"Edmonds’s paintings invite us to step back from the physical realm, not in an effort to escape its thorny textures, but in order to realize the other narratives existing alongside us — the intangible, the metaphysical, the ancestral."

“Jamie is an art collector, and we had a lot of fun. We went to different places in L.A., and we ended up working with the Luis De Jesus art gallery, a great gallery downtown. They have amazing artists and most of them are LGBTQ — and they really care about diversity, which is something that both me and Jamie love. Every single piece is powerful, from Zackary Drucker’s self-portrait in the living room to three pieces from Josh Reames. I love them a lot.”

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.”

"'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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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.

"Johnson and Silton read the story aloud together—Johnson first and then Silton—on the last weekend of the exhibition, performing the particularity of differences manifest in its content, here embodied in the pair’s vocalization and also in their delivery. