icons. They discuss their approach to concepts of photographic beauty and their personal involvement in trans activism. Renowned photographer, curator, and educator Allen Frame moderates the conversation and BMA Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Leslie Cozzi hosts a live Q&A following the discussion.
CALIFORNIA AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM ACQUIRES WORK BY CARLA JAY HARRIS
June 16, 2020
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that the California African American Museum, located in Los Angeles has acquired work by Carla Jay Harris. Harris' Sphinx (2018) is currently on view in Sanctuary, a group exhibition of recent museum acquisitions that focuses on safe spaces and self-care as part of the African American experience. Founded in 1977, the CAAM is the first African American museum of art, history, and culture fully supported by a state.

MEAD ART MUSEUM ACQUIRES WORK BY JUNE EDMONDS
June 15, 2020
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that the Mead Art Museum in Amherst, MA has acquired work by June Edmonds. Convictions IV (2020) is part of her ongoing series of Flag Paintings, which explore the alignment of multiple identities such as race, nationality, gender, or political leanings. Named for its founder, William Rutherford Mead (an 1867 graduate of Amherst College and a partner in the storied architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White), the Mead holds the art collection of Amherst College, celebrated for its American and European paintings, Mexican ceramics, Tibetan scroll paintings, English paneled room, ancient Assyrian carvings, Russian avant-garde art, West African sculpture, and Japanese prints.

TARBLE ARTS CENTER AT EASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY ACQUIRES TWO ARTWORKS BY FEDERICO SOLMI
June 2020
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that the Tarble Arts Center at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, IL has acquired two seminal works by Federico Solmi. Chinese Democracy and the Last Day on Earth (2012) is a single-channel video running 10:09 minutes enclosed within a hand-painted presentation box and The Beloved Autocrat (2018) is a unique artist book consisting of 12 bound paintings. Both works were exhibited recently in Solmi's 2019 full scale survey exhibition at the Tarble. The Tarble Arts Center is a major cultural arts resource serving east-central Illinois. Its founding purpose is to “take the arts to the people."
ARTIST TALK: KEN GONZALES-DAY
ECHO/LOCATE PRESENTED BY BRIDGE PROJECTS
May 21, 2020 at 5pm PT via Zoom
The gallery is pleased to announce that Bridge Projects' ongoing event series Echo/Locate will host Ken Gonzales-Day for an artist talk, virtual site visit, and discussion via Zoom. The group will embark upon an hour-long exploration into the purpose and power of the Gonzales-Day's series Searching for California Hang Trees and Erased Lynchings. Gonzales-Day will be in his studio, and the Bridge Projects team will be scattered throughout Los Angeles at locations pertaining to his practice.
INTERVIEW: ZACKARY DRUCKER
"NO SPACE FOR SELF INDULGENCE"
May 20, 2020
The gallery is pleased to announce that the McEvoy Art Foundation has published an interview with interdisciplinary artist Zackary Drucker through their ongoing conversation series titled McEvoy Arts at Home. Interviewed by Steve Polta, director of the San Francisco Cinematheque, Drucker reflects on witnessing her lineage and shifting consciousness through lyrical film-making.
LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES JOINS GALLERYPLATFORM.LA
HYPERALLERGIC: 80 LA GALLERIES BAND TOGETHER IN AN EFFORT TO SURVIVE THE PANDEMIC
May 14, 2020
GALLERYPLATFORM.LA launches May 15, featuring online viewing rooms for small and blue-chip galleries, video profiles of artists, and a column on the history of LA galleries — all to help galleries stay afloat.
FEATURED: LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES TO PARTICIPATE IN NADA'S NEW PROFIT-SHARING DIGITAL ART FAIR
ARTFORUM
May 14, 2020
“FAIR is NADA’s response to the current situation, in line with our commitment to supporting a global community of galleries and artists,” said NADA executive director Heather Hubbs. “While many of these art spaces have been temporarily closed to the public, this new model provides an opportunity to showcase the best of contemporary art, while demonstrating our collaborative spirit and fostering mutual support for one another.

MEAD ART MUSEUM ACQUIRES 7 PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ZACKARY DRUCKER & RHYS ERNST'S "RELATIONSHIP" SERIES
May 2020
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that the Mead Art Museum in Amherst, MA has acquired seven photographs from Zackary Drucker & Rhys Ernst's Relationship (2008-2014), a series of intimate snapshots taken by the artists that depicts the arc of their real-life love story. Named for its founder, William Rutherford Mead (an 1867 graduate of Amherst College and a partner in the storied architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White), the Mead holds the art collection of Amherst College, celebrated for its American and European paintings, Mexican ceramics, Tibetan scroll paintings, English paneled room, ancient Assyrian carvings, Russian avant-garde art, West African sculpture, and Japanese prints.
KEN GONZALES-DAY INCLUDED IN "SEEING NOW" AT 21C OKLAHOMA CITY MUSEUM HOTEL
April 2019 - May 2020
This multi-media selection of works by over two dozen artists explores what and how we see today, revealing the visible and hidden forces shaping both what the contemporary world looks like, and how we consume and interpret that information—how visual and psychological perception are evolving in the 21st century.
THE DAVID OWSLEY MUSUEM OF ART ACQUIRES WORK BY JUNE EDMONDS
April 2020
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University located in Muncie, IN has acquired work by June Edmonds. Convictions I (2019) is part of her ongoing series of Flag Paintings, which explore the alignment of multiple identities such as race, nationality, gender, or political leanings. Central to the mission and vision of the David Owsley Museum of Art is the global art collection—we turn to it to learn, to celebrate, to heal, to dream, to empower.
ARTIST TALK: LIA HALLORAN AND KIP THORNE TO DEBUT A SECTION OF THEIR NEW BOOK
"THE UNIVERSE IN VERSE" IS PRESENTED BY PIONEER WORKS
April 25, 2020 at 1:30pm PST via Zoom
Lia Halloran and Kip Thorne will debut a section of their book, to be published by Norton this upcoming year, as part of The Universe in Verse. Ordinarily a ticketed charitable event, with all proceeds benefiting a chosen ecological or scientific-humanistic nonprofit each year, the 2020 edition will be livestreamed on April 25, 2020 at 1:30pm PST.

KEN GONZALES-DAY APPOINTED 2019 FLETCHER JONES CHAIR IN ART
SCRIPPS COLLEGE
June 9, 2019
The Scripps College Board of Trustees has announced the appointments of Ken Gonzales-Day, professor of art, to the Fletcher Jones Chair in Art, Julia Liss, professor of history, to the Mary W. Johnson and J. Stanley Johnson Professorship in the Humanities, and Sheila Walker, professor of psychology, to the inaugural appointment of the Laura Vausbinder Hockett Endowed Professorship, effective July 1, 2019.
FEATURED: LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES IN ARTILLERY MAGAZINE
QUARANTINE Q&A: ART, LIFE, AND THE BUSINESS OF ART DURING COVID-19
March 26, 2020
An interview with Luis De Jesus & Jay WIngate by Anna Bagirov in Artillery Magazine.
FEATURED: NICOLAS GRENIER ON CBC RADIO
THE NEW MASTERS: CONVERSATION WITH THE 2019 SOBEY ART AWARD FINALISTS
March 5, 2020
The annual Sobey Art Award is Canada's most prestigious prize for contemporary artists. Established in 2002, the award honors Canadian artists 40 years of age or under, who have exhibited their work in a public or commercial art gallery within 18 months of being nominated.
JUNE EDMONDS WINS INAUGURAL $10,000 AWARE PRIZE FOR WOMEN ARTISTS AT THE ARMORY SHOW
March 5, 2020
US artist June Edmonds has been named the inaugural winner of the $10,000 Aware Prize at The Armory Show. Presented by the Paris-based nonprofit Archives of Women Artists: Research and Exhibitions the juried award goes to one female artist whose work is shown as a solo booth presentation within the fair’s Galleries section.

ZACKARY DRUCKER'S "ICONS" OPENS AT THE BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART
March 1 - June 28, 2020
Zackary Drucker: Icons weaves together two semi-intertwined personal narratives, juxtaposing newly created self-portrait photographs of artist, producer, and activist Zackary Drucker with pictures the artist has taken of mentor and friend Rosalyne Blumenstein, LCSW, who directed the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center’s pioneering Gender Identity Project in the 1990s. Depicting two women of different ages and experiences and the scars that they bear, Drucker’s work interrogates assumptions about transformation, beauty, aging, and mortality. Her searching, meticulous self-portraits expand on the groundbreaking Relationship series Drucker co-created a decade ago. Forming part of Drucker’s ongoing project to record and chronicle the trans community, her images of muse and mentor Blumenstein capture the cinematic flavor of the artist’s timely revision of art historical precedent.

GROUP EXHIBITION: ZACKARY DRUCKER INCLUDED IN "FLUIDITY"
SYKER VORWERK- ZENTRUM FÜR ZEITGENÖSSICH SKYER VORWERK- ZENTRUM FÜR ZEITGENÖSSISCHE KUNST
February 23 - May 17, 2020
Curated by Alejandro Perdomo Daniels and hosted by Syker Vorwerk, Fluidity creates a framework for positions in contemporary art that articulate the spectrum of gender difference, the overriding certainties regarding gender, sexuality, and desire, making it clear that the traditional identity categories of men and women, heterosexual and homosexual represent incomplete approaches to real life experiences. Instead of reproducing normative narratives through affirmation or negation, the exhibition shows perspectives that destabilize systems of normality and power. Based on the work of nine selected contemporary artists, Fluidity addresses a field of tension of unlimited scope and reflects the plurality and performance of contemporary art production in an international context.

GROUP EXHIBITION: LIA HALLORAN INCLUDED IN "SKY"
ALYCE DE ROULET WILLIAMSON GALLERY AT ARTCENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN
February 20 - August 3, 2020
An immersive examination of how humans have conceptualized the sky throughout history, SKY will demonstrate how the unfolding realities exposed by new science are affecting change in the understanding of ourselves, our planet and beyond.
A NEW ARMORY SHOW PRIZE WILL AWARD $10,000 TO AN OUTSTANDING FEMALE ARTIST
ARCHIVE OF WOMEN ARTISTS: RESEARCH AND EXHIBITIONS
February 19, 2020
The Armory Show in New York is partnering with the Paris nonprofit Archives of Women Artists: Research and Exhibitions (AWARE) on a new juried award. The AWARE Prize will recognize the best booth dedicated to a solo presentation of a female artist, awarding $10,000 to the artist or her estate. The shortlisted artists are Yuko Nasaka (1939–, Japan) with Belgium’s Axel Vervoordt Gallery; Rina Banerjee (1963–, India) with Galerie Nathalie Obadia of Paris and Brussels; Aase Texmon Rygh (1925–2019, Norway) with Oslo’s OSL Contemporary; Alexis Smith (1949–, US) with Garth Greenan Gallery in New York; and June Edmonds (1959–, US) with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
ARTIST PANEL DISCUSSION: FEDERICO SOLMI TO PARTICIPATE IN "VIDEO ART::DOOMSDAY DREAMS"
PRESENTED BY THE BROOKLYN RAIL
February 12, 2020
A conversation with Eleanor Heartney, Joan Jonas, Barbara London, and Federico Solmi, moderated by Martha Schwendener, and Phong Bui to celebrate the publication of Barbara London's recent monograph Video Art: the First Fifty Years (Phaidon) and Eleanor Heartney's new book Doomsday Dreams (Silver Hollow Press).
LIA HALLORAN UNVEILS A NEW COMMISSION
SIMON'S FOUNDATION FLATIRON CENTER FOR COMPUTATIONAL ASTROPHYSICS
February 11, 2020
On Tuesday, February 11, 2020 from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm in the 5th floor Lounge of the Simon's Foundation Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York, a new commission by Lia Halloran will be unveiled. Solar (2019) is a mural-sized cyanotype measuring 120 x 131 inches and inspired by the artist's ongoing series Your Body Is A Space That Sees.

ZACKARY DRUCKER INCLUDED IN "ORLANDO," CURATED BY TILDA SWINTON
MCEVOY FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS
February 7 - May 2, 2020
Orlando presents recent and newly commissioned photographs inspired by the themes of Virginia Woolf’s prescient 1928 novel, which tells the story of a young nobleman during the era of Queen Elizabeth I who lives for three centuries without aging and mysteriously shifts gender along the way. Orlando is guest curated by Tilda Swinton and organized by Aperture, New York.

LIA HALLORAN'S "DOUBLE HORIZON" OPENS AT THE PETER AND PEARL MULLEN ART GALLERY AT ARTCENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN
January 30 - March 15, 2020
Double Horizon features works by Lia Halloran that investigate the personal, physical, psychological, and scientific exploration of space.

HUGO CROSTHWAITE TO SPEAK AT THE BURLINGAME LIBRARY FOUNDATION
January 26, 2020
Kim Sajet, noted art historian and the first woman to serve as Director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, will speak at the Burlingame Public Library on Sunday, January 26th. Born in Nigeria, raised in Australia, and a citizen of the Netherlands, Sajet brings a global perspective to the position. She is also the host of the Portrait Gallery’s new podcast series, “Portraits,” which explores themes of art, history, and biography.
Kim will introduce Hugo Crosthwaite, the first-prize winner of the 2019 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. His award-winning stop-motion drawing animation, A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chavez, will be shown at the event.

JUNE EDMONDS FEATURED IN "THIS PLACE," CURATED BY JUNE EDMONDS FEATURED IN "THIS PLACE," CURATED BY JILL MONIZ
QUOTIDIAN, LOS ANGELES, CA
January 25 – March 28, 2020
This PLACE focuses on artists who articulate, correct and/or challenge historical narratives about geographical and cultural perceptions of place. Grounded by never exhibited 1960s ceramic works by Dale Davis — multimedia artist and Brockman Gallery co-founder who made space for the black arts west movement, This PLACE highlights how artists know, remember and reimagine environments that are relevant to their identities, aesthetic concerns and histories that define public visual awareness.

THE COLLECTION OF BETH RUDIN DEWOODY ACQUIRES A WORK BY MIYOSHI BAROSH FOR THE BUNKER ARTSPACE
January 2020
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Miyoshi Barosh's embroidered painting Paintings for the Home (Portrait) (2010) was acquired by the Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody for The Bunker Artspace in West Palm Beach, FL. Paintings for the Home is a series of works painted to resemble found thrift store paintings which are then embroidered with black abstractions that may be ink blots, decay, or disease. Paintings for the Home (Portrait) was first exhibited at the Gallery in 2010 and again in 2020 as part of a three-gallery city-wide retrospective after the artist's untimely death. Presenting rotating exhibitions and viewable storage of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The Bunker Artspace opened in December 2017 and showcases a wide range of contemporary art by both well-known and emerging artists, displayed alongside iconic pieces of furniture and other curiosities.

THE ELI AND EDYTH BROAD MUSEUM ACQUIRES KEN GONZALES-DAY'S ERASED LYNCHINGS
January 2020
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day's Erased Lynchings III (2019) was acquired by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. Opened on November 10, 2012, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (MSU Broad) is a dynamic contemporary art museum, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid, which serves as both a teaching institution and a cultural hub for East Lansing and the region.
ANDRÉ HEMER AT MASS MOCA RESIDENCY PROGRAM
OPEN STUDIOS ON JANUARY 28, 2020
January 1 - February 1, 2020
We are pleased to announce that André Hemer is an artist-in-residence at The Studios at Mass MoCA. The Studios is MASS MoCA’s artist and writers residency program situated within the museum’s factory campus and surrounded by the beautiful Berkshire Mountains. Operated by MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists program, the residency runs year-round and invited artists make work on site for periods of 4-6 weeks. Hemer is a resident for the month of January and will be featured in the open studio event. While in residence Hemer has been collecting videos, images, and 3D scans using the environment within the Museum campus—these will be developed into new paintings, sculptures, and video works to be shown during 2020.

NEW YORK- PRESBYTERIAN ACQUIRES SEVERAL PAINTINGS BY JUNE EDMONDS
December 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that New York-Presbyterian Hospital has acquired several paintings by June Edmonds from her ongoing series of abstract paintings that explore how repetition, movement, and balance can serve as conduits to spiritual contemplation and interpersonal connection. The acquisition includes the massive and seminal painting Story of the Ohio: For Margaret (2017), inspired by the story of Margaret Garner, the enslaved African American woman in pre-Civil War America who was known for killing her own daughter rather than allowing her child to be returned to slavery. This event took place near Paducah, Kentucky, on the Ohio River, where June Edmonds did an artist’s residency in early 2017 and was also the inspiration for the events depicted in Toni Morrison's Beloved.

THE MCEVOY FAMILY FOUNDATION ACQUIRES PAINTINGS BY LAURA KRIFKA
December 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Laura Krifka's painting Copy Cat (2017) was acquired by the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco, CA. The McEvoy Foundation for the Arts (MFA) presents exhibitions and events that engage, expand, and challenge themes in the McEvoy Family Collection. Established in 2017, MFA’s vision is to create an open, intimate, and welcoming setting for private contemplation and community discussion about art and culture.

THE COLLECTION OF BETH RUDIN DEWOODY ACQUIRES WORKS BY HUGO CROSTHWAITE FOR THE BUNKER ARTSPACE
December 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Hugo Crosthwaite's drawings Tijuanerias #34 (2011) and Tijuanerias #48 (2011) were acquired by the Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody for The Bunker Artspace in West Palm Beach, FL. The drawings are part of a series titled Tijuanerias in which the artist, inspired by Goya's Los Caprichos, creates new myths and narratives about the violence and excesses of narco wealth in his hometown of Tijuana. These drawings were featured in the artist's first solo exhibition with the Gallery, Tijuanerias on view from April 14 - May 26, 2012. Presenting rotating exhibitions and viewable storage of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The Bunker Artspace opened in December 2017 and showcases a wide range of contemporary art by both well-known and emerging artists, displayed alongside iconic pieces of furniture and other curiosities.

THE PIZZUTI COLLECTION ACQUIRES A PAINTING BY LAURA KRIFKA
December 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Laura Krifka's painting Tipping Point (2019) was acquired by the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH. Originally founded as an independent nonprofit by the Pizzuti family to share exhibitions of contemporary art from their private collection, the organization and its beautifully renovated building were recently acquired by the Columbus Museum of Art.

HOOD MUSEUM OF ART ACQUIRES A PHOTOGRAPH BY KEN GONZALES-DAY
November 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day's photograph Nightfall II (2006) from the series titled Search for California Hang Trees was acquired by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. Dartmouth's collections are among the oldest and largest of any college or university in the country, but it was not until the Charles Moore–designed Hood Museum of Art opened its doors in 1985 that they were all housed under one roof and made available to faculty, students, and the public.

KEN GONZALES-DAY WILL GIVE KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC EDUCATION CONFERENCE "ALL-INCLUSIVE: PHOTOGRAPHY FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE"
November 1 - 3, 2019
The conference All-Inclusive: Photography for Social Justice is co-hosted by the West and Southwest Chapters of SPE and the Department of Art and Art History at Santa Clara University, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, minutes from the San Jose Airport and less than an hour from the old stomping grounds of Group f/64, which includes Carmel, San Francisco, and Oakland.
The conference will explore how photography is used to challenge injustice, pursue social equality, and advance human rights through creative skills in order to inspire social movements, to witness, to resist oppression, to pose the difficult questions, and to stimulate debate and awareness about critical social issues. It will take place concurrently with Ken Gonzales-Day's solo exhibition at Santa Clara University.
HUGO CROSTHWAITE AWARDED FIRST-PRIZE IN SMITHSONIAN'S NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY OUTWIN BOOCHEVER PORTRAIT COMPETITION
October 26, 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce that gallery artist Hugo Crosthwaite has been awarded First Prize in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.
Hugo Crosthwaite’s work will be presented in The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today, a major exhibition premiering at the National Portrait Gallery October 26, 2019 through August 20, 2020. The exhibit will present the work of this year’s nearly 50 finalists, including seven artists that were shortlisted for prizes, selected from over 2,600 entries. As the first-prize winner, Crosthwaite receives a cash award of $25,000 and a commission to create a portrait of a notable living person for the museum’s permanent collection.

FEDERICO SOLMI FEATURED IN "THE QUEST FOR HAPPINESS- ITALIAN ART NOW" AT SERLACHIUS MUSEUM, MÄNTTÄ, FINLAND
October 26, 2019 - September 27, 2020
The Quest for Happiness – Italian Art Now presents a selection of the most interesting Italian contemporary artists. Their common theme is the quest for happiness. The majority of them have never exhibited in Finland before.

THE PIZZUTI COLLECTION ACQUIRES PAINTINGS BY CAITLIN CHERRY
October 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Caitlin Cherry's painting Solar Asian Doll (2018) was acquired by the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH. Originally founded as an independent nonprofit by the Pizzuti family to share exhibitions of contemporary art from their private collection, the organization and its beautifully renovated building were recently acquired by the Columbus Museum of Art.
FEDERICO SOLMI AND HUGO CROSTHWAITE ARE 2019 OUTWIN BOOCHEVER PORTRAIT COMPETITION FINALISTS
SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
October 1, 2019
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has announced the finalists for its fifth triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Their work will be presented in The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today, a major exhibition premiering at the National Portrait Gallery Oct. 26 through Aug. 30, 2020. Every three years, artists living and working in the United States are invited to submit one of their recent portraits to a panel of experts chosen by the museum. The works of this year’s nearly 50 finalists were selected from over 2,600 entries. The first-prize winner, to be announced this fall, will receive a cash award of $25,000 and a commission to create a portrait of a living person for the museum’s permanent collection.

LIA HALLORAN FEATURED IN "THE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE: VISUALIZING THE COSMOS IN ART" AT SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF ART
September 29, 2019 - February 16, 2020
Drawing primarily from SBMA’s permanent collection and supplemented by loans from area collections, The Observable Universe explores a diverse range of artistic representations of the cosmos roughly coinciding with the ‘Space Age’ of the last sixty years.
FEDERICO SOLMI'S SURREAL, SATIRICAL UNIVERSE COMES TO THE BLOCK MUSEUM COLLECTION
September 25, 2019
Past and present, history and amusement, reality and spectacle are conflated and distorted in Federico Solmi’s monumental media work, “The Great Farce” (2017), recently acquired by Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art. The Block received the multiscreen, limited-edition work as a gift from the artist’s studio in recognition of the museum’s upcoming 40th anniversary and its related initiative “Thinking about History.”
Originally commissioned for the 2017 B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Frankfurt, Germany, “The Great Farce” is Solmi’s most ambitious work to date in terms of technical complexity, physical scale and scope of content. Featuring a cast of time-traveling world leaders with a feverish madness for power, Solmi’s animation turns a frenzied, fun-house mirror to grandstanding historical figures.

The Pizzuti Collection acquires paintings by June Edmonds
September 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that June Edmond's painting Sign of Life Flag (2019) was acquired by the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH. Originally founded as an independent nonprofit by the Pizzuti family to share exhibitions of contemporary art from their private collection, the organization and its beautifully renovated building were recently acquired by the Columbus Museum of Art.

THE COLLECTION OF BETH RUDIN DEWOODY ACQUIRES A PAINTING BY JIM ADAMS FOR THE BUNKER ARTSPACE
September 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Jim Adams's painting Faith (1996) was acquired by the Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody for The Bunker Artspace in West Palm Beach, FL. The painting is part of a series of portraits of black archetypes that the artist created in the 1990s and 2000s. Presenting rotating exhibitions and viewable storage of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The Bunker Artspace opened in December 2017 and showcases a wide range of contemporary art by both well-known and emerging artists, displayed alongside iconic pieces of furniture and other curiosities.
Zackary Drucker's Relationship series discussed in The Body Electric
YBCA Zine
September 9, 2019
An essay by curator Pavel S. Pyś on the exhibition The Body Electric, which originated at the Walker Art Center and will travel to the Yeba Buena Center for the Arts and the Miami Dade College Museum of Art and Design. The exhibition includes works from Relationship (2008-2014) by Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst.

The Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody acquires a painting by Laura Krifka for The Bunker Artspace
September 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Laura Krifka's painting Piggyback (2019) was acquired by the Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody for The Bunker Artspace in West Palm Beach, FL. The painting was featured in the artist's first solo exhibition with the Gallery, The Game of Patience on view from September 7 - October 26, 2019. Presenting rotating exhibitions and viewable storage of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The Bunker Artspace opened in December 2017 and showcases a wide range of contemporary art by both well-known and emerging artists, displayed alongside iconic pieces of furniture and other curiosities.

Zackary Drucker featured in "The Body Electric" at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
September 6, 2019 - February 23, 2020
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents the West Coast debut of The Body Electric, an expansive array of more than 70 works revealing the ways that technology changes our collective understanding of the body, everyday life, and sense of self.

The Pizzuti Collection acquires a painting by Caitlin Cherry
July 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Caitlin Cherry's painting Miasma (2019) was acquired by the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH. The painting was featured in the group exhibition I've Got A Good Mind To Give Up Living And Go Shopping Instead, on view at the Gallery from July 13 - August 17, 2019. Originally founded as an independent nonprofit by the Pizzuti family to share exhibitions of contemporary art from their private collection, the organization and its beautifully renovated building were recently acquired by the Columbus Museum of Art.
Nicolas Grenier Shortlisted for the 2019 Sobey Art Award
June 12, 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce that Nicolas Grenier is a finalist for the 2019 Sobey Art Award. The Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada will present the 2019 Sobey Art Award exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton. The exhibition presents the work of the five outstanding Canadian artists who have been shortlisted for the 2019 Sobey Art Award.

The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery acquires a photograph by Ken Gonzales-Day
May 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day's Shonke-Monthin, Osage by Joseph Palmer (National Museum of Natural History, D.C.) (2014) was acquired by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The photograph is part of the artist's ongoing Profiled series and was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in the two-person exhibition titled UnSeen: Our Past In A New Light from March 23, 2018 through January 06, 2019

Association of Art Museum Curators Names Recipients of 2019 Awards for Excellence
UNSEEN: OUR PAST IN A NEW LIGHT, KEN GONZALES-DAY AND TITUS KAPHAR CURATED BY TAÍNA B. AND ASMA NAEEM
May 6, 2019
The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) and the AAMC Foundation has named the 20 U.S. curators who will be receiving its 2019 Awards for Excellence. This year’s honorees were selected from 150 nominations, and work in a variety of fields, including native and indigenous art, contemporary art, folk art, medieval art, American art, media art, and photography.
Judith Pineiro, executive director of AAMC and AAMC Foundation, said in a statement, “For 15 years, curators have recognized the trailblazing achievements of their peers through our annual Awards for Excellence. It is a privilege to celebrate this year’s awardees who, through their work, have fostered dynamic dialogue and broader engagement in the arts.”
Taína B. Caragol, curator of painting and sculpture and Latinx art and history at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and Asma Naeem, chief curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art, for “UnSeen: Our Past in a New light, Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar” at the National Portrait Gallery

The Davis Museum at Wellesley College acquires paintings by June Edmonds
April 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that June Edmond's painting A Tisket (2018) was acquired by the Davis Museum at Wellesly College in Massachusetts, USA. One of the oldest and most acclaimed academic fine art museums in the United States, the Museum was founded more than 120 years ago by the first President of Wellesley College. The Davis collections, which span global history from antiquity to the present and include masterpieces from almost every continent, are housed today in an extraordinary museum building, designed by Rafael Moneo, winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In addition to dynamic presentations of the permanent collections, and installations that support specific coursework and research interests, the Davis hosts a rotating series of engaging temporary exhibitions and programs organized to inform, delight, and challenge its visitors.

The Neiman Marcus Art Collection acquires work by Dennis Koch
April 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Dennis Koch's color pencil drawing Untitled (Versor Parallel) (2019) was acquired by the Neiman Marcus Art Collection in Dallas, TX. The Neiman Marcus Art Collection began in 1951 when Stanley Marcus purchases a large-scale Alexander Calder mobile and reflects the company’s broad interests in high quality, creativity artworks that span all media. With the initial purpose of enriching the environment and supporting artists who explore unusual paths of creative expression, the collection has grown to hold some 2,500 works of art.

The Battery acquires a photograph by Chris Engman
February 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Chris Engman's Landscape for Quentin (2017) was acquired by The Battery in San Francisco, CA. The Battery is a private social club, a boutique hotel, a hub for music, arts, and literature, and a philathropic organization founded by Michael and Xochi Birch in 2014.

The Pizzuti Collection acquires an additional painting by Britton Tolliver
January 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Britton Tolliver's painting Traffic Light (2018) was acquired by the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH. Originally founded as an independent nonprofit by the Pizzuti family to share exhibitions of contemporary art from their private collection, the organization and its beautifully renovated building were recently acquired by the Columbus Museum of Art.

The Pizzuti Collection acquires a painting by Caitlin Cherry
January 2019
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Caitlin Cherry's painting Sapiosexual Leviathan (2019) was acquired by the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH. The painting was featured in the artist's first solo exhibition with the gallery, Threadripper, on view from January 12 - February 9, 2019. Originally founded as an independent nonprofit by the Pizzuti family to share exhibitions of contemporary art from their private collection, the organization and its beautifully renovated building were recently acquired by the Columbus Museum of Art.
EDRA SOTO RECIEVES FOUNDWORK ARTIST PRIZE
The gallery is pleased to announce that Edra Soto has received the Foundwork Artist Prize. The Foundwork Artist Prize is an annual juried award that we inaugurated in 2019 to recognize outstanding practice by contemporary artists. The honoree receives an unrestricted 10,000 USD grant and studio visits with the distinguished jurors. The honoree and three short-listed artists are also featured in interviews as part of our Dialogues program.

The Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection acquires several works by Dennis Koch
August 2018
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that the Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection has acquired several Cutouts (2018) by artist Dennis Koch. Part of a new series in which original LIFE Magazines are carved page by page to reveal interior images, thus transformed into hand-cut magazine sculptures, these works interrupt and reconstruct common narrative strategies while compressing time and space into one image. Launched in 1980 in Boston, MA, Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection collects artwork that is experimental, intellectually curious, and technically precise across all media.
Artnet News Profiles Luis De Jesus: "I’ve Always Been an Advocate for Diversity"
LUIS DE JESUS HOPES THAT A NEW CLASS OF LATINX COLLECTORS WILL EMERGE IN THE US LIKE IT HAS IN THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY.
July 23, 018
A former artist and one of only a few successful Latinx dealers in the US, Luis De Jesus understands the difficulty of getting the art world to pay attention. Since founding his gallery Luis De Jesus Los Angeles in 2010, he has made a career of showing young artists with something to say, and has quietly become a staple of the city’s art scene in the process.

Flaten Art Museum acquires work by Ken Gonzales-Day
May 2018
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day's Hands Up (2015) was acquired by the Flaten Art Museum at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. This photograph was first exhibited in the artist's second solo exhibition at the Gallery titled, Run Up on view from April 4 through May 9, 2015. It was exhibited again in Ken Gonzales-Day: Shadowlands at the Flaten Art Museum from September 1 through October 29, 2017. Founded in 1976 at St. Olaf College, the Flaten Art Museum has evolved from college gallery to collecting museum with programming that is regional, national, and even international in scope.

The Microsoft Art Collection acquires works by Chris Engman and Lia Halloran
February 2018
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Chris Engman's photograph Prospect (2016) from his ongoing Prospect and Refuge series and Lia Halloran's drawing Andromeda, after Mollie O' Reilly (2017) from her ongoing series Your Body Is A Space That Sees were acquired by the Microsoft Art Collection in Redmond, WA. The Microsoft Art Collection was launched in 1987 by a committee made up of employees interested in collecting and displaying artwork created by artists from the community. Over the past quarter-century, the Collection has mirrored the corporation’s meteoric growth with nearly 5,000 artworks on display in over 130 buildings throughout North America.

The Pizzuti Collection acquires three works by Britton Tolliver
December 2017
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Britton Tolliver's paintings Icarus (2017), Distant Roam (2017), and Night Goat (2017) were acquired by the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH. Originally founded as an independent nonprofit by the Pizzuti family to share exhibitions of contemporary art from their private collection, the organization and its beautifully renovated building were recently acquired by the Columbus Museum of Art.

Museum of Comtemporary Photography at Columbia College acquires several works from Zackary Drucker's Relationship series
December 2017
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that six photographs from Zackary Drucker's Relationship (2008-2014) were acquired by the Museum of Comtemporary Photography at Columbia College in Chicago, IL. Relationship (2008-2014) is a series of intimate snapshots taken by Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst that depicts the arc of their real-life five-and-a-half year relationship, during which one transitioned from female to male, and the other from male to female. Founded in 1976 by Columbia College Chicago as the successor to the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography, the Museum of Contemporary Photography began collecting in the early 1980s and is the world’s premier college art museum dedicated to photography with more than 15,000 objects by over 1,500 artists in its collection.

Minnesota Museum of American Art acquires work by Ken Gonzales-Day
October 2017
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day's photo-based wallpaper The Lynching of Spanish Charlie (2016) was acquired by the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul, MN. The work is part of the artist's ongoing Erased Lynchings series and was first on view at the Museum in the exhibition Ken Gonzales-Day: Shadowlands from January 19 through April 16, 2017.

THE PHYLLIS AND ROSS ESCALETTE PERMANENT COLLECTION OF ART AT CHAPMAN UNIVERSTIY ACQUIRES WORKS BY LIA HALLORAN AND KEN GONZALES-DAY
July 2017
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Lia Halloran's Triangulum, After Adelaide Ames (2017), Paper Dolls (2016), and Ken Gonzales-Day's 41 Objects Arranged by Color (2016) were acquired by the Phyllis and Ross Escalette Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University in Orange, CA. Both of Halloran's works are part of Your Body is a Space That Sees an ongoing series of cameraless cyanotypes that highlight the achievements of the Harvard Observatory female researchers who made significant contributions to the field of astronomy. Gonzales-Day's photograph is part of his ongoing Profiled series in which the artist photographs sculptures of the human form as found in international museum and anthropology collections as a way to reveal the emergence, idealization, and even folly of race. Beyond its role in curating art in public spaces, the Escalette Collection is a learning laboratory that offers diverse opportunities for student and engagement and research, and involvement with the wider community.
INTERVIEW BY A. MORET WITH LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES
Volta Basel 10/ Booth #C21
September 2014
A. Moret interviews Luis De Jesus on the gallery's participation in VOLTA Basel 10.
Press
These practices parallel the Erased Lynching photographs of artist Ken Gonzales-Day. In these digitally manipulated versions of historical photographs, the bodies of lynching victims have been removed, leaving only the images of the perpetrators subject to our gaze. It is an opposite approach to that of the Emory iconoclast. Yet the redacted or defaced pictures in Bibb’s book similarly attest to a reader’s active rejection of oppression.
Los Angeles-based painter and video artist, Edie Beaucage, is committed to her direct and subjective imagination. She intends to create images in a vast spectrum of undefined categories, allowing vague ideas, inconclusive views, wobbly constructs, pleasure or sorrows, and fun to be included in the art conversation. This way, she actively opens up the critical discourse in new and different avenues.
At first glance, Vian Sora’s works look like cosmic implosions. Flat, organic forms act as viewfinders for boisterous textures that resemble bubbling, oozing acid; wet, dense cement; and hazy cosmic dust. But Subduction, the artist’s first solo exhibition at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, does not speak of intergalactic or otherworldly realms. Rather, it pertains to the entropic and ever-changing geological processes of the earth.
What makes Harris so special is her magical ability to create fantastical (and yet intimately familiar) works. These art pieces feel as though they’re fables, and we’re familiar with the characters and landscapes. Using a combination of photography, her own unique digital painting method, and acrylic, Harris stuns with large format artworks which are accessible across an array of viewers.
Three fine solo shows of paintings offer personal perspectives as unique as the artists who created them: Laura Krifka, Evita Tezeno, and Nancy Evans. Tezeno’s work is a delightful, vibrant mixed-media swirl of collage and acrylic. “My Life, My Story” is reminiscent of a quilt, a layered narrative of family life in which the textured mediums also convey the stories. Krifka’s “Still Point,” is a beautiful tribute to light, the human body, and the human heart. With domestic settings framing lustrous images, her stunningly accomplished work pulls at the heart and reaches the soul. Nancy Evans focuses on a celestial landscape rather than a human one in “Moonshadow.”
In Fleurs du mal, Evans moves from American Modernism to a post-apocalyptic version of American Regionalism, unsettling, ravishing and surreal. Within its potent symbolism, many American myths collide. Evans infuses Fleurs du mal with a poetic sense of ruin and devastation, but also with the possibility of renewal.
Tezeno creates scenes of everyday life that have a timeless quality. They could be images of now, or from the past. While representational, they have a folk art quality so they appear simple, yet complex simultaneously. The works are composites filled with an array of different materials. Whoever these figures may be, they round out Tezeno’s story and illustrate a vital community.
Fairgoers buzzed about work by Ukrainian artists at the Sapar Contemporary booth, or the pieces by local artist Evita Tezeno that had already been acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art, and gallerists—a mix of local and international—were eager to note the difference between Texas crowds and those at other fairs.
Taylor is among several artists who portray mirrored gazes. So does Melissa Ann Pinney in her public-bathroom photograph “Portrait of Jael” and Paul Mpagi Sepuya in a nude self-portrait in which he’s entwined with another unclad man, with the artist’s visage mostly hidden behind his camera. Even murkier are the faces in Laura Karetzky’s “Toast,” a painting that includes people reflected in, and distorted by, a chrome-clad toaster.
Lia Halloran’s work ‘Your Body is a Space That Sees’ is a series of cyanotype prints that source historical imagery to trace the contributions of women in astronomy from antiquity to the modern-day. Halloran’s work draws from narratives such as the historical accounts of Hypatia of Alexandria, and the work of a group of women at Harvard in the late 1800’s known as Pickering’s Harem or the Harvard Computers.
Moonshadow brings together the artist’s series of Moon paintings, painted between 2014 and 2020, for the first time. In a departure from her abstract practice, and a long career that encompasses performance, sculpture, painting, drawing, and sound elements, Evans’ cosmic paintings take inspiration from the sublime forces of nature which the artist has experienced throughout the course of her life in California, from her upbringing in California’s expansive and fertile Central Valley, to the raw and rugged Pacific Ocean coastline, and the high desert landscapes of Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley.
A story which is now being unboxed. Phung Hyunh is a Cambodian-American artist who came to America as a refugee. In her exhibit, "Doughnut (W)hole," at Self Help Graphics & Art in Los Angeles, she uses a pink doughnut box instead of a white canvas to capture a taste of the Cambodian-American refugee experience.
Occupying the opposite pole of painting are the socially engaged works of Karla Diaz at the Los Angeles gallery Luis De Jesus (Booth 5.03). Diaz’s deep, color-saturated canvases tell personal stories of migration from Mexico to the United States, as well as preserve folklore from her heritage.
The Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Program, which director Kelly Cornell told me was modeled after the Tate’s Outset program, utilized this year’s $125,000 grant to add ten new works to the Dallas Art Museum’s permanent collection—unexpected choices and classic beauties, like a homoerotic vase by Krzysztof Strzelecki called “Olympia” via Anat Ebgi, “Joy, Compassion, Generosity” by Texas native Evita Tenzeno via Luis De Jesus, and “Untitled (laborer)” by Kaloki Kyami via Keijsers Koning, which recently relocated from NYC to Dallas.
Like previous bodies of Krifka’s work, the domestic space is the container for these devious glances, yet there is always the allusion to an “out there” that is more scenic and wild. Several paintings subtly capture sunrise or sunset, the fading light visible in the painting’s background. Sink or Swim pictures a dim and banal kitchen sink that looks out to a lavish private beach. The fantasy always remains at a distance, trumped by the real. Everything But depicts a similar kitchen sink set into an unremarkable Formica countertop, but rather than peer out over a landscape, the sink looks out into a mirror that reflects the entire scene back at us, giving the viewer the uncanny ability to see what would be behind us in the painted scene.
At the Dallas Art Fair press preview yesterday morning, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) announced its acquisition of ten works of art, three of which are by Texas artists. These acquisitions are made possible by the Dallas Art Foundation + Dallas Museum of Art Acquisition Fund, which was established in 2016. Evita Tezeno, a Dallas-based mixed-media artist who is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, is the third Texas artist to have work acquired by the DMA from the Dallas Art Fair.
This May, the Baltimore Museum of Art will open an exhibit that explores the concept of transformation as artistic inspiration. Shapeshifting: Transformations on Paper will feature 35 prints, drawings, photographs, and artists’ books from the BMA’s collection that touch on ideas of renewal, shifting manifestations of identity, and classical myths. Shapeshifting features works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Margaret Burroughs, Paula Gately Tillman, Zackary Drucker, Saya Woolfalk, and many others.
Here’s a shortlist of recommended booths: global powerhouse Perrotin; iconic-to-cool NYC dealers Kasmin and Karma; European bastions of important discourse Hales Gallery, London, and Kerlin Gallery, in from Dublin; and L.A. outposts of cool Anat Ebgi, Louis Stern Fine Arts, Night Gallery, Luis De Jesus, and Various Small Fires (L.A., Seoul), which also unveils a permanent Dallas space timed to the opening of the fair. (We’ll be catching up with VSF’s Esther Kim Varet in the coming weeks for an in-depth profile.)
There’s something about Gabriel Sanchez’s work that’s almost addictive. Maybe it’s the serotonin-boosting colour palettes – something that’s been lacking here in the UK – or his ability to capture friendship, hope and intimacy. Either way, the audience are invited to learn more of the people he’s painting, whether it’s by listening in on a phone call or observing a trio (in the nude) as they peak over a wall.
Representing a variety of fields, 180 recipients of 2022 Guggenheim Fellowships were announced on April 7. The artists include Tyrone Ta-columba Aiken, Lisa Corrine Davis, Nathaniel, Donnett, June Edmonds, Mark Thomas Gibson, Lisa E. Harris, Alisha Wormsley, Autumn Knight (film/video), Ja'Tovia Monique Gary (film/video) and Gary Burnley (photography).
Artist Jackie Milad is motivated to memorialize her Honduran and Egyptian heritage as she considers the importance of authorship and dissemination of history. “JACKIE MILAD: Birth” consists of four large scale works that combine painting, drawing and collage on hand-dyed canvas, making visual references to creation myths of Ancient Egypt and Mayan civilization. Via “disparate” imagery, Milad contemplates her own mixed-cultural upbringing as well as the complexity of history-making.
Huynh hopes to uplift doughnut kids by centering their stories and experiences in her latest work. While history can benefit from a variety of perspectives, Huynh says that it can be problematic when those who exist only on the periphery are the sole authors of the past. “I really am against the whole American dream narrative — ‘Look at these Asians, they come here and they pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and they’re successful’ — because it demonizes purposely Black and brown folks. It also masks the extreme trauma that our parents faced and experienced, and how that trauma is passed down,” she says.
Equally lovely are the gilded, fantastical images of Harris’ A Season in the Wilderness. Infused with light and a sense of magic, Harris shapes boldly hued visuals myths both mysterious and captivating. With gold leaf elements that mirror that of Byzantine icons, Greenfield’s “A Survey, 2001-2021″ creates powerful paintings that subvert negative stereotypes about Black people and culture. Like Bey and Harris, a fierceness in palette matches passion for his subjects, serving as a framework for a message of pride, hope, achievement and sacrifice.
Huynh, a bubbly 44-year-old with black bangs sweeping across her face, created these portraits first by drawing her subjects in a style reminiscent of Pop Art, then silkscreening them, along with vintage family photographs, onto the pink cardboard donut boxes that have become emblematic of donut shops run by Cambodian-Americans. "These donut shops represent a cultural space where refugees and immigrants reshape their lives in the process of negotiating, assimilating and becoming American," Huynh writes.
Another such project is artist Ken Gonzales-Day’s Erased Lynching series. Since 2000, he’s been collecting and digitally manipulating photographs of lynchings, removing the victims’ bodies from the frame. The rationale, he says on his website, is that “by erasing the victim’s body I hoped to create a visual experience that would force the viewer to focus on the crowd, and in doing so, to address the underlying racism and bias that was so foundational to many of these acts of collective violence”.
"Donut (W)hole" expands on Huynh's earlier body of work portraying first-generation Khmericans on pink doughnut boxes using graphite pencil. A refugee herself, Huynh could relate to many of her subjects' experiences of hard work and persistence. Huynh's father fled the Cambodian genocide and eventually relocated to the United States from Vietnam with his family, but not before spending some time in a Thai refugee camp.
Every time I encounter Carlson Hatton’s work, I come away with distinct sensory experiences of each artwork’s components: paint, shadows, shapes, and objects—human or otherwise. A barrage of images, whether figures or scenes from his paintings, appear in my mind like past movies or dreams, to finalize his confluence of art and its impact.
“There’s a lot of body in this,” Hunt said. “We’ve all been through something pretty intense together as a global civilization. I’m interested in how that informs people moving through these presentations.” Examples of this include Amia Yokoyama’s sensuous ceramics of contorting, melting figures at Stanley’s and Diné artist Eric-Paul Riege’s hanging works constructed from fabric, faux fur, and hair that visitors can interact with at Stars. At Luis De Jesus, Rodrigo Valenzuela’s tightly composed photographs resemble Constructivist post-apocalyptic landscapes, devoid of people.
Odd machines, both weapon-like and suggestive of mechanical creatures, inhabit artist Rodrigo Valenzuela’s solo art installation called “New Works for a Post-Worker’s World” at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles gallery. Valenzuela’s large photo-based works play with the idea of the elimination of “workforce,” pushed aside by automatons that no longer require human operators. “To me, industrialization and the early labor union movement are a very integral part of the beginning of modernism,” Valenzuela said.
There is definitely a focus on featuring Black artists. There are a number of female group shows we’re seeing being presented. There are some really exciting artists. Evita Tezeno is showing with Luis De Jesus, and she’s actually from Dallas. Her work is incredible. And she’s really just getting the recognition that she deserves. So, we’re excited. And excited how her work hasn’t really been shown in Dallas before. So, I’m excited for an LA based gallery to show the work to an audience in Dallas.
To make the works in this show closing on Saturday, Rodrigo Valenzuela built a stage in his backyard on which he constructed haunting creations in metal. He then photographed his creations in black and white, often pumping in fog as he did so to enhance their eeriness, and printed the images himself. This exhibition presents two bodies of works, “Weapons” and “Afterworks,” in which menacing creations of welded scrap metal appear like futuristic torture devices or strangely alien machines that have outlived their purpose.
For instance, Rodrigo Valenzuela, who is a teacher at UCLA, is making incredible work right now. His practice looks at the working class and issues of labor, immigration and protest. Represented by Luis De Jesus gallery, he’s got a beautiful new book out and has put together a striking presentation for Focus.
In “Another Land” at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Ken Gonzales-Day invites viewers to face the ugliest parts of ourselves and our nation’s history: its legacy of racialized violence. This latest series of drawings is informed by Gonzales-Day’s extensive research into the history of lynching in the conquest of the Americas and are a continuation of his “Erased Lynching” series, in which he appropriates and reinvents historic lynching images and artworks.
Rodrigo Valenzuela. Industry, automation and displacement, along with workers’ struggles for unionization, are longtime interests of Valenzuela, whose photography and cast concrete sculptures will be on view at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles’ booth. Get familiar with the L.A.-based Chilean artist’s photography first, however, in “New Works for a Post-Worker’s World,” the downtown L.A. gallery’s first solo presentation of his work. Valenzuela is an assistant professor at UCLA, and his black and white images in the current show, the gallery writes, “suggest the roaring steel mills of the past, quickly abandoned once outdated, while also offering a retro futuristic vision in which workers and machines devised a better plan than their mutually assured futility.”
Lia Halloran traverses through mechanisms of experimentation in order to document motion of matter. As an interdisciplinary artist, Halloran examines the interconnectivity of scientistic cultures and the performance of light. Halloran recently presented Your Body is a Space That Sees at LAX Terminal 1, as well as a solo exhibition, The Sun Burns My Eyes Like Moons at Luis De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles. In this interview the artist deep dives into the creation of cyanotypes, her Dark Skate series, and the influences of mythology and science on her practice.
The American worker is having a moment. Headlines have declared the current power shift from employer to employee as “The Great Resignation” of twenty-four million people, and, for the first time in fifty years, unions in the United States are increasing in popularity, infiltrating some of the largest corporations. Indeed, one of the silver linings of this horrific pandemic has been this empowerment of the worker when automation and downsizing have eroded their perceived value for decades. Perhaps this is why Rodrigo Valenzuela’s first solo exhibition at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, RODRIGO VALENZUELA: New Works for a Post-Workers World, feels so timely and authentic.
Rodrigo Valenzuela's futuristic vision of a mechanical world devoid of humans is so ominous, it makes us shudder - much like the surrealist films of Luis Bunuel. Valenzuela creates poetry from rebellion in eerie factory scenes that are filled with sinister machines and scary automatons – yet there are no humans in sight or glimpses of nature, except the mist which creates a surreal light. We do not know why the humans have gone or why they have turned machines into dangerous weapons. Was there a revolution? These puzzling, dream-like images are left open for the viewer to interpret. They are so visually well-organized that the underlying aggression and paranoia is almost subliminally felt. As Valenzuela told me, they are “memories from the future.”
In their projection of a post-worker’s world, Rodrigo Valenzuela’s Afterwork series and Weapons series speaks to the elimination not only of individual laborers but of the idea itself of the work force, pushed aside by the very shapes we see here: odd machines and automation, engines that no longer require an operator, but that rage when no one is watching.
In Work for a Post Worker’s World, Rodrigo Valenzuela’s grayscale photographs feel like ominous apocalyptic factory scenes — pictures of invented machinery that, devoid of people, imply a future where the robots have taken over. A closer look, however, reveals familiar materials arranged in haphazard but careful compositions.
The new and temporary installations, include "Out of the Blue," a group show curated by John David O'Brien, in Terminal 7's art gallery and running through summer 2022. The solo exhibits, "Your Body is a Space That Sees" by Lia Halloran, in Terminal 1, and "Tumbleweeds" by Pontus Willfors in the customs hallway in the Bradley International Terminal. The latter two are on display through fall 2022.
Highlights include artists looking at labor and industry, such Rodrigo Valenzuela’s new series of performative photographs. These uncanny images invoke early steel production, when workers were treated as engines, while imagining a new relationship between man and machine in a post-worker’s world (showing with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles).
A new exhibition by Chilean artist Rodrigo Valenzuela explores the implications and philosophical consequences of what happens to laborers as technology and automation displace reorganize, and potentially destroy existing work environments. New Works for a Post-Worker’s World is the artist’s first solo exhibition, and it will be on display at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles (DTLA) now through Feb. 19.
And Chilean-born artist Rodrigo Valenzuela explores themes of labor and automation in several series of black and white photographs at Luis de Jesus Los Angeles. His exhibition, “New Work for a Post-Worker’s World,” runs through Feb. 19.
Especially illuminating is the article devoted to the personal collection of Ken Gonzales-Day. An artist who has long engaged photography and the history of California in his work (and who currently has a show on view at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles). Gonzales-Day has spent years gathering vernacular images of Latinos in Southern California in the period that spans the 1850s to the 1950s. California seems only to exist in the U.S. public imagination after becoming a state in 1850. Gonzales-Day’s collection reveals who was here when the U.S. military rolled in.
Rodrigo Valenzuela, Ken Gonzales-Day, Michael Kindred Knight at Luis De Jesus. Three concurrent solo exhibitions. Rodrigo Valenzuela’s New Works for a Post-Worker World speaks to the elimination not only of individual laborers but of the idea itself of the workforce. In Another Land, Ken Gonzales-Day presents a new series of drawings started in 2020 as part of a commission project for the Smithsonian’s Journal of the Archives of American Art. Michael Kindred Knight’s newest body of work, Guide Meridian, represents a progression in his approach to abstraction as complex pictorial events that are developed over time.
Ken Gonzales-Day, the Los Angeles-based visual artist best known for his Erased Lynching photographic series (2002-ongoing) and the related 2006 book, Lynching in the West: 1850-1935, has been researching and collecting Latinx photography spanning from the 1850s to the 1950s.
A new exhibition, We Are. . . Portraits of Metro Riders by Local Artists, is now on view in Union Station’s Passageway Art Gallery. Each rider portrait has a story that is personal and universal, intimate and immediate — and each is told by an artist with ties to neighborhoods served by Metro. Artwork by Carla Jay Harris will be included in the exhibition.
Karetzky plays with ideas of simultaneity and what is seen or inferred through painted visual illusions. The works concretize the sense of distance and isolation many felt during the pandemic, yet rather than see limitations, Karetzky explores possibilities.
Across town, in downtown L.A., Luis de Jesus Los Angeles has a trifecta of shows that engage architecture in different ways. Nicolas Grenier uses a labyrinth structure as a site for presenting diagrammatic paintings that chart questions of governance (and more metaphysical questions of color), while in a separate space, painter Laura Karetzky compellingly riffs on the nature of the window — as structure, but also as metaphor. In addition, artist Edra Soto dwells on the memories and social signifiers embedded in architecture, reproducing brise soileil structures typical of vernacular Puerto Rican design, but placing within them tiny transparency viewers that feature images of people and places.
A name unfamiliar to most will be June Edmonds. The Laband Art Gallery at Loyola Marymount University presents a thrilling solo exhibition serving as a forty-year survey of the Los Angeles-based artist. “June Edmonds: Full Spectrum” displays more than forty pieces made between 1980 and 2021, representing the first opportunity to offer attention to the artist’s lifelong commitment to portraying Black positivity in her artistic practice.
The exhibition includes 35 portraits celebrating the diversity of Metro's ridership, with transit riders of different ages, ethnicities and backgrounds included. Artwork by Carla Jay Harris will be included in the exhibition.
The fair will include two special sections. The first is Frieze Sculpture Beverly Hills, a new public art program that takes after similar ones in London and New York. That section will be staged in the nearby Beverly Gardens Park, where the works will be on view for three months. The second is Focus LA, which will focus exclusively on presenting one- or two-person presentations from L.A.-based galleries younger than 15 years old. Organized by Amanda Hunt, director of public programs and creative practice at the forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the section will feature Luis De Jesus, Charlie James Gallery, Parker Gallery, Garden, and Stars.
Los Angeles-based painter June Edmonds takes inspiration from the multiple inflections of the vesica pisces. Known for her large, abstract paintings depicting vibrant energetic wheels and neutral flags, Edmonds draws upon her meditation practice and American history — often highlighting the undertold chronicles of Black Americans — to create works that slow the viewer down, encouraging us to contemplate the myriad energies (and histories) coursing all around us.
Many of the artworks — including pieces by Zackary Drucker (self portait, above center), Josh Reames and Laura Krifka — were found at L.A.’s Luis De Jesus Gallery. “It’s really important to support working artists,” says Clayton.
In the tradition of 20 century great Romare Bearden, Texas native Evita Tezeno creates richly embellished collages depicting the same Black woman in a variety of situations, including the play of emotions she felt during the pandemic lock-down last year. Tezeno explores our limited lifespan, sheltering in place, and hopeful transformation. Collectors loved them; the NADA booth quickly sold all her work. // “Shattered Glass” tells an evocative story of strength by those often marginalized because of race, ethnicity and sexual identity through works such as Gabriel Sanchez’s “Babalao Pastor, Yoruba Priest.”
Dallas-based artist Evita Tezeno presents several new collage-based paintings that reflect on her experience living through the pandemic. They each present portraits of Black women holding various objects—a miniature house, a bountiful bowl of fruit. “There have been a lot of strong Black women in my life,” Tezeno said of the people she paints. The figures are all depicted with large eyes because, for the artist, “the eyes are the mirror of soul.”
Evita Tezeno brings out the joy in painting, through soft hues and bold figures evoking smiles and memories of time gone by.
Karetzky adeptly addresses this new convergence of human interaction and observation in her work. The notion of watching someone through a digital platform has largely influenced daily life because of social distancing — sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. Now, even as we peel our eyes away from these windows to re-enter our offices, schools and shopping centers, we all seem to be stuck between two windows.
In conjunction with the opening of Untitled Art Fair 2021, Miami’s non-profit art exhibition space Locust Projects kicks off Art Week with a public screening of local artist Antonia Wright’s And so with ends come beginnings, a contemplative video on sea-level rise that will play on a large screen floating off the shores of South Beach. Shot when the artist was nine months pregnant, the video is a metaphor for the dualities of ecstasy and anxiety of living in a paradise for ground-zero sea-level rise. Lummus Park, 1130 Ocean Dr, Miami Beach. Nov 29, 4–6pm.
With more than 250 galleries, including 43 first-timers based in countries from Uruguay to Zimbabwe, Art Basel Miami Beach might be the most renowned fair in town this week — but it’s by no means the only one. Untitled Art Miami Beach (November 29-December 4, 12th Street and Ocean Drive) is celebrating its 10th edition by inviting four curators to stage presentations at the show. Natasha Becker of the de Young Museum in San Francisco is uniting 11 galleries around the theme of black voices, while art historians Estrellita Brodsky and José Falconi have focused theirs on less traditional, more outlying ways of understanding the universe.
December is right around the corner and we’re happy to say Miami Art Week is back in grand fashion. This year’s Untitled Art Fair will be in keeping with the festive mood, too. The 10th edition of the event will also be the biggest it’s ever been, with over 145 international galleries exhibiting and a new section, Nest, which will aim to support emerging galleries, collectives, and non-profits. But there’s more. This year, Untitled has also tapped four powerhouse guest curators to create special themed shows within the fair: Natasha Becker, Miguel A. López, Estrellita Brodsky, and José Falconi.
Tracing her journey from figuration to abstraction, “Full Spectrum” at Laband Art Gallery surveys the practice of June Edmonds over the past 40 years. Edmonds was born in Los Angeles, where she continues to live and work. Over the years, consistently considered the complexity of the Black experience, through race and history. Early representational works are personal images of domestic scenes. More recently, Edmonds has employed a language of abstraction, utilizing shape, repetition, and color. She has explored little-known narratives of historic women, redlining, and the symbolism of the American flag. Providing the first opportunity to consider the full spectrum of Edmonds’s ouevre, more than 40 paintings and drawings, made between 1980 and 2021, are on view.
The post-pandemic era can offer rewarding challenges, as I found out when engaging in my first Zoom interview. I spoke with painter and educator June Edmonds on the occasion of her current 40-year retrospective at the Laband Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, and a simultaneous solo show at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
Nine years ago, June Edmonds made a painting that, if not an immediate turning point in the 40-year development of her work, nonetheless signaled a direction that has lately come into full flower. “Gee’s Jungle” (2012) is included in the aptly titled survey “June Edmonds: Full Spectrum,” at Loyola Marymount University’s Laband Art Gallery in Westchester. The painting is composed of about a dozen mandala-like geometric disks of saturated color — the full spectrum — rendered in short, thick strokes of dense paint, each laid on with controlled concentration.
“We,” Susan Silton’s first solo show with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, featured a suite of sixteen photographic prints of the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve in Northern California. Each black-and-white work presents two nearly identical views of coastal redwoods, resolutely earthbound trunks emerging from the grassy floor. Silton shot them on her iPhone; vantages capture clearings and the receding spaces of deep, dense groves that eschew the aperture of sky.
June Edmonds is known for large-scale, dynamic abstract paintings that pay homage to African American figures and historical events. The concurrence of her 40-year survey, June Edmonds: Full Spectrum at Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University and an exhibition of her recent work, Joy of Other Suns, at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is perfectly timed - during the current renaissance of Black art - for overdue critical recognition of her constantly evolving aesthetic style. The survey is accompanied by a 64-page catalogue with essays by Dr. Jill Monitz and Laband Art Gallery Director, Karen Rapp, that will be launched at the gallery in November and ensure her position in African-American art history.
Los Angeles-based artist Ken Gonzales-Day discussed his ongoing series, “Erased Lynching,” Thursday at the USC Fisher Museum of Art. Invited as part of the museum’s Fall 2021 exhibition “Art and hope at the end of the Tunnel,” Gonzales-Day talked about the history of lynching’s erasure in California, particularly of Latinx people.
A man dressed in brown stands before a row of trees, the color of his garments and the sturdiness of his posture evoking the solidity of the forest behind him. To his left, a fire eater spits flames into a tangerine sky. If this all sounds like a dream, well, it is. “El ´Árbol y el Tragafuegos” — “The Tree and the Fire Eater,” in English — was painted by Los Angeles artist Karla Diaz and it emerges from her dreams and her memories. The tree-man? That’s her, as a figure she once embodied in a dream. The fire eater was inspired by “Dragón,” a man — and actual fire eater — she knew from her family’s native village in the Mexican state of Colima. His real name was José and he hoped to one day become a truck driver.
Perhaps no artist of this year’s winners so starkly conveys the binational experience on both sides of the border quite like Hugo Crosthwaite. Blending fantastical elements and intimate portraiture, his drawings seem otherworldly, yet remain grounded in real-life issues. His work has been collected by everyone from the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego to National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.
A brand new exhibit has graced the Laband Art Gallery, "June Edmonds: Full Spectrum", which displays her best works from the past 40 years. The exhibit ranges from her first-ever oil painting to her most recent American flag collection –– but all pieces emphasize her commitment to Black positivity. For the past four years, Karen Rapp has been directing and curating the Laband Art Gallery for students and Westchester locals alike. “I became aware of June’s work a few years ago through her American flag paintings series for which she has received much acclaim. I wanted to present this 40-year survey of her career because she has been making stunning works from a Black feminist perspective that speak to everyone,” said Rapp.
The vibrant, curvilinear abstractions of June Edmonds have a backstory. Calling to mind travel routes and topographical mapping, her latest works explore race, history, and the Great Migration, paying tribute to Black female pioneers and early Southern California landowners. This gallery exhibition coincides with “June Edmonds: Full Spectrum,” a 40-year survey of Edmonds at Laband Art Gallery at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Edmonds also recently installed a mural in La Jolla, Calif., and she is giving the Russell Lecture at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego on Oct. 27.
Full Spectrum is a 40-year survey of the work of Los Angeles-based artist June Edmonds, who has spent her career “centering Black American experience.” The show spans early portraits of herself and other Black women, prefiguring contemporary painters of African-American domesticity like Jennifer Packer,through recent abstract compositions made up of hundreds of individual, distinct brushstrokes. Concurrently, Luis de Jesus will be staging a show of contemporary work by Edmonds, Joy of Other Suns, up through October 30.
Though the Fisher Museum features art of many different mediums (including amazing quilted tapestries and more abstracted collages), the exhibition excels most in its presentation of various portraits. The portraits displayed a range from Damian Elwes’ Basquiat-inspired canvas to Simon Toparovsky’s futuristic-looking cast aluminum busts and Ken Gonzales-Day’s collection of “Pandemic Portraits” depicting fellow artists, models and friends.
For a city that was once part of Mexico and nearly 50% of the Los Angeles population being Latinx, it’s fair to imagine that the number of art galleries, museums, and spaces showing Latinx work here would roughly mirror that number. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. That’s why, when Latinx Heritage Month rolled around this year, all of us at Curate LA felt the need to celebrate and shine a light on the Latinx artists, curators, and spaces working hard to close the gap. All month long, we’re featuring Latinx artworks, events, and exhibitions on our social media, newsletter, and website. To kick us off, here’s our list of 16 Latinx-owned museums, galleries, and art spaces in Los Angeles and our surrounding areas who you can show some love to this month.
In each of Carla Jay Harris’ photographic collages at Luis De Jesus in the Arts District, the artist drops us into an allegorical narrative that is frozen in time. In each, figures commune with each other in ethereal landscapes which layer washy color over mountain peaks and rock formations to imbue them a celestial atmosphere. Though based on photographs, Harris collages texture and pattern over her figures and landscapes, adding painterly gravitas to her scenes.
The four winners of the annual prize will collectively show off their latest works, which range from street-style pop-surrealism (PANCA) and Turkish-style ceramics (Beliz Iristay), to black-and-white drawings (Hugo Crosthwaite) and subversive paintings (Perry Vásquez). There will be an artist reception on Oct. 9 from 5 to 8 p.m.
THE FALL EXHIBITION SEASON is officially underway and some of the first new gallery shows to open feature five early- and mid-career artists to watch. Each has a unique visual voice. What unifies their latest work is a resonance with the contemporary moment. Deborah Roberts, Carla Jay Harris, and Brittney Leeanne Williamsare confronting hard truths about ourselves, our communities, and our democracies and considering the empowering effect and emotional toll of these realities on our children and on Black women, their bodies, in particular. Sculptural reliefs by LaKela Brown utilize an ancient art form to document the lives of contemporary women.
“I hope what the section does is show the complex nature of how each of us might envision the future,” says Wassan Al-Khudhairi, the curator of the Focus section at this year’s Armory Show. “The works are informed more by the idea of looking into the future as a place to start rather than making work ‘about the future’.” Works are often interdisciplinary, the curator says, and engage in notions of cross-cultural collaboration, environmental stewardship, mutualism, care and the power of communities coming together. Al-Khudhairi says she wants to “create a space that captures the ideas of a group of artists that consider the future in the context of our current conditions”. Carla Jay Harris’s series Celestial Bodies (2018-ongoing) at the Los Angeles gallery Luis De Jesus depicts ancient gods inhabiting the spaces where heaven meets earth, in the guise of peaceful and empowered Black characters.
Carla Jay Harris has long used mythology in her work as a tool to make sense of reality. Her series “Celestial Bodies” (2018–20) reflects her personal experiences as an American kid growing up outside the United States, picturing Black and Brown protagonists navigating mystical landscapes. Her newest pieces, featured at The Armory Show and in her current solo show with Luis de Jesus Los Angeles, “A Season in the Wilderness,” build upon her earlier body of work, responding to the circumstances of the pandemic and the social and political unrest that ensued.
It was also exhilarating to visit the post-pandemic expansions of Anat Ebgi Gallery and Luis de Jesus Gallery, both of which have relocated and expanded their programs. Carlson Hatton’s must-see exhibition of dynamic, multi-layered paintings in one gallery room at Luis de Jesus, navigates complex detours and returns by combining dense patterning, intricate figuration and subtle marking in emotionally-charged, vibrant colors.
Last summer, with art fairs on indefinite hold and museums shuttered, former art fair director Helen Toomer saw an opportunity to bring together the art community safely in upstate New York’s Hudson Valley, where she and husband Eric Romano run the Stoneleaf Retreat artist residency in Eddyville. Last year, the inaugural Upstate Art Weekend invited visitors to explore 23 art spaces throughout the region. This year, there are 61 participants, ranging from Storm King and Dia Beacon toward the south up to galleries in Hudson and Art Omi in Ghent, furthest from the city. Stoneleaf is presenting solo exhibitions from Hiba Schahbaz and Liz Collins, plus site-specific projects by Lizania Cruz, Macon Reed, and Rebecca Reeve.
“The future is happening. It is limitless,” Transparent producer Zackary Drucker said. “I think that the trans and nonbinary community have tools to offer everybody — tools for survival, tools for self actualization that are invaluable. Our stories are universal. They’re not at all niche.”
Emmy-nominated artist and filmmaker Zackary Drucker (“This Is Me,” “Transparent”), who made her longform directorial debut earlier this year with the HBO documentary series “The Lady and the Dale” and serves on the Outfest board, returns to the festival she credits with fostering her development as an artist and subsequent leap from the experimental art world to a film and television career.
For this iteration of the exhibition, which debuted at the National Portrait Gallery in 2019, artists were invited to respond to current social and political contexts. First Prize was awarded to Hugo Crosthwaite for his “A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez” (2018), a stop-motion drawing animation that recounts a young woman’s journey from Tijuana, Mexico, to the United States.
Flags have a history as a contentious subject in art, probably because of their lasting grip on our political imaginations. In 1970, for instance, three artists were convicted of flag desecration in New York, and in 1988, Dread Scott sparked controversy by layinga U.S. flag on the ground. I thought of those incidents when seeing “Counter Flags,” curated by Natalia Viera Salgado, a co-founder of the art space Pública in Puerto Rico and a resident at Abrons Arts Center. The exhibition is a mini philosophical inquiry into flags as symbols of nationalism, with attendant pride and critique. Edra Soto and the duo Melissa Raymond and René Sandín contribute eye-catching celebrations of Puerto Rican culture, although a version of Soto’s work, “Tropicalamerican 21” (2021), was recently and more evocatively displayed on Governors Island, where it blew in a sunroom, accompanied by music.
The newest installation in the Murals of La Jolla project is a highly saturated abstract painting by prestigious LA-based artist June Edmonds. Edmonds completed her undergrad at San Diego State. This piece is based upon Henrietta VanHorn-DeBose, who was the first African-American woman to settle in La Jolla, beginning in the early 1900s, and ultimately Henrietta and her husband Thomas DeBose would own multiple properties along Draper Ave.
“What are we looking at?” You hear that (usually rhetorical) question a lot in art galleries and design houses – also in accounting firms, screening rooms, at construction sites, and (really) business meetings of any kind – frequently spoken with some impatience. (We’re always in a hurry here, even as we’re telling ourselves to slow down – which is what this question is actually asking for permission to do.) It is understood that what is referred to here is a presentation, or representation of the actuality, the thing, what we all agree to agree is the reality. How we may think about that agreed-upon actuality or reality becomes a matter of both methodology and attitude.
With the majestic radiance of stained glass windows, the cosmic imagery of planetarium ceiling murals, the fractal arabesques of primordial soup, and the precise geometrical armatures of ancient architectural motifs, a suite of four cyanotypes at monumental scale by Lia Halloran — actually two cyanotypes and their corresponding 1:1 scale hand-painted negatives — are made both by and about the power of the sun.
Multidisciplinary American artist Carla Jay Harris also began to incorporate mystical ideas into her work due to her personal experience. “In my larger art practice, I always start with something going on in my personal life,” Harris explained. “And after graduate school, I felt a bit sort of adrift. Looking at mythology and spirituality was my own way to ground myself. And that’s what really got me into it.”
The mysterious, slowly-unfolding plot kept me off-balance and deeply absorbed. The disjointed, imaginative visual style suggests pop music videos more than any conventional opera video I’ve ever seen,and works marvelously well; great credit for this to director of photography Michael Elias Thomas, production designer Yuki Izumihara, and lighting designer Pablo Santiago. James Darrah, Zackary Drucker, Joy Kecken, and Raviv Ullman directed. Costumes are by Molly Irelan. The Boston Lyric Opera Orchestra provided the instrumental soundtrack, conducted by David Angus.
“My approach to diversity has been an organic one,” says Luis De Jesus, owner of the eponymous gallery downtown. “Being Puerto Rican, a person of colour and a gay man, I’ve always been conscious of the need to support artists of diverse backgrounds and perspectives.” He names grassroots galleries and museums that have tirelessly held a place for Latinx art, among them La Plaza De Cultura Y Artes, the Museum of Latin American Art and the Latino Arts Network.
As a child, artist Hugo Crosthwaite spent a lot of time hanging out in his father's curio shop in Rosarito, Mexico. It was there that the seeds were planted for his particular approach to art. "That's where I learned English, by just interacting with American tourists," Crosthwaite said. "I would tell them stories about a little ceramic idol and I would make up stories about 'Oh, this is Tlaloc, the god of rain.' It wasn't."
My bias in art appreciation leans toward figuration/realism. I like abstraction particularly when it informs the emotional nature of realism. Carlson Hatton is a terrific painter. The “armature” for his painting is the figure/realism which he then emotionally deconstructs by abstraction. Hatton’s talent portends ever better painting to be seen in LA.
The latest work in the Murals of La Jolla public art program, June Edmonds’ “Ebony on Draper and Girard,” was completed July 19. Unlike other murals that are printed out and hung on a building, this one was painted on a three-story column over several days on the alley-facing side of 7724 Girard Ave.
For Los Angeles-based artist June Edmonds, the in-production “Ebony on Draper and Girard” mural is about more than making a three-story statement on the alley-facing side of 7724 Girard Ave. in La Jolla. It’s a salute to Black women and their role in La Jolla’s development.After completing a mural inspired by Maria Valdez, the first Afro-Latina woman to own property in Beverly Hills, Edmonds was invited to create a piece for the Murals of La Jolla public art program. She researched names such as Henrietta VanHorn-DeBose and Carrie Coleman, who were among the first to own property on Girard and Draper avenues.
Now my friends, brace yourselves for a “sublime cosmic phenomenon” of the exhibition by maverick, Los Angeles artist, Lia Halloran (b. 1977) at Luis De Jesus Gallery. The exhibition title, The Sun Burns My Eyes Like Moons, refers to photographs Halloran took during the total solar eclipse in 2017. This body of work is her homage to the sun.Halloran’s large-scale cyanotypes are produced through exposure to the sun. Each cyanotype panel is a unique positive imprint that occurs by placing translucent paper under the sun that acts like negative film absorbing light. Saturated with blues, black and pops of color, Halloran’s painting “evokes the overwhelming grandeur and luminosity of the sun.”
The show features the arresting, large-scale cyanotypes of L.A.-based artist Lia Halloran along with their painted negatives. The mesmerizing work in the show is an homage to the sun, but instead of bright yellows and oranges that radiate light, Halloran’s suns are that rich, deep-sea blue that is created through the cyanotype process. Her suns are almost amoeba-like, swirling and erupting with captivating line work that reach out like tentacles. Halloran integrates scientific concepts into her studio practice by researching solar eclipse expeditions and ancient Egyptian temple reliefs.
But the most visceral work in this exhibition goes to Antonia Wright and “Suddenly We Jumped,” a 14-second video documenting the artist being thrust into a sheet of glass. The result is expectedly dangerous and unexpectedly beautiful. The piece accompanies “MAP,” her photograms of glass panes the artist shattered with a hammer—Wright’s furious and reasonable response to the police killings of unarmed Black people in 2020.
For Smith, it’s a thrill to be included in the show. “I studied some of these artists when I was in grad school.” she says. “Some of them were my first introductions to what the possibilities were for being a Black artist—that you didn’t have to be this one type of artist making this one type of work; that we could be expansive, complicated, and not monolithic in our approach.”
The 2021 Acquisitions artists include Cara Despain, Susan Lee-Chun, Nicolas Lobo, Reginald O'Neal, Marielle Plaisir, Jamilah Sabur and Antonia Wright. A jury comprised of Miami and nationally-based curators, Tami Katz-Freiman, Omar Lopez-Chahoud and Larry Ossei-Mensah, helped select the diverse group of both established and emerging artists from a pool of more than 500 artists who are current residents or alumni of Oolite's programs. Oolite Arts purchases new works each year through its Acquisitions program.
The 2021 Acquisitions artists include Cara Despain, Susan Lee-Chun, Nicolas Lobo, Reginald O’Neal, Marielle Plaisir, Jamilah Sabur and Antonia Wright. A jury comprised of Miami and nationally-based curators, Tami Katz-Freiman, Omar Lopez-Chahoud and Larry Ossei-Mensah, helped select the diverse group of both established and emerging artists from a pool of more than 500 artists who are current residents or alumni of Oolite’s programs. Oolite Arts purchases new works each year through its Acquisitions program.
Hatton's latest body of work explores the psychological and physical terrain of the post-pandemic world.
Zackary Drucker: Aimee Goguen, 38
"To me, Aimee Goguen’s work unlocks a limitless and imaginative internal universe. It spans genres and is truly masterful in every form. She is an abject visionary and a prolific artist’s artist in Los Angeles."
Or the cyanotype frames (photographic procedure) by Antonia Wright, who “integrates and combines her body and that of a palm tree, forming a union between the human body and nature,” Mitrani pointed out.
The works included in the show feature re-imaginings of ancient mythology with contemporary issues. A painting called Bus Stop (Leda and her Cygnets) become a parable for gun violence. Adams often features himself in his work, portraying himself as Zeus with a freaky looking grizzly bear. The work is a wonderful reminder that figurative painting is not only relevant, it’s ferocious. His images stare straight out from the canvas, locking you into their gaze. But before the relationship becomes a virtual stare-down, humour, compassion and joyous surrealism disrupt the intensity. Liberation ensues.
I create self-portraits often and especially when something extraordinary is happening. This was the first time I got fillers injected and I loved the bruising on my face. I do participate in Pride but I don’t believe it’s a value that we should elevate. I think of pride as conceit and have expunged pride from my life in order to not be vulnerable to shame. The only way to not have any shame is to not have pride and to find humility.
In the group exhibition Painting the Narrative at the National Arts Club in New York City the artist Dee Shapiro brings together six contemporary artists who explore content and form of narrative painting ranging from interiors to landscapes, personal to imagined, realistic to fantastic. Featured artists: Jennifer Coates, Laura Karetzky, Judith Linhares, Ernesto Renda, Kyle Staver, and George Towne. The show runs through June 28th.
"Solmi reimagines these figures as devilishly smiling partiers, who are unconcerned with the people – particularly Native victims of colonialist action – who are trampled over by their revelry. The show, through all its varied mediums, points a finger towards the rampant deification of these historical figures despite the atrocities and pain they perpetuated and profited from."
This unique group exhibitions features recent works of 32 established and emerging artists, manyare exhibiting at the gallery for the first time. The exhibition encompasses a variety of media, scale, and modes of presentation, with artworks that address themes of cultural resilience, the articulation of marginalized histories, and the significance of embodied knowledge.
THE SHOPHOUSE gallery in Hong Kong is pleased to present group exhibition “I & the ME” by Anders Lindseth, Iabadiou Piko, Josh Reames, Julian Watts, Kour Pour, Mahsa Tehrani, Osamu Kobayashi, Yves Scherer and Zhang Ji. Participating artists are invited to create two works, one representing “I”, the subjective side of the artists evaluating themselves. Another piece about “Me” – the objective side of themselves shaped by the market, exploring how artists rover around today’s art world.
"The real showstoppers — Solmi’s video paintings — are situated in the main gallery. Created using a unique synthesis of painting, drawing, 3D digital animation, gaming, screen recording and motion capture software, each video is developed through a process that may take up to three years to complete. Seeking to achieve what he views as a humanizing of artificial looking digital imagery, Solmi scans the textures of hand-drawn or painted figures, objects, and settings, and maps the scans over digital skeletons, the blueprint-like imagery that is created using animation software. Motion is incorporated by capturing movements that he and his assistants create in the studio. In this way he creates compositions that resemble expressionistic figurative paintings brought to life. "
Ken Gonzales-Day is among the artists included in “Photo Flux: Unshuttering LA” at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition opens when Getty Center re-opens on May 25, and will be on view through October 10. “Photo Flux” features pictures by 35 Los Angeles-based artists who challenge ideals related to beauty, representation, cultural capital and objectivity. It was curated by jill moniz.
"My paintings seems spontaneous, but it is not so unexpected, considering the amount of work I do before engaging in a series. I can think about a subject for months before I paint it. I obsessively accumulate many images in my notebooks around a topic. Afterward, in the studio, it is momentarily translated into paint. I know what I want to paint, and then I let the images develop and let them flow. I discover my pictures as I paint them, and I love the surprise of this process. "
“The mythology of the Wild West as being somehow different from the history of lynching is the first part of the problem,” Gonzales-Day said when I asked for his thoughts in light of his work. “There’s this sense that the lynchings here weren’t how it happened in the South. So the invisibility of those cases is just repeated by counties, governments, and by individuals and schools.”
Ken Gonzales-Day’s large-scale digital print Monumental Vision: Labor/Lenin(2020) is a pigment print on vinyl itself at a monumental scale, which considers the fate of discarded sculptural testaments to Soviet rule in the implicit context of toppled Confederate monuments in the U.S. and indeed, the altars to violent colonialism that pollute so much of the world.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles has moved his gallery to Mateo Street in DTLA. His space is now heroic in size. Federico Solmi inaugurates the gallery. Solmi dominantly uses computing processes to produce his extravagant morality play films/videos. There are so many skillful layers from the unique painted frames that surround the video monitors to the “films” themselves. I must call his films, films. The word “video” is too simple to describe the depth and nuance of Solmi’s art. The opportunity to experience Solmi’s work wearing Virtual Reality goggles is beyond wondrous. A peak experience. Take this opportunity while you can.
Solmi’s recurring subject is the knowing abuse of power, and he has a bleak and urgent message for us regarding this particularly agonizing moment in history: it has happened before, it will happen again, and there is very little within our power to stop it. Bucking convention, Solmi even sees it from the perspective of the aggressors, whose greatest wish is to wall themselves off from the rest of us, the better to enjoy the fruits of their plunder.
Our impulse to tell stories is as human as the need to consume them. It shouldn't come and go like a new trend. That's why I was so surprised to learn that the art world had rejected narrative art until recently.
Evita Tezeno’s mixed media collages are folksy images crafted from colorful and patterned paper. On view are both close cropped portraits and full-bodied figures with exaggerated features who often appear in flowery fields of green, a cheerful setting that contrasts with the works’ titles. While the images pay homage to artists like Romare Bearden, Tezeno’s whimsical representations feel like fairytales filled with determined, loving and compassionate figures. Through evocative titles such as “The Soul Knows My Silence,” “My Dreams Make Me Who I Am,” and “My Life Tells Where I Have Been,” Tezeno evokes the plight and struggles of her subjects.
On view now in the Taschen Family Gallery, Transformations: Living Room -> Flea Market -> Museum -> Art examines how a political watershed moment, the fall of the Berlin Wall, initiated a radical change in the perception of art and culture. The show presents the metamorphosis of objects from everyday life through discarded flea market items to museum pieces, where they finally become sources of artistic inspiration. Transformations includes materials from the Getty Conservation Institute as well as works by contemporary artists Chelle Barbour, Ken Gonzales-Day, Farrah Karapetian, Richtje Reinsma, Daphne Rosenthal, Jennifer Vanderpool, and Bari Ziperstein.
Federico Solmi will feature VR art, video paintings, paintings and drawings in the inauguration exhibition of Luis De Jesus Los Angeles's new gallery in the DTLA Arts District.
In his “Profiled” project, artist and art historian Gonzales-Day has mined the collections of established museums such as J. Paul Getty and the Smithsonian, among others, photographing portrait busts exploring Western assumptions about beauty and human value through the material legacies of slavery, colonialism and white privilege.
Five years ago, in the spring of 2017, Surrey Art Gallery featured Adams’ work in “The Irretrievable Moment,” the biggest exhibition of his career. The title reflected the tone and nature of his art, which curators said “combines historical events with speculative futures, real people in imagined situations, and mythological people in contemporary scenarios.” Meantime, the ongoing pandemic hasn’t really changed the way Adams paints at his home studio.
A few weeks ago I talked about the solo exhibition, Better Days, at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles by Dallas based artist Evita Tezeno. Her collage paintings on canvas and rag board introduce you to a variety of characters in everyday life. And what interesting characters they are…Sunday was the last day of the exhibition, and Tezeno flew to Los Angeles to hold a private reception for its closing. I asked her if the characters in her paintings are based on real people. Does she photograph them first? To my surprise, her answer was no. She paints from memory, inspired by family, friends and neighbors. For me, it was another example of how a conversation with an artist deepens the experience of their work.
Despite the artist’s more provocative paintings that attempt to provide social commentary about Cuba, it is when Sanchez’s attention is truly focused — in his reverential tribute to his wife, “Laura” (2020), for example — that the viewer is compelled to start paying attention, too. The exquisite amount of tenderness he takes, with each tendril of her hair, the exact purse of her lips, even the wisps of her lower eyelashes, is a reminder that paying attention to others is sometimes the most radical act of all.
Like transplanting skin, interdisciplinary artist Edra Soto inserts her replicas of vernacular Puerto Rican architectural forms, namely the wrought iron rejas screens and concrete quiebrasoles ubiquitous on the island, into new spaces throughout the Americas in her ongoing GRAFT series. The migration of these forms becomes a metaphor for literal migration, raising issues of colonization, identity, and family in works that stretch wall-to-wall across galleries spaces or become free-standing structures, such as Screenhouse—her public commission for Chicago’s Millennium Park on view through April 2022.
Her characters possess overwhelming pride in their surroundings, their loved ones, and the attention paid to how they represent themselves. Viewing Tezeno’s lively colored work replicates a leisurely drive through a small Black town, encountering its most fascinating figures, passing by shotgun houses and acres of green landscape or leafing through an old family photo album and seeing mixed-media collage versions of beloved relatives on page after page.
Evita Tezeno's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Better Days, features colorful collage paintings that depict a cast of black and brown characters in harmonious and joyful everyday scenes inspired by the artist's life, memory & dreams.
And at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown, the Mexican-American artist Ken Gonzales-Day is placing photographs of sculptures of human figures in display cases, encouraging viewers to reckon with definitions of beauty and race. Those displays are part of rotating public art series organized by the artist, activist, and writer Avram Finkelstein and the set and costume designer David Zinn.
Capturing artists, writers, photographers, dancers, and opera singers living and working in Cuba, Gabriel Sanchez’s exhibition at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is dedicated to the Cuban avant-garde community from the perspective as a first-generation Cuban-American. “Mirando Al Mundo” (Looking at the World) documents the artist’s creative contemporaries—often naked, or isolated against solid colored backgrounds or blue skylines—with inquisitiveness and sensitivity. In the press release, Sanchez reveals many of his models are openly gay in a country that stifles #LGBTQ expression, yet are willing to tell their stories through his paintings. The exhibition is an empowering portrayal of a generation who are stripped bare of garb and fable in order to redefine an abstruse reality.
Carla Jay Harris developed her “Celestial Bodies” series, which features mythological female figures, to reflect on the universal notion of belonging.
As the planet enters the beginning of a post-pandemic, post-Trump administration era, it was wonderful to be baptized in optimism from Evita Tezeno’s exhibition, “Better Days” at the Luis De Jesus Los Angeles gallery. One sweeping taste of these works results in a single message: Tezeno’s unique voice reflects a masterful synthesis of several groundbreaking aesthetic approaches that pay tribute to Black culture in her use of acrylic mixed-media collage on rag paper.
Employing richly patterned hand-painted papers and found objects in a contemporary folk-art style, Evita Tezeno’s colorful collage paintings on canvas and rag board depict a cast of characters in harmonious everyday scenes. Inspired by her family and friends, childhood memories in South Texas, personal dreams and moments from her adult life—and influenced by the great 20th century modernists Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, and William H. Johnson—scenes of joy animate her vision of a Black America filled with humanity.
Reames views the visual complexity of his paintings as a strength, rather than being willfully cryptic for its own sake. "There can be moments of discovery or ahas down the road,” Reames says. “All the artwork that I live with, I typically will discover new things in it down the line, and that’s a really important experience for me — the kind of experience I want other people to have with it.”
From his fascination with flying to his desire to see the world in its totality from space, [Jim] Adams’s decades-long art pursuit seems as much about the scope of his journey as a Black man moving through time and mapping the coordinates of pleasure and meaning as it is about the paintings those experiences have produced. This is the visual literacy we need to engage now, so that instead of performing allyship through what’s trending, viewers come to understand how Black diasporic people, and specifically, one Black man, might interpret identity and mobility vis-à-vis painting.
Tezeno uses collage and vibrant colors to tell a visual narrative of her life experiences. “I hold close the memories of days gone by. I relish the time before there were Wi-Fi, cell phones and so many other technological visual distractions,” says the artist in her statement.
Beyond being eye-catching, some of the works reflect the times we are living in. Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares’ light installation “Yes/No” was inspired by the protests against racial injustice that have been happening for years and came to the forefront in 2020.
Evita Tezeno and Jas Mardis speak with Good Morning Texas about their show Sharing Memories, currently on view at Art Centre of Plano.
My paintings are a celebration of positive contemporary possibilities. In an era of mass-media thought-coercion, my work is committed to the preservation of intellectual and spiritual independence. I invest my seemingly whimsical subjects with genuine purpose, presence, and the intense assuredness of self-realization. My vibrant portraiture of moments and my casual characters alert the viewer to the urgent need to develop, express, and celebrate the saving force of indelible personality. My process involves gathering images and arranging storyboards from a broad array of sources ranging from Venice street life, to a multitude of paintings and photography in art history; to the contemporary art scene.
In the Profiled series, Gonzales-Day recontextualized sculptures by putting them in conversation only with other sculptures- and the fraught spaces between them. Not dissimilar to theater, his Profiled works tell complex, socially layered stories by simply placing human figures together across empty space. Gonzales-Day describes, "I wanted to take these existing objects and give them a voice, a chance to be in dialogue with us and with each other across time. They're from different periods, they're from different places, some are identified, some are unidentified, which speaks to questions of who has a voice and who is denied a voice, who is represented and who is denied representation.
But, it’s not all international artists. Illuminate includes local flavor. Antonia Wright, artist: “We are so excited to be a part of Illuminate Coral Gables. It’s just a really uplifting and inspiring exhibition that questions the medium of light.” Ruben Millares, artist: “We love how they all integrate, and you can see them across all of downtown Coral Gables, so no matter where you are you get a nice visual of one or several of the pieces.”
Pacific Standard Time will include dozens of simultaneous exhibitions and programs focused on the intertwined histories of art and science, past and present, that together address some of the most complex challenges of the 21st century—from climate change and environmental racism to the current pandemic and artificial intelligence—and the creative solutions these problems demand.
Although Adams casts Black men and women in the role of classical heroes and deities, his work isn’t only a commentary on current events and geopolitics. Adams’ practice also captures dramatic skyscapes, planetary eclipses, and astral constellations that are apolitical and ahistorical. By connecting mythic subjects, modern-day people, and dream-like settings in his paintings, Adams uncovers qualities of our nature that have remained the same throughout time.
Evita Tezeno has exhibited at the ArtCentre previously, and this time will be showcasing her Cubism-inspired collages. Evita works with handmade paper, acrylic paint and found objects. Her work has been lauded by entertainers, media personalities and professional athletes for its use of color, texture and shapes. She has been commissioned by the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans, the Deep Ellum Film Festival and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
“Eternal Witness” is a show emblematic of the endless pertinence of history. Adams maintains that history is just as relevant today as it ever was when it was happening. The scenarios may change but he pursues the notion that the ideas driving humanity, for instance, the glorification of war or striving for power, remain persistent throughout time. The pyramid, a common structure throughout this series, remains a pinnacle of historic monuments that are significant in themselves but also carry individual projections. In Eternal Symbol 1996, the structure of cosmic proportions that has sparked conspiracy theories about its origins is positioned in an orangey burnt sienna background high above dusts of a cerulean blue sky.
The two first met at a party in California for Stephen Hawking. Levin had written about the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Kip Thorne in her 2016 book Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, and the Los Angeles–based Halloran—an associate professor of art at Chapman University whose work is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles—had been working with Thorne on a decade-in-the-making mix of writing and art about what she called “the warped side of the universe” (to be published next year by W. W. Norton & Company).
Eternal Witness marks Jim Adams' first solo exhibition with the Gallery. The exhibition will present new paintings and sketches completed over the last four years along with a selection of works dating to the turn of the millennium.
The exhibition presents new paintings and sketches completed over the last four years along with a selection of works from the 1990s and 2000s. Philadelphia born Adams has lived in Canada since the 1970's and at age 78, this marks his first solo exhibition in the United States in over 45 years.
Jim Adams, an artist based out of British Columbia, presents a collection of paintings and drawings mostly drawn from a series named Mythic Sketches. The artist is interested in how myths, “both classic and obscure,” still represent the realities and struggles we undergo today: “jealousy, ambition, hubris, greed, and the glorification of warfare.” His images carry signs of ancient Egyptian pyramids and ruins, but his subjects are updated for the times: all heroes and deities wear 21st-century garb.
Mr. Olujimi’s portrait series starts sober, the early entries often literal, in black or blue ink. But soon he was applying color washes, emphasizing traits, blurring others, doubling or tripling his subject’s likeness. With rich colors and deconstructive verve in the later portraits, the series recalls a jazz piece that improvises on a theme toward a raucous, polyphonal resolution.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles has revealed works by its artists that have recently added to museum collections. The Nasher Museum in Durham, North Carolina, acquired Peter Williams‘s 2020 painting Birdland; the Baltimore Museum of Art acquired photos from two series, “Relationship” and “Before and After,” by Zackary Drucker; Federico Solmi‘s video installation The Great Farce Portable Theater was acquired by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; Edra Soto’s installation Open 24 Hours is now held in the collection of the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago; and five works by Erik Olson have been acquired by the Art Gallery of Alberta in Calgary, Canada. Additionally, the gallery announced that Lia Halloran has been named a 2020–21 City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellow. As such, Halloran will be awarded a $10,000 grant to produce a new body of work.
Mary Salvante, the director of Rowan Universtiy Art Gallery and curator of this exhibition art titled "The Bacchanalian Ones," by Federico Solmi, which will include virtual reality and augmented reality works.
The Rowan University Art Gallery offers a couple of reasons why people should make an appointment during a pandemic to see its newest exhibition, “The Bacchanalian Ones” by Federico Solmi, in person. The exhibition provides a rare opportunity in South Jersey to see art enhanced by augmented and virtual reality.
In other words, Hyde forces us to look with fresh eyes through visual propositions that challenge our habits of seeing. At times he achieves astonishing poetry. A good example in the show is Goddess (2020), which brings together acrylic and acrylic dispersion painted over an inkjet print. The painting reads as abstract, until you begin to notice the presence of the photographic image beneath. However, Hyde obviates any attempt to clearly interpret this image by painting over it.
The show also features work by June Edmonds, André Hemer, Kambui Olujimi, and Edra Soto. This Saturday, December 19, all six participating artists will be talking about “making art during a year unlike any other”in a Zoom conversation moderated by Luis De Jesus and Lindsay Preston Zappas, editor-in-chief of CARLA. While we sorely miss in-person events, remote talks like this one make it easier for all artists to participate, so don’t miss this rare occasion.
Federico Solmi’s timely solo exhibition here, “The Bacchanalian Ones,” interrogates the greed and corruption of world leaders both past and present. The artist’s paintings and multimedia installations caricature his famous (and often infamous) subjects—from the realms of politics, religion, the military, and the aristocracy—by combining digital technology with the most traditional of media. Solmi’s acidic portraits reveal these renowned figures for what they really are: soulless prevaricators crazed by power.
Unreachable Spring takes its title from the eponymous painting by Laura Krifka. The painting was slated to be featured as the sole work in her first Viewing Room on the gallery website, accompanied by an essay by the writer and art critic Andrew Berardini. Laura began the painting in late March—within days of the start of the Covid lockdown in the U.S., and shortly after learning that she and her husband were expecting their first child. By summer it had become clear to us that it was the lede for a deeper exploration of ideas and subject matter.

Ken Gonzales-Day is a Los Angeles-based artist whose interdisciplinary practice considers the historical construction of race and the limits of representational systems ranging from lynching photographs to museum displays. He is a professor of art at Scripps College in Claremont, CA where he has taught since 1995. Gonzales-Day’s Erased Lynching series features photos of lynching postcards where he removes, or 'erases,' the victims in order to focus on the white crowds gathered to witness the murders.
When I set out to write this piece on women fiber artists in the Hudson Valley, I didn't recognize the brazen naivete of my quest. Fiber is not like paint—it is not a single material. It is terrycloth and leather, polyester batting and velvet, microfiber, fur, wool roving, cotton thread, raw silk, muslin, burlap, tulle. And that is just a sampling of what artists in this "medium" are working with to create sculpture and three-dimensional drawings, site-specific installations, and wall-mounted works. I tried to find a through line with the historical aspect of women's fiber and textile crafts, but some were rejecting it, some were carrying the torch, and some were indifferent. So rather than try to find a neat container that encompasses this beautiful gamut of creators, I would rather simply say: Behold these splendid, talented artists creating utterly distinctive and beautiful work that makes use of fiber.
BRIC has announced the ten winners of its second annual Colene Brown Art Prize, which awards $10,000 to New York-based artists yet to receive institutional support.
Of the 2020 recipients, Zachary Fabri, Christophe Roberts and Scherezade Garcia are based in Brooklyn. The other winners are: Caitlin Cherry, Nate Lewis, Joiri Minaya, Kambui Olujimi, Erwin Redl, Naomi Safran-Hon and Michelle Segre.
Montreal-based painter Nicolas Grenier places recognizable diagrammatic shapes in colourful gradients to mimic political affiliation graphs and charts. While viewing the artwork, visitors are provided with an Approval Matrix sheet—via PDF for online visits—to map their positions on the current state of the world and where it’s headed.
The New York–based Joan Mitchell Foundation has named the twenty-five artists who are recipients of this year’s Painters & Sculptors grants, which are meant to assist artists making exceptional work and who are seen as deserving greater national recognition. Each grantee will receive $25,000 in unrestricted funds. The foundation, which was formed in 1993 to celebrate and expand the abstract painter’s vision, noted in a statement that it felt especially compelled to make the awards this year, given the current landscape in which artists are operating.
At Luis De Jesus in Culver City, a group show gathers a loose array of artworks that were made in response to recent events. With so many crises affecting our country, the work diverges in focus, addressing a range of issues: pandemic’s loneliness, the toppling of monuments, and the lives lost to police brutality. Unusually, the gallery has included artist statements next to each artwork, allowing the viewer into the thinking behind each work, and providing a connective personal tone across the exhibition
While group shows can sometimes lack a coherent vision, this one seems worth a trip. All of the works were made during the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from bitingly political paintings to beautiful reflections on home. The featured artists are June Edmonds, André Hemer, Laura Krifka, Kambui Olujimi, Edra Soto, and Peter Williams.
Texas native Evita Tezeno is known for her whimsical collages that capture the beauty and joy of day to day experiences. Her mixed media depictions of Black women, men, and children are inspired by moments from her own life as well as children’s stories. Through her work, Evita seeks to inspire the viewer and bring laughter to the lives of others.
The intaglio print edition, which is called WE, engages the messiness of subjective observation through pairings of the same subject. In this case multiplicity/repetition — of the images and also of the phrase silkscreened below each pair — activates difference. The repetition of one phrase in Type Specimens, through twelve different mastheads, activates intersection. Those of us immersed in a politics of identity have always attempted to transcend the confines of classification through multiplicity. But I’m having a hard time these days coping with “multiple truths,” especially as that applies to journalism. Nuance, which I’ve often relied on in my work, feels like a thing of the past, when facts could be agreed on, but one could still discuss subtleties.
Unreachable Spring is a group exhibition featuring artists prompted by a desire to take refuge in their work and address this transformational moment in a personal way.
Speaking from separate corners of Chicago, Chicago artists Bob Faust, Edra Soto, and Sadie Woods and art historian Greg Foster-Rice brought warmth, passion, and a will to change the world to their panel discussion of art and its potential as agent of social change (part of the Terra Foundation for American Art’s Art Design Chicago program and the Chicago Humanities Festival).The panel began with each artist showcasing their recent work, beginning with Edra Soto’s Graft, recently displayed at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography. Graftborrows from iron screens common in post-war Puerto Rican architecture to allow Soto—and the viewer—to explore the devastation wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria and the later inaction by the United States, the invested colonial power.
In the exhibition’s accompanying text the artist writes, “These paintings fold in on themselves to protect, they fold back on themselves as they attempt to reconstruct. These paintings guard their own inner reality.” To Bonner, cutouts “betray an inner confusion and chaos,” while layered images “depict second guesses.” Fittingly, the star-shaped folds conjure memories of paper fortune tellers that succinctly relayed our destinies in times when the future felt less tenuous. Shifting stories (v1-v3)deflect any sense of a neatly ordered reality. They indulge entropic anxieties.
Ken Gonzales-Day is a Los Angeles-based artist whose interdisciplinary practice considers the historical construction of race and the limits of representational systems ranging from lynching photographs to museum displays. Gonzales-Day received a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, an MFA from the University of Colifornia, Irvine and a MA from Hunter College in New York. He is a professor of art at Scripps College in Claremont,CA where he has taught since 1995. In 2017 he was awareded a Guggenheim fellowship in photography.
Puerto Rican artist Edra Soto's work will be featured in "Unreachable Spring," a group exhibit of works done during the Covid-19 pandemic and which opens at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles gallery on Oct. 17. Soto's piece "Let Love Win" depicts many faces on embossed metal which are highlighted by ink of different colors. One of those faces depicts Breonna Taylor, the Black woman killed by police in her own apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13 of this year.
Vienna-based artist André Hemer spent lockdown creating new paintings based on his process of layering thick, colorful paint streaks on a flatbed scanner and digitally scanning them. These abstract works, alongside his first sculptures, are on view in the artist’s first New York solo show, and capture something of the isolation of lockdown and the unexpected beauty of a slower-paced life.
A conversation with a deported Mexican immigrant he met on the streets of Tijuana became a stop-motion animation art piece that won artist Hugo Crosthwaite first prize in “The Outwin: American Portraiture,” a Smithsonian exhibition featured at the Springfield Museums.
A Smithsonian-sponsored exhibit of works by 50 select artists from throughout the country opens today in the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts at the Springfield Museums. The artists were finalists in “The Outwin: American Portraiture Today,” running through April 4. Among the works is first prize-winner Hugo Crosthwaite of San Diego, the first Latinx artist to receive this award since the national competition was founded in 2006.
Works from the triennial’s fifth edition, including Crosthwaite’s stop-motion drawing animation, “A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez,” can still be viewed online at portraitcompetition.si.edu. The Outwin 2019 will also travel to the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield Museums, Massachusettes (October 3, 2020–April 4, 2021) and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. (September 10, 2020–January 23, 2022).
Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, is ramping up its efforts to inhabit Mars, raising crucial questions about who gets left out of fantasies of space colonization. Artist Peter Williams explores Afrofuturist themes in this painting titled “He Was a Global Traveler.”
Virtual Exhibition Openings at the Wende Museum. A virtual opening to celebrate the launch of two new exhibitions: Transformations: Living Room -> Flea Market -> Museum -> Art and See Thy Neighbor: Stern Photographers Thomas Hoepker and Harald Schmitt in the GDR, presented via the 3-D platform Matterport. The program will feature a panel discussion with Transformations artists including Ken Gonzales Day.
In honor of the release of Legacy Russell‘s Glitch Feminism, Russell and a group of artists, writers, and activists including Salome Asega, Caitlin Cherry, Zoé Samudzi, Tsige Tafesse, McKenzie Wark, Mandy Harris Williams, and Jenna Wortham will gather on Zoom to respond to the text. Glitch Feminism is a vital new manifesto and Russell’s research as a curator breaks new ground on themes of gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new-media ritual. The celebration’s format—a Zoom critical discussion, and everyone’s invited—couldn’t be more apt.
Rowan University Art Gallery presents The Bacchanalian Ones, an exhibition that investigates the contradictions and inaccuracies in historical narratives that have led society to a chaotic era of misinformation, corruption, and hypocrisy. On view by appointment from November 2, 2020 – January 9, 2021, The Bacchanalian Ones will feature augmented reality-based artworks, a new virtual reality project, paintings, and never before seen video animations from artist Federico Solmi.
Evita Tezeno is a collage artist who spends about 12-hours a day, 6-days a week inside her Dallas art studio working on her latest project; a 19-piece collection of collages inspired by the pandemic. "It's called 'Daughters of the Crown'," Tezeno said, pointing out the 'corona' means crown. "I was sketching one night and looking at the news, and it just came to me."Each piece features the same character, depicted with different aspects of living in a pandemic."I chose a Black woman to represent that," Tezeno said. "It's very personal. It's very personal. I had an artist friend that perished because of COVID."
If you’re looking to add to your art collection, or maybe even start one, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego brings back its biennial Art Auction. Bid on a variety of artworks for sale — from painting and sculpture to photography and works on paper — created by emerging and international artists including Leonardo Drew, June Edmonds, Luchita Hurtado, Jean Lowe and more.
NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale will kick off its new exhibition season with New Art South Florida, the 2020 South Florida Cultural Consortium (SFCC) exhibition. Featuring the work of 13 preeminent South Florida artists who are recipients of the 2020 South Florida Cultural Consortium awards, the exhibition will be curated by NSU Art Museum's Director and Chief Curator, Bonnie Clearwater, a longtime champion of South Florida artists. The exhibition's artists work in a wide range of mediums and include: Broward County: Nathalie Alfonso, Shane Eason and Andriana Mereuta; Miami-Dade County: Itzel Basualdo, Franky Cruz, GeoVanna Gonzalez, Nicolas Lobo, Monica Lopez De Victoria, Kareem Tabsch and Antonia Wright; Palm Beach County: Ates Isildak; and Monroe County: Michel Delgado and Mark Hedden.
“The Democracy Project: 2020” manifests the great, besieged “project of Democracy” as an online exhibition for Artillery’s September/October issue, featuring recent work by a diverse selection of the West Coast’s most compelling artists. Whether approaching the theme ironically, or with reverence (or a bit of both), the artists below are chosen for their political engagement, provocative content, and significant contributions to the diversity of the art world. ARTISTS: Kim Abeles, Sama Alshaibi, Aaron Coleman, Eileen Cowin, Asad Faulwell, Corey Grayhorse, Mark Steven Greenfield, Salim Green, Ken Gonzales-Day, Alexander Kritselis, Ann Le, Alejandro Macias, Renée Petropoulos, Mike Reesé, Miles Regis, Julio M. Romero, Stephanie Syjuco, Meital Yaniv.
The South Florida Cultural Consortium (SFCC) announces 13 awards to distinguished South Florida artists through its 2020 Visual and Media Artists Program. The Consortium, an alliance of the arts councils of Broward, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach Counties, has recognized seven individuals from Miami-Dade County (including Antonia Wright), three from Broward County, one from Palm Beach County, and two from Monroe County.
Former Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, Ken Gonzales-Day, thinks about who is and who is not represented in the National Portrait Gallery and in the Smithsonian collection as a whole, while researching in the institution’s massive digital archive.To commemorate MHz Foundation’s collaboration with the Smithsonian Open Access initiative, we asked artist Shana Lutker, one of MHz Curationist’s Advising Editors, to introduce the new Smithsonian Open Access collections to artists and talk with them about what they found.
“Seed to Harvest,” an outdoor photo exhibition at Wellesley College by artist Alexandria Smith, portrays five of the first Black graduates of the college in bold portraits. For her final project, Elana Bridges, class of 2020, brought the show online and drafted in-depth bios of each graduate to accompany the photographs.
“I thought it was important to highlight where they were coming from before Wellesley … to make a point that Wellesley didn’t make them special,” says Bridges. “These women on their own, in their own right, were gifted and deserved to be in this space. Wellesley gave them the tools to continue their social justice work.”
“Al otro lado” is a phrase used in Mexico referring to shared borders with the United States and the space populated by many Mexican immigrants on the other side of the Mexico/US border. Inspired by award-winning author Reyna Grande’s A Dream Called Home, a required text for FIU’s First-Year Experience Program, Otros Lados weaves narratives of historical memory, personal experience, and social justice. The works of Itzel Basualdo, Hugo Crosthwaite, and Judithe Hernández offer shared vantage points with Grande’s memoir, bringing distinct perspectives to Mexican and Mexican American experiences.
The image above is from Ken Gonzales-Day’s Erased Lynchings series, which documents the historic lynchings of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American individuals across California. The victims in these images have been removed by the artist. The horrific nature of these crimes often makes it difficult to see the apparatus that surrounds the spectacle of the dead body on display. By removing the victim, Gonzales-Day allows us to see what is hiding in plain sight: the white audience gathered for this act of racial terror. The image is a stark reminder of the invisibility of white identity. Whiteness permeates through western society as thoroughly as the air that we all should have the right to breathe. The people in this particular image are not all actively tying a noose, but their mere presence and inaction creates an atmosphere within which such violence is normalized and perpetuated.
Edra Soto spoke with Esthetic Lens recently as part of our Creative Quarantine feature. She brought us into the loop about projects that were put on hold because of quarantine, projects that still moved ahead, the current iteration of her GRAFT piece, and using her Instagram account to advocate for social justice.
Edra Soto’s ongoing 24 Hours project, in which she collects and glorifies discarded liquor bottles, and her GRAFT series, inspired by the iron rejas screens in her native Puerto Rico, have heavily influenced the trajectory of her art career and public interventions. These bottles and iron-wrought kaleidoscopic and geometric formations have graced her home in Garfield Park (where she also co-directs The Franklin, a backyard artist-run project space); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Blue Line Western Station; the Chicago Cultural Center and, most recently, Millennium Park, where her first public art commission Screenhouse, will be on view for two years.
Venturing to Upstate New York and Western Massachusetts for Upstate Art Weekend Renée Riccardo and I took the train from Grand Central Station to Croton Falls to pick-up a rental car...From there, it was a short drive to the Starlite Motel, where works by Hope Gangloff, Liz Collins, Jeffrey Gibson and others were wonderfully installed around the restored 1960s motor lodge.
This year’s auction will works including paintings, sculptures, photography and more — all donated from artists and galleries both locally and internationally. The auction, hosted on ARTSY.com, will feature approximately 100 works by early career and internationally recognized artists, including Leonardo Drew, June Edmonds, Luchita Hurtado, Jean Lowe, Kim MacConnel, Rubén Ortiz Torres, Trevor Paglen, Helen Pashgian, Ed Ruscha, Marnie Weber, and James Welling.
This spring, Los Angeles-based artist Lia Halloran was to have joined Caltech as artist-in-residence in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences as part of the Caltech-Huntington Program in Visual Culture. COVID-19 upended those plans, and Halloran’s residency has been postponed until the spring of 2021.
The past few months have been busy for Halloran, however, as she has put the finishing touches on a book project she has been working on for more than a decade with Kip Thorne (BS ’62), Caltech’s Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, and one of the recipients of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. The book, The Warped Side of Our Universe, is to be published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2021 and features poetic verse by Thorne alongside paintings by Halloran.
“The art produced by Mexican and Mexican American artists in the U.S. has a long history that continues to reverberate–this echo is a dynamic and necessary narrative that expands traditional interpretations of American art,” said Amy Galpin, Chief Curator at the museum. Artist Hugo Crosthwaite, whose paintings are featured in the exhibit, was born in Tijuana, Mexico and the cultural aesthetics are influenced with his crossing of the border between Mexico and the United States. The subject matter he paints is inspired by the novel A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande.
"I think you know a lot about how visibility is, you know, begins with representation, begins with images and how the kind of dearth of images of people with disabilities and trans people and people of color existing in public life have kind of invisibilized to us and made our need sort of…underground, concealed, the physical needs for us to exist. Invisibilized representation in the trans community I think has really been front and center and the conversation over the past several years because of the emergence of gender diversity on screen and the counter."
- Zachary Drucker
Peter Williams began three of the paintings illustrated in this book in 2014 after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. He began the rest in 2015 in response to the killing of Eric Garner in New York. Unfortunately, they have lost none of their relevance. The earlier paintings respond to the late work of Philip Guston, whose comment about his turn from abstraction resonated with Williams: “What kind of man am I, sitting at home, getting into a frustrated fury about everything and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?” The paintings are poster-like and rendered in blue, rather than black, and white, with red banners at the top – Guston’s red and blue put to use for political commentary on the murder of black men.
Carla Jay Harris is equally driven by research and materiality, as she builds complex mixed media images and objects on the foundations of painstaking historical deep dives into personal and geopolitical events. Across photography, collage, drawing, and environmental installation, Harris delicately blurs the boundaries of space and time to highlight ancestral rhymes and the follow-on effects of history. Part of her practice involves literal place-making, as she incorporates her juxtapositions of archival and original images with pattern, portrait, and talisman into rooms that ideally function as social gathering points where the conversations sparked in the work can continue in the present.
When I first saw Carla Jay Harris’ project Celestial Bodies at AIPAD (NYC) in 2019 I was spellbound. More than beautiful and graceful, her work was ethereal. Like a bashful vagrant, I conspicuously loitered by the Kopeikin Gallery booth, hoping I would have a chance to meet the artist. Ironically, I learned that she was from my hometown of Los Angeles. Emblematic of her stratospheric talent, it required a transcontinental journey for me to be introduced to someone that was practically my neighbor. Perhaps you really can’t go home again! I chatted online with Carla in June 2020 about her work and process.
As the pandemic tethers us close to home, Calgary-born Erik Olson has unveiled a travelogue three years in the making of his 10,000-mile motorcycle odyssey through the storied places and dysfunctional underbelly of the United States.
For her new online exhibition, “Corps Sonore,” artist Caitlin Cherry sources her subjects through social media. They include “Instagram influencers, glamour models, rappers, and exotic dancers — Black American femmes who play a dominant role in shaping popular culture without due credit.”
The oil paintings and digital collages in Caitlin Cherry’s online show “Corps Sonore” call forth a phantasmagorical nightclub harboring cliques of bionic sirens bathed in an opulent, rippling iridescence. Sourced from social media feeds, Cherry’s reimagined subjects embody a specific ideal of Black femme beauty associated with rappers, exotic dancers, and glamour models—women whose efforts are frequently disparaged, ignored, and, in some instances, even criminalized.
Gonzales-Day’s powerful and nuanced investigations of intersectionality and racial violence stem from an almost-encyclopedic knowledge of art history and a desire to rewrite a more inclusive past and advocate for a more equitable present. The work has a gravitas that is often accentuated by a poetic manipulation of light and form, and exhibits Gonzales-Day’s dexterity in working in a range of modes from performance and installation to projects that are more documentary in nature. What is perhaps most profound about his work is that he invites inquiry and connections, but not without effort from his audience; the more open the viewer, the more the work reveals.
When De Jesus was forced to close in March, he transitioned to an online platform and even managed to make a couple of sales. Given that the gallery was able to reopen for private appointments last month, he’s cautiously optimistic. As a whole, however, the industry has taken a hit: In an Art Dealers Association of America survey of nearly 170 art galleries in April and May, galleries across the country forecasted a gross revenue loss of 73 percent in the second quarter of this year.
More recently, she has produced prismatic paintings from photos of Black femmes (including models, exotic dancers, porn actresses, rappers, and influencers) culled from social media. Inspired by the promotional posts of a Brooklyn cabaret, her newest works feature its servers and dancers in suggestive poses, flattened by delirious patterns and alphanumeric codes onto canvases with widescreen dimensions. Here, the slipperiness of digital images comes up against the slickness of oil paint, which she manipulates into a kind of filter that both obscures and refracts representations of Black femininity. A virtual presentation of Cherry’s new paintings and digital collages, entitled “Corps Sonore,” is currently viewable in the online viewing room of Los Angeles’s Luis De Jesus Los Angeles through August.
The exhibition opens with a rapid, stand-alone animation that displays 19 images at a speed evoking the highway, testing our powers of perception and suggesting that the story of the journey could be told entirely visually, as if by Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, who avoided scripted narration. The first sets the bike against an expanse of sky and sea near Vancouver, recalling Arthur Rimbaud’s discovery of “eternity” in the sea merged with the sun.
An American painter based in Los Angeles, Edmonds has described her work as a “doorway to memory,” which is evident in the many allusions to longstanding African traditions and influential African Americans from bygone eras...“The bending lines of contrasting colors lead your eye around the painting, and in person, the texture invites a close look,” says Gilvin. “It intrigues me because of the almost dizzying experience of studying it, and because of its conceptual and formal conversations with other artworks.”
Chicago-based artist Edra Soto made a gate studded with viewfinders. They show tiny images she captured in Puerto Rico the day after the hurricane. And another artist has an entire installation open for visitors – it’s a recreated beauty salon that explores the struggle of businesses owned by women on the island. The show was organized by Columbia College’s Curatorial Fellow for Diversity in the Arts.
Caitlin Cherry: Corps Sonore at Luis De Jesus. An online show that toggles between art, technology, codes, Cherry's Black femmes, & digital graphics that function like visual intermissions.
The Museum of Contemporary Photography has reopened with the exhibit “Temporal: Puerto Rican Resistance,” an exploration of Puerto Rico’s contemporary history documenting protests, life during and after Hurricane María and the art of the resistance. Artists include Christopher Gregory-Rivera, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Mari B. Robles López, Eduardo Martínez, Ojos Nebulosos, Adriana Parrilla, Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo, Erika P. Rodríguez, Edra Soto, SUPAKID, and Rogelio Báez Vega
Over Independence Day Weekend, 80 artists [including Ken Gonzales-Day and Zackary Drucker] asked Americans to look up at the skies. Throughout July 3 and 4, messages related to immigration were written at 10,000 feet by World War II military planes, sky-typed over 80 sites related to the country's network of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, immigration courts, and the southern border. The idea was to bring attention to these facilities, which may not be familiar to many Americans.
During the Obama administration, while addressing the proposed legislation of North Carolina to bar trans students from restrooms that correlated with their gender presentation, then attorney general Loretta Lynch said to transgender Americans, “We see you, we stand with you, and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward.” It was an incredible moment historically because trans people had never been spoken to so publicly. To have a person from the president’s cabinet speak directly to a community that had been ignored and silenced was such a powerful paradigm shift and validation. —Zackary Drucker
The purpose of the temporary works was to raise awareness about social injustice rampant in the US’s immigration system and where these injustices are carried out. Over the weekend, XMAP: In Plain Sight uplifted the children and adults who have suffered from inhuman living conditions, the separation of detained families, violence, and, in some cases, death at the hands of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE.
Two fleets of five skytyping planes each are set for takeoff across the country this Independence Day weekend armed with calls for the abolition of the immigrant detention in the United States as part of the project “In Plain Sight.” (Developed from older skywriting technology, skytyping planes inject oil into their exhaust systems to produce a white smoke that is released into the sky by a computer-controlled system to produce precise letter-writing.) Phrases like “Care Not Cages,” “Unseen Mothers” and “Nosotras Te Vemos (We See You)” will momentarily hover above 80 locations — including detention facilities, immigration courts, prisons, borders and historic sites like Ellis Island — before dissipating into the atmosphere.
A group of 80 artists from around the country have teamed up to produce skytyped messages that will appear over immigrant detention camps around the United States, as well as other sites related to internment and incarceration. Among the participating artists of “In Plain Sight” are Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors; graphic designer Emory Douglas, once the minister of culture for the Black Panther Party; and a range of cultural practitioners, including Ken Gonzales-Day, Harry Gamboa Jr., Mary Kelly...
For Luis De Jesus of the eponymous gallery on South La Cienega Boulevard, moving online has been an expansion rather than a limitation. When lockdown began, his staff was already redesigning the gallery’s website, so they added an “online viewing room.” “It’s like the second gallery that we don’t have,” De Jesus said, “It functions like an alternative space, a project space, and that to me is very exciting.”
Chicago-based, Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist Edra Soto’s work is about bringing people together. Through sharing experiences and questioning histories, Soto invites us to reimagine and meet between worlds. The way one feels around Soto’s work is something quite special, that very same feeling of community gets activated through her work by incorporating food, elements of memory and place such as tiny viewfinders, while also creating spaces for joy.
There is a profound stillness in Carla Jay Harris’ photographs—her framing and shooting style emits a pervasive calm that quiets the anxiety of her subject matter. Harris’ ability to create silence amid moments of emotional upheaval is eerie, tense, and evocative. Two bodies of work portray people and places in the midst of economic and cultural change; Dirt, Dust, Sand, Concrete (2012–2015) shows Smithfield, Virginia, amid a corporate buyout, and Culture of Desperation (2012) portrays a struggling record company during lean times.
Some of the most alluring art shows happening virtually this season. Chris Engman: Looking at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. Ongoing at viewingroom.luisdejesus.com
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles gives us a chance to be amused and fooled by Chris Engman’s photographs, that give you a sensation that what you see is three-dimensional paper sculptures. But no, my friends, don’t trust your eyes. Come close, and “touch” these framed photos with your eyes, and discover to your astonishment that you have been magically tricked.
The California African American Museum (CAAM) presents recently acquired works in its exhibition called Sanctuary. The exhibition focuses on safety and refuge in relation to the African American experience. One piece in the exhibit is from Carla Jay Harris, which pictures a female figure in a celestial landscape. She explains, “I’ve had a bit of a nomadic life…Through my life, I seek to connect with permanence. Safe space and making time for self-care is essential to your own mental health and wellness.”
In this Episode I feature June Edmonds, a west coast based abstract painter that was awarded the AWARE prize during the 2020 Armory show in NYC. AWARE, an acronym for Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, is a Paris based non profit that this year debuted an award for a Solo Exhibition of Work by a Woman Artist. June’s work was exhibited by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
Artist Ken Gonzales-Day has been widely recognized for the “Erased Lynching” series, which include lynching postcard photos that effectively “erased’ the victims of lynching and focused on the white crowds gathered to witness the murders. Gonzales-Day argues that the erasure of the lynching victim “allows the viewer to see, for the first time, the social dynamics of the lynching itself.” The photos, absent of the images of victims, “helped us to recognise the dynamics of whiteness within the complex history of racialised violence in America,”
Searching for California’s Hang Trees, grew out of the research artist Ken Gonzales-Daywas doing for his book Lynching in the West: 1850-1935, published by Duke University Press in 2006. In it, Gonzales-Day sets out to assemble the most complete record of lynching in California that had yet been published. What his research uncovered, was that contrary to popular belief, African Americans were not the only targets of lynching in California and the west. In fact, Gonzales-Day was also able to document the lynching of Latinos, Native Americans, and Chinese immigrants, at least in part due to their racial identity. In doing so, Gonzales-Day has revealed a history of violence against immigrants in the west that still goes on today, with mass incarceration and family separation taking place at our borders.
You know what actually, was our very first collaboration? The ‘I Love Chicago Project.’ From when I was in my MFA studio at SAIC. It was an installation to bring together all types of disciplines—sound, performance, musicians. A lion, and a lion tamer. Even then, I was drawn toward leading a project space. I had a fascination with crossing the boundaries.
The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) announced on Thursday that it plans to launch a new digital art fair to support member galleries who have been impacted by Covid-19. Titled “FAIR,” the online initiative will boast of a profit-sharing model designed to give participants who have recently experienced revenue loss due to the closure of their physical locations a financial boost. Kicking off next week, FAIR will run from May 20 through June 21.
Galleryplatform.la launches May 15, featuring online viewing rooms for small and blue-chip galleries, video profiles of artists, and a column on the history of LA galleries — all to help galleries stay afloat. Luis De Jesus also added that “this period has been a welcome respite from the hectic, nonstop schedule of back-to-back gallery shows and art fairs. It’s given me time to think about the business — what’s working and what isn’t.”
Greetings from the timeless void of quarantine, where we all feel like astronauts who have been in space just a little too long. I’m Carolina A. Miranda, staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, with your essential guide to all things arts — and operatic krumping. On Instagram, I’ve been very much enjoying Hugo Crosthwaite’s stop motion animations of his quarantine drawings.
Within figuration, the materiality of oil paint has been bound to its relationship to the depiction of skin. Velasquez went so far as to say that if not for skin, oil painting wouldn’t exist. ...This obsession with material skin seems to have lost its privileged position due in no small part to how incredibly realized it’s been within the traditions of western art history. There is a completeness to Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995) and Saville’s surgical portraits that followed, that have made contemporary artists disregard flesh, instead pursuing a frontier that investigates the body as one that is weightless, boneless, hollow, thin, and digital- phantom bodies.
Since 2017, The Universe in Verse has been celebrating the natural world — the science, the splendor, the mystery of it — through poetry, that lovely backdoor to consciousness, bypassing our habitual barricades of thought and feeling to reveal reality afresh. And now here we are — “survivors of immeasurable events,” in the words of the astronomer and poet Rebecca Elson, “small, wet miracles without instruction, only the imperative of change” — suddenly scattered six feet apart across a changed world, blinking with disorientation, disbelief, and no small measure of heartache.
Federico Solmi (Italy, 1973) currently lives and works in New York. Solmi’s work utilizes bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present-day society His exhibitions often feature articulate installations composed of a variety of media including video, painting, drawing, and sculpture. Solmi uses his art as a vehicle to stimulate a visceral conversation with his audience, highlighting the contradictions and fallibility that characterize our time. Through his work, Solmi examines unconscious human impulses and desires in order to critique Western society’s obsession with individual success and display contemporary relationships between nationalism, colonialism, religion, consumerism.
I expect to see a post-epidemic rising of physical modifications made to existing public spaces and new spaces designed with public distancing considerations in mind. Perhaps these changes manifest more through policy rather than physically, but maybe we will see a combination of both. Most of my work is motivated by a public approach to design a space or an activation. This is something I’m hoping I don’t have to give up in the future, but I wouldn't be surprised by future changes.
J'ai rendez-vous avec Nicolas Grenier dans so atelier de l'îlot Bellechasse. Ce n'est pas la première fois que j'y recontre des artistes, mais il se pourrait bien que ce soit la dernière... / I have an appointment with Nicolas Grenier in his workshop on the Bellechasse block. It is not the first time that I meet artists there, but it may well be the last ...
There’s a challenging tension to his work in the way he conflates entertainment and celebrity and power and authority,” says Bleu Cease, RoCo’s executive director and curator. “And there is a push-pull … It’s attractive, but once it draws you in, it’s grotesque and maybe even repelling. Things are on the verge of breaking down and there’s a sense of impending doom.
How are you overcoming the challenges we are now facing?
Like many other galleries, we are looking for ways to stay present and relevant. We recently launched our new website and we’re in the process of adding a new page that will pull together all of our artist’s video and film projects as well as links to other feeds and impromptu and intuitive content. We’re in production mode—a good thing.
Art galleries provide necessary spaces for creative discovery and connection—experiences we all may be seeking in our current existences. Luckily, many galleries across the country can still be visited virtually, and at your work-from-home leisure through Artnet Galleries.
If you’re in need of an art break, here are 13 of our favorite exhibitions, from New York to California, that you can gallery hop through your laptop.
The $10,000 Aware Prize for solo presentation by women artists was awarded to June Edmonds, whose politically charged paintings were represented at the fair by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
Tezeno’s work consists of collages with cubist influences. Her bold use of color, texture and shape are the core of her collages. Inspired by the images that she sees in her sleep, Evita translates these visions through mixed media, combining handmade paper, acrylic paint and found objects. Pulling from experiences and children’s stories, she creates whimsical images that provoke laughter and thought to help enrich the soul.
“Citizenship acknowledges the political power of images,” [curator Georgia Erger] said, “and the power that comes from the fact that photos, and graphics and ultimately video and film can be so widely and easily disseminated, and therefore, much more accessible.” The works of art include 20th-century photographs by Leonard Freed, a series of etchings by Francisco de Goya, and engravings by William Hogarth, along with “Erased Lynchings,” which Mr. Gonzales-Day produced from 2006 to 2019. Based on actual postcards, and his visits to where lynchings took place, Mr. Gonzales-Day’s work shows crowds gathered at places across America, such as California and Montana, to watch the hangings.
Drucker of Los Angeles explores the novel’s themes of gender and time as part of her photo series “Rosalyne,” which show trans elder and activist Rosalyne Blumenstein in a variety of poses that evoke some of the classical imagery of the novel as well as the blending of time periods. A photo of a nude Blumenstein mimicking the pose of a nearby Venus de Milo also manages to recall the aesthetic of Potter’s film.“Rosalyne is a legend in the trans community,” says Drucker, who lives in Los Angeles. “The photos came about because I felt she was the perfect living Orlando, she was traveling through time and crossing genders.”
Additionally, the inaugural edition of the $10,000 Aware Prize for solo presentations by women artists—presented by the Paris-based nonprofit AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions) in partnership with the Armory Show—was given to June Edmonds, whose work at the fair is presented by the Los Angeles-based gallery Luis De Jesus. Edmonds is known for abstract paintings that explore race, gender, and politics, and the prize was juried by a cast including AWARE co-founder Camille Morineau, writer and curatorial activist Maura Reilly, and Swiss Institute director Simon Castets, among others.
June Edmonds’ dark, seemingly abstract paintings at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles (Booth 827, Pier 94) are actually based on flags and their palettes are derived from a spectrum of black and brown skin complexions.
June Edmonds’s Flag Paintings explore the American flag as a symbol of ideals, promises, and identity. Each flag is associated with the narrative of an African American, past or present. Edmonds explores the psychological construct of skin color, utilizing the primary colors of brown skin tones to build symbols of American identity that reflect the broader changes in the racial and ethnic makeup of the country's population and the ideals and promises enshrined in the Constitution.
The first-ever winner of the Armory Show's AWARE Prize is artist June Edmonds. The $10,000 juried prize was given for the excellence of the artist’s work and for the Luis de Jesus Los Angeles gallery’s courage to present a solo-female artist’s work in a market that has systematically undervalued art made by women. The prize's short list of five finalists also included Rina Banerjee, Yuko Nasaka, Aase Texmon Rygh and Alexis Smith. AWARE co-founder Camille Morineau said, “Edmonds was unanimously selected by the jurors, who coalesced around the discovery of her new Flag Paintings—a breakthrough body of never-before seen work by the artist presented by Luis de Jesus Los Angeles at this year’s Armory Show.”
CBC Listens IDEAS with Nahlah Ayed interviews the four 2019 Sobey Art Awards Finalists across two episodes, "The New Masters: Sobey Art Awards: Part 1 & 2." Nicolas Grenier discusses his practice and two projects, The Time of Work and Vertically Integrated Socialism.
This week we made our way to Luis De Jesus’ opening of Britton Tolliver’s Bend To Play and Ethan Gill’s, New Paintings. Upon walking into the gallery, we were met by the boldly colored geometric abstract paintings by Tolliver. The vibrant works featured thick layers of smoothly applied paint the resulting decisive forms suggestive of decadent topographical psychedelic maps. The satisfying hardy spreads of acrylic paint resulted in the paintings existing more as sculptures and exemplified the physicality of Tolliver’s practice, which requires pushing paint through sieve-like grids.
Highlights that both flaunt the space’s architectural potential and honor the integrity of the artwork include Edra Soto’s Open 24 Hours (2017). Her pristine white vitrines house polished liquor bottles found on her daily walks in Chicago’s Garfield Park, challenging notions of “detritus” and making an industrial room devoid of natural light shine.
On her walks through Garfield Park, Edra Soto noticed how the streets became a "24/7 living history of a place," always collecting waste on display for all to see. Inspired by the high number of liquor bottles, she began taking them home, removing their labels and photographing them. One man's trash is another woman's art. We circled around the display of bottles a few times.For something to go from trash on the street to being cleaned up and used in art, that's a sort of rebirth in itself, right? The kind of rebirth only an artist with imagination can bring about.
As the kick off to the 2020 edition of the Armory Show edges closer and closer, the fair has announced a new art prize to add to its list of juried awards. The AWARE Prize, which will be presented for the first time this March, will deliver a $10,000 prize to one deserving female artist, or the artist’s estate, whose works will be exhibited in a solo presentation in the Galleries section of the Armory Show.
We came across an installation from Puerto Rican Edra Soto. It's called Open 24 Hours and looks like different stands with several polished glass bottles inside, some clear, some green. And the art has a creative story to go with it: On her walks through Garfield Park, Edra Soto noticed how the streets became a "24/7 living history of a place," always collecting waste on display for all to see. Inspired by the high number of liquor bottles, she began taking them home, removing their labels and photographing them. One man's trash is another woman's art.
Perspective is constantly shifting, from Lia Halloran’s cyanotype of The Great Comet, 2019, trailing clouds of glory, to the spider who does an unscripted walk-on in Christopher Richmond’s looped video of a rotating asteroid, Viewing Stone, 2018. The spider remminds the viewer how ultimately small we, and spiders, are in the cosmic view of things.
Hugo Crosthwaite, the 2019 first place winner was recognized for a stop-motion animated drawing. “A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez” (2018) depicts a young woman from Tijuana and explores her pursuit of the American dream. The animated video project is part of a series based on oral histories Crosthwaite has gathered at the U.S.-Mexico border.
A personal telescope belonging to astronomer George Ellery Hale, developed in 1885 that afforded a precise view of the night sky representing a leap in astronomical technology, is adjacent to Lia Halloran’s The Great Comet, 2019, a monumental cyanotype suggesting the marvels of astronomical phenomena that might have been experienced by pre-technological peoples
Lewis & Clark College's Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery will host Making a Better Painting. The regional exhibition showcases the work of 18 artists from around the Pacific Northwest who seek to spark conversations about paintings from a practitioner's point of view. Each of the artists address at least one of the four exhibition themes in their work: painting in the expanded field, painting and politics, painting in the Anthropocene and painting after technology.
The artists shortlisted for the prize, funded by French nonprofit AWARE, are Yuko Nasaka, Rina Banerjee, Aase Texmon Rygh, Alexis Smith, and June Edmonds. The perception that art made by women is less valuable is one that the French nonprofit Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions (AWARE) seeks to correct. For the 2020 Armory Show, the international art fair held every year in New York City, AWARE will recognize a solo booth of a woman artist by a gallery at the fair with a $10,000 award to either a living artist or her estate.
Drawing its title from my Pulitzer Prize-nominated book of the same name, Lynchings in the West: 1850-1935, this series considers the transracial nature of lynching in California, from statehood to the last recorded lynchings in 1935, as well as other western states and territories outside the historically better-known Southern black lynching areas. Given the broad number of people touched by this history (Asians, Anglos, Blacks and American Indians), many will be suprised to learn that Latinos (Mexican, Mexican- American, and persons of Latin American descent) were statistically more likely to die of lynching than those of African, Asian or European descent.
Artist Lia Halloran has skateboarded through runoff drains in pitch darkness, piloted a plane solo over Los Angeles and navigated dense theories of interstellar wormholes.Her diverse studio practices simply follow her personal curiosities, which she said often land her in interdisciplinary spaces where she can warp and manipulate concepts of space and time.The alumna most recently experimented with spatial distortion through an audio-visual installation called “Lia Halloran: Double Horizon,” on display at the ArtCenter College of Design’s Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery until March 15.
Sometimes a sausage is just a sausage, but not in Miyoshi Barosh’s archly adorable world. Her kielbasa-shaped glass sculpture, Untitled (Sausage) from 2015, gleams suggestively from a vitrine at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. In case you doubt its Freudian implications, its cellmates are a penis and a pair of breasts, also made of glass, both trussed with twine as if ready for the oven. The vitrine’s fourth occupant, Untitled (Meat), is a smooth hunk of reddish-brown glass, tied up like a small ham. Equating body parts with meat is nothing new, but these works put a sharper point on Barosh’s more prominent work in textiles, which tends to be exuberantly domestic and slightly macabre.
Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) returns to Hollywood for its international art fair producing a dynamic and informed cross-section of international contemporary art. The massive exhibition will feature 50 artists at the historic Hollywood Athletic Club on Sunset Boulevard utilizing the ballroom, bars and athletic spaces of the once celebrity hot spot.
In the early 2000s Los Angeles-based artist Miyoshi Barosh started making large-scale textile sculptures that combined the intimacy of craft with the bold, irreverence of Pop. Though vibrantly colorful and often playfully ironic, a dystopian sense of decay and death characterized these pieces. After the artist’s untimely death last year, the artworks have taken on new poignancy; they’re spirited, contradictory, and full of mischief and the carnivalesque madness of contemporary life.
Carla Jay Harris’ series, Celestial Bodies, does not entirely eliminate facial features in the work, but the features of these powerful women are not the focus either. Rather, Harris creates regal, spiritual images that combine a range of mediums. She terms them a link between the mythological and the real; travels as a child in a military family, and a sense of rootlessness, of being an outsider attracted her to the inclusiveness of legend.
Lia Halloran, Double Horizon, at Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery. To create large-scale filmic views of Los Angeles, Halloran takes to the air, mounting four cameras to an airplane that she piloted during more than 30 flights. She has put the footage together into an immersive, three-screen projection that is accompanied by a score created by Allyson Newman. Runs through March 15. ArtCenter South Campus, 1111 S. Arroyo Pkwy., Pasadena
A painter, photographer, and science enthusiast, Lia Halloran fuses together artistic creativity with a splash of scientific elements into her works. As an investigative explorer of space in its physical, psychological, and scientific forms, Lia uses these concepts as a major point to begin her creations; art allows her to express various concepts in science and gives her an outlet to explore many different themes that relate to humans, such as our place in the world, both psychologically and emotionally.
For the past four years, Margie Livingston has been dismantling the line between painting and performance. In a hybrid form of Action Painting, performance, and Land Art, she drags constructed paintings across terrain, inscribing the canvases with the ground to what she calls Extreme Landscape Painting or “non-painting painting.” Inherent in this process is the use of chance procedures and the knowledge that the ideas change and evolve as she gets into the work.
Three local galleries are honoring the groundbreaking artist and L.A. native with simultaneous exhibits: Before she succumbed to uterine cancer last February at age 59, artist Miyoshi Barosh spent the better part of three decades cultivating an art practice that was compassionate yet contrarian, conceptual yet craft-made, and Pop yet profoundly personal.
Throughout L.A., three galleries have teamed up to honor artist Miyoshi Barosh, who passed away last year. Barosh’s fiber-based work is exuberant and joyful. LOVE!, one proclaims, next to a giant oversized yarn tassel. At Night Gallery, a collection of pink oversized and fabric cartoon legs called Large Legs spew off the wall. At Luis De Jesus, I ♥ Kitties is a photograph of a cat’s head, embellished with embroidered patches. While this all might sound saccharine, Barosh’s work intentionally tugs our heartstrings to get at larger messages of consumerism, ecological failure, and social control. By using techniques associated with “woman’s work” and a cutesy aesthetic, Barosh slyly pokes at our associations with each, while uncovering a rawer, more unnerving element underneath.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles announced the opening of two new galleries, “The Earth is a Brush” and “Love,” on Saturday, Jan. 11.
Margie Livingston’s “The Earth is a Brush,” the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, will be on view through Feb. 15. Miyoshi Barosh’s “Love,” the late artist’s third solo show with the gallery, will also be on view through Feb. 15. Her work combines humor and dystopian irony in a style she dubbed “conceptual pop.”
While researching Latino portraiture from the 1800s, the photographer Ken Gonzales-Day found an image of a young Latino man. "Last man hanged in Los Angeles," was written on the back. When he read that phrase, Gonzales-Day came to the conclusion that he didn't have a clear understanding of California history. To make sense of his discovery, he began to work on the series of photographs that's now known as "Erased Lynching" (2006). The Santa Clara University Art Department's exhibit "Ken Gonzales-Day" features several of his photographs from the collection.
Santa Clara University (SCU), a flag bearer in an ongoing crusade for social justice, regularly raises awareness of social issues through the arts. A free exhibition of 25 Erased Lynching and California Hang Tree photos by Los Angeles-based artist Ken Gonzales-Day is on view through Jan. 24 in the Gallery of the Art and Art History building.
“Ken Gonzales-Day is an artist who makes work as an act of compassion,” said exhibition curator Renee Billingslea, a senior lecturer in the Department of Art and Art History.
ZACKARY DRUCKER: I think all of us in the community have had those moments of being like, “Is this going to somehow alienate people who aren’t ready yet?”
SUSAN STRYKER: Why is it that trans issues have become like a front-and-center issue in the culture wars?
ZACKARY DRUCKER: I think capitalizing on people’s fear is what has landed us in this moment right now, and you have hope on one side and fear on the other.
Carla Jay Harris’s work investigates how physical space influences psychological space. Through photographs, composites, sculptures and built environments, Harris explores the interaction of the interior with the exterior, of home with the outside world, of image and meaning. A 2015 graduate of UCLA’s MFA program, where she studied with Catherine Opie and James Welling among other artists, Harris exhibited her work this fall at Sonce Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles.
Yale School of Art faculty member and alumna Sarah Oppenheimer ’99 ART, along with some former faculty members and alumni, are featured in the current Artspace exhibition “Strange Loops,” on view through the end of February. The group exhibition explores psychological affect and the human condition expressed through instruments, systems, and objects of human design.
So I went to The Female Lens expecting a counter-attack, an alternative narrative of reproof. Did I find one? I didn’t discern such a narrative but what I did find was like a well-mixed box of chocolates, a selection of images, differing greatly, both in content and approach. Some were provocative, with a twist, such as Zackary Drucker’s shot of a slender honey-blonde lying on her back on a cement floor, apparently in a basement - there are household appliances and paper bags of stuff around - and she is seemingly naked beneath a plastic apron. Broad silver tape has shut her mouth but her eyes are open and unafraid.

Hugo Crosthwaite's La Güera, 2018, is featured in the "Readings" section of Harper's Magazine in print in January 2020.
I have never before seen an artist who can sidle right up to Goya’s Caprichos or Desastres de La Guerra and not only survive the comparison but generate mutual enrichment. Hugo Crosthwaite’s TIJUAS! (Death March, Tijuana Bibles, and Other Legends) at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles presents a breathtaking collection of drawings ranging from small to mural-size, as well as video animations and books, all made over a period of over a decade. Crosthwaite’s work addresses life on both sides of the US–Mexican border where he conveys the feeling of life bottled up beneath a merciless cork, his observations packed with violence, tenderness, pain, boredom, and his mind-boggling draftsmanship. —Daniel Gerwin
...The selection includes far more photographs and videos than paintings and drawings, although some entries blur those categories. The top prize went to Hugo Crosthwaite for a series of black-and-white drawings, animated into a video, of Berenice Sarmiento Chavez. She is a young Mexican woman who ventured north across the border in search of the American Dream, but has since been deported. The artist encountered her in Tijuana. As winner of the top prize, Crosthwaite will be commissioned to do an official portrait. The 2016 winner, Amy Sherald, made a painting of Michelle Obama that became one of the gallery’s most popular attractions.
Ultimately, spending time with artists is what truly “floats her boat.” Currently, she is working with her dear friend and renowned artist Antonia Wright on a project called “WWWW - Suffer in Style” that will be the next ARTSail residency. The two plan to produce a luxury chain of accessories inspired by environmental causes in an effort to make climate change more stylish. “It is about talking about dark issues with irony and humor,” she says, “while making it all — art, fashion, etc. — as accessible as Mother Nature.”
Ken Gonzalez-Day’s images from the series Erased Lynchings sees the artist digitally remove the dead hanging body of a nameless murdered person of colour, in order to avoid re-victimising the individual. This places our attention on the real guilty subjects, those white people who take it upon themselves extrajudicially to police black and brown bodies. The black body is here removed from the gaze of white eyes, a form of sight which undergirds the social dominance of whiteness. Gonzales-Day writes: “The work asks viewers to consider the crowd, the spectacle, the role of the photographer, and even the impact of flash photography, and their various contributions to our understanding of racialized violence in this nation.”
Positioned at entrance to UNTITLED, overlooking the South Beach is Ruben Millares and Antonia Wright’s It’s not down on any map; true places never are (presented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles), a motorized public sculpture made out of flagpoles, chains, a steel platform, and 16 flags of countries currently involved in migration crises, such as Venezuela, United States, South Sudan, Myanmar, Turkey, Germany, and Mexico. Rotating in a steady half loop, the chain structure moves the flags up and down, creating a metallic machinery noise as the flags ascend, squeeze through the chains, and rise again. Flags which have traditionally been placed on high ends of dwarfing poles are upside down, crumbled, and eventually risen, in a system that recalls the instability and interchangeability of sociopolitical power and nationalistic ideologies.
The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., named Hugo Crosthwaite the 2019 winner of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, an astute selection for several reasons. Crosthwaite’s entry, a meditative, three-minute stop-motion animation about a woman migrating from Mexico to the United States, stretched the conventional bounds of portraiture and affirmed the genre’s relevance, both of which are aims of the prize. Over nearly two decades, Crosthwaite has applied portraiture’s concentrated attention not only to individuals but even more avidly to place.
Double Horizon reflects the artist’s ongoing investigations of the body’s relationship to space in three simultaneous, large-scale, aerial views of the greater Los Angeles landscape. Double Horizon is Lia Halloran’s most recent work in her ongoing investigations into the physical, psychological and scientific explorations of space.
Don’t miss: The greenspace of Lummus Park has been commandeered for public art displays under the auspices of the fair, all of them large-scale works—look for the kinetic sculpture from Miami-based artists Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares. Make sure, too, that you pick up a copy of Untitled News—or whatever writer-in-residence Osman Can Yerebakan chooses to call the daily dispatch he’s been tasked with producing about the fair and its fairgoers.
The Baltimore Museum of Art has announced that it will dedicate the next year to women artists, most notably by spending its entire acquisitions budget for the year on works of art by women, as part of its 2020 Vision campaign. The museum’s permanent collection contains over 95,000 pieces of art, but only about 4% of those pieces were created by women. Next year’s initiative is meant to help rectify that imbalance. “You don’t just purchase one painting by a female artist of color and hang it on the wall next to a painting by Mark Rothko...To rectify centuries of imbalance, you have to do something radical.”
It’s an exciting year for UNTITLED Miami Beach, the fair situated on Ocean Drive and 12th Street that’s celebrated for being highly curated, architecturally mindful, and pleasant to navigate. The 2019 edition launches Monuments, a new program of large-scale, site-specific installations such as It is not down on any map; true places never are (2019). This kinetic outdoor sculpture by collaborative artists Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares, presented by Luis De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, consists of a group of flags sliding up and down on a flagpole in an allegory of complicated global hierarchies.
NADA, December 5–8: With representation from 25 countries and 56 cities, the 17th annual NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) art fair will take place at Ice Palace Studios, putting a focus on supporting new voices in the contemporary art community. Joined by 136 presenters this year, the fair will feature 71 NADA member galleries and will also include 28 first-time exhibitors.
Fairgoers can expect to see solo showings of artists like Agnieszka Brzezanska (BWA Warszawa), Guadalupe Maravilla (Jack Barrett), Ariana Papademetropoulos (Soft Opening), Aaron Gilbert (Lulu), and Peter Williams (Luis De Jesus Los Angeles)...
Vibrant and joyful with eye-popping colors and textures, Thread at the Long Beach Museum of Art pushes the boundaries of textile art. Selected works range from modern to contemporary and display the ability to use thread to create narratives, sculpture and political comment.
Laura Krifka's The Game of Patience at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is at its core about seduction, built through scenarios of being seduced, and how the artist constructs each painting to both seduce, and, by revealing subtle (metaphorical) cracks in the foundation. The interview covers topics such as: playing with repulsion; the frank reactions Krifka’s received from more non-Art World audiences about being a ‘weird lady’ for the things she paints; her process of working with models, and more...
Evita Tezeno seeks the pleasures of life through the eyes of visual expression. Her exuberant passion for life leads her to explore the human experiences related to her childhood memories and life’s encounters. Using bright colors soft hues, and bold figures, Tezeno crafted visual stories, by the use of hand made papers, crayons and other mediums, that evoke smiles, joy and thoughts of yesteryears.”
The title of this year’s winning work, by Hugo Crosthwaite, tells us the name of the person represented in the artist’s three-minute stop-motion animation of black-and-white drawings. It is A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez, a young woman from Tijuana, Mexico, who is seeking a better life in the United States. Her face emerges from a blank space, like a piece of paper or canvas, and then we watch as her body is sketched in, as though she’s materialized from nothing. In a series of brief vignettes, we learn about the danger that she, like other migrants, has faced, including violence and sexual harassment.
The Baltimore Museum of Art will celebrate 2020 by adopting a daring new policy designed to reverse the art world’s historic marginalization of female artists. Museum director Christopher Bedford said Thursday that every artwork the BMA purchases for its permanent collection next year — every painting, every sculpture, every ceramic figurine — will have been created by a woman. In addition, each of the 22 exhibits on view will have a female-centric focus. Nineteen will showcase artworks exclusively by women and will include works by at least one transgender woman, Zackary Drucker...
The new exhibition at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles by Mexican-American artist Hugo Crosthwaite (b. 1971) grabs your attention the moment you walk into the gallery. The artist, who lives and works in San Diego and Rosarito, Mexico, created a monumental, 27-foot wide multi-panel work called Death March. Multiple human figures and skeletons compose a funeral march, appearing to honor the deceased in a manner that calls to mind Día de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead.
The collective work resulted in a “bright, “vibrant,” “rhythmic” and richly layered project that references, among other things, jazz, the Inglewood-raised saxophonist Kamasi Washington, the late rapper and entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle, and low-rider car culture. Though it’s been 20 years since Hatton moved to L.A., the city is still revealing itself. When he embarked on the Crenshaw/LAX project, his impressions and understanding of the city shifted.
The painter is showing a new series of drawings, panel paintings and animations that chart the ebb and flow of humanity, along with unseen magical phenomena, in the U.S.-Mexico-border region where he lives and works. (The artist divides his time between Rosarito and San Diego.) Crosthwaite, a painter whose work is as influenced by comic books as it is by Gustav Doré, recentlywon the top prize in the National Portrait Gallery’s Outwi Boocheyer Portrait Competion, pays tributes to Goya’s Caprichos. A recent series capturing grotesqueries and folly.
For painter and video artist Hugo Crosthwaite, life has unfolded in equal parts on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and he has come to understand that in a way the border region itself is its own nation, with a unique culture that is both blended and divided, and a population comfortable with dualities. Both his films and graphite and ink drawings on canvas—often at monumental scale—exist in a black-and-white palette and are rich with regal, stylized detail.
Los Angeles-based painter, Edie Beaucage, crisply deploys multi-hued brushstrokesto set off characters in color field drama and fantastical spaces. Edie received her Masters of Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design in 2010. Her work has been exhibited at the UNTITLED art fair and is part of the Creative Artists Agency Collection. She is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
Los Angeles artist Lia Halloran wants to touch the heavens and to celebrate women who had the same ambition long before her. Her The Same Sky Overarches Us All, at the University of Maryland Art Gallery, mostly consists of seven-foot-high vertical prints inspired by a group of women known as the Harvard Computers. Halloran weaves their story, along with her own and the universe’s, into cosmic vignettes.
The video begins with the sound of a guitar strumming and a voice singing in Spanish. The main character is sketched quickly, beginning with her eyes, then face, hair and shoulders. She gazes into the distance. Over the course of the three-minute stop-motion drawing animation video, we watch as the main character goes about her life, immigrating to the United States and trying to succeed in her new country.
Portraiture is due for a reframing. Although the art form has traditionally served to memorialize the affluent and the powerful, the finalists of the 2019 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition point to a future where portraits empower the disenfranchised. The triennial competition, founded in 2006 by an endowment from the late Virginia Outwin Boochever, calls for artists to “challenge the definition of portraiture.” First-prize winner Hugo Crosthwaite does just that. His 2018 stop-motion animation, A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez, illustrates one woman’s journey from Tijuana, Mexico, to the United States.
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery announced that artist Hugo Crosthwaite has been named the first-prize winner of the fifth triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, which aims to reflect the contemporary state of portraiture in the United States. Recognized for his stop-motion drawing animation A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez, 2018, Crosthwaite is the first Latinx artist to receive the $25,000 award since the national competition was founded in 2006. Following in the footsteps of Amy Sherald, the previous winner of the prize, the San Diego–based artist will receive a commission to create a portrait of a living individual for the National Gallery’s collection.
The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, has announced the winner of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, a triannual contest honoring artists that “challenge the definition of portraiture.” Hugo Crosthwaite, a San Diego-based artist, will take home the $25,000 prize, which also comes with a commission to create a new portrait for the museum’s permanent collection.Crosthwaite follows in the footsteps of now-veritable art star Amy Sherald, who won the last Boochever award in 2016.
Laura Krifka enjoys doing things she is not supposed to do. Having absorbed the tenets of neoclassical painting, she bypasses high-minded seriousness by adding a candy-coated veneer of hyper-artificiality adopted from 1950s MGM musicals to the domestic decor of private scenes she then undercuts with a deviant sexual subtext recalling David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. This irresistible mix of dexterity, decor, decorum and deviance makes viewing her paintings a guilty pleasure — rather like sneaking into a peep show or secretly spying on neighbor’s forbidden acts.
In her first exhibition with Luis De Jesus, Laura Krifka presents a series of seductive, even voyeuristic domestic interiors in which semi-clad female and male figures engage in intimate moments of conversation, reading, and repose. Though at first glance they appear to be straightforward portraits of our interior worlds, a little more looking reveals more choreographed compositions—shadowy figures gaze in at these figures from shrouded windows; the figures themselves angle their bodies; even the wallpaper, so vividly hued and loudly patterned, plays a part, leading our eyes where the artist chooses. Taken together, the paintings present a sly theater of sexuality, or as the gallery puts it, a “game of patience.”
"Painting is an interesting medium — it's old and traditional, and in that respect it has inherent qualities that keep it grounded. It is the most primary visual language, pigments on a flat surface, and to me it acts as a constant reminder of the temporality and physicality of our bodies. By contrast, the types of socio-political power dynamics that I often explore are rather intangible, diffused and abstract."
Laura Krifka is a superlative, if shifty, storyteller — a cross between a delectably unreliable narrator and a canny ventriloquist. Her intriguing recent oils on canvas and panel at the Los Angeles gallery Luis De Jesus Los Angeles are painted with brushless exactitude, their crisp and controlled surfaces belying personal and interpersonal complexities beneath. Krifka tells it super-straight, but the “it” is slant.
Past and present, history and amusement, reality and spectacle are conflated and distorted in Federico Solmi’s monumental media work, The Great Farce (2017), recently acquired by Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art. The Block received the multiscreen, limited-edition work as a gift from the artist’s studio in recognition of the museum’s upcoming 40th anniversary and its related initiative “Thinking about History.”
Speaking of pop culture, if you’re excited to see the upcoming Joker film, you may want to stop by Frederico Solmi’s work at the gallery of Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. The animation and colors present in his five-minute video, The Drunken Boat, are eerie and mesmerizing. Notable historic figures are seen partying together, vulgar smiles on their faces. It’s like a nightmare steeped in a rainbow of colors that you can’t stop watching.
At Luis De Jesus Los Angeles in Culver City, Laura Krifka’s hyper-realistic figurative paintings build to create an uncanny mood. In each work, figures are placed within an interior domestic space, and subtle sexual cues build as you view the works. The breast of a sleepy figure mimics the egg-patterned wallpaper behind her; lemons in various stages of juicing are laid on a table next to a bare buttox. These more overt sexual themes are soon overtaken by more subtle ominous ones—strange shadows fall over the furniture in each painting, as if someone or something is looming just outside of the picture.
With sweeps of blue and white, painter and photographer Lia Halloran explores the often overlooked accomplishments and progression of women astronomers through her exhibition The Same Sky Overarches Us All. Curated by Taras Matla, acting director of the University of Maryland’s Art Gallery, the exhibit is beautiful — and it has an admirable purpose. “Everyone’s promoting gender equality… this is a good place to portray female accomplishments,” said Victoria Hernandez, a senior art and communication major who works in the art gallery.
Throughout The Body Electric,groupings of artists demonstrate shared engagements with themes of transgender identity (Rhys Ernst and Zackary Drucker, Juliana Huxtable), visualizing queerness (Paul Mpagi Sepuya), and race (Howardena Pindell, Lyle Ashton Harris), speaking to how we negotiate our sense of self in relation to media-driven systems of representation.
Drucker, the 36-year-old transgender artist, activist, actress and producer of the television series Transparent, who The New York Times described as “tall and blonde with eyes as blue as swimming pools”, momentarily loses her train of thought.I had asked her what she sees when she sits in front of a mirror. “That's such a revealing question, it's wonderful,” she says, smiling.
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery announces the acquisition of a photograph of the bust of Shonke Mon thi^, who was a prominent warrior and spiritual leader of the Osage people and hereditary Chief of the Pa tso li^ Big Hill Band at the turn of the 20th century. This work by Latino artist Ken Gonzales-Day was first displayed by the Portrait Gallery in UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light, Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar, which was presented as part of the museum’s 50th anniversary exhibition program.
Now, it seems the Shed, a new arts complex in the heart of Hudson Yards, may be going through its own, lower-key crisis. Earlier this month, a boycott of fitness properties such as Equinox, Soulcycle and Blink over owner Stephen Ross’ decision to host a fundraiser for President Donald Trump bled into other investments. The artistic duo who style themselves Zackary Drucker + A.L. Steiner have removed their work from the Shed’s “Open Call, Group 2” exhibition, in protest of Ross’ fundraiser.
Zackary Drucker says she’s used “code-switching” as a trans woman navigating the complex contexts of social and cultural structures. Add to that, she appreciates the nuances of moving between and among the interconnected yet oppositional worlds of fine art and entertainment production in Los Angeles.
Laura Krifka takes on the classical stance of European academic painting in her first solo show with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, smashing ivory tower patrician preciousness with a cheeky wit, advanced technique, and lush elements of both social realism and rococo modernism. The new work represents an evolution from her Flemish Renaissance style toward more modern visual cues and a crisper hand that is less folk-inflected and while not quite surreal, are certainly uncanny.
I’ve been running THE FRANKLIN with my husband Dan Sullivan since 2012. THE FRANKLIN is a gazebo type of space designed by us and located in the backyard of our home. After completing my MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000, the artist-run community in Chicago became my preferred to-go-to community. I was fascinated by the energy, enthusiasm, comradery and complicitness I kept finding while experiencing the artists-run spaces. This experience brought me lifetime friendships, my first exhibition at a major Chicago art museum and an invaluable collection of art that continues to grow. Exchange, support and the gift of visibility are all a part of the M.O. that motivates us to foster the artist-run model as an intricate part of our life philosophy.
Ken Gonzales-Day is a historian, and the author of the book Lynching in California. He included the Callahan lynching story in his book as an unconfirmed case. And he says that people don’t often realize how common racist violence was in the history of the Western US. “I wanted to write a book to clearly demonstrate racialized violence was active in California, and that it wasn’t just some sort of race-neutral wild-west frontier sort of activity, which is what many people thought at the time,” he says.
Laura Krifka’s forceful painting, entitled Grab Bag, 2016, oil on canvas, 40” x 30,” is a wonderfully perplexing image of a nude woman covering her genitals with her hands, in a harsh flash bulb kind of light. Her vintage hairstyle and the sleazy curtain behind her, plus the strange color sensibility (it almost appears like a colorized black and white film still) make it seem like a still photo from the 1930’s to 40’s. It’s almost like she is on display in a Hollywood casting couch kind of way.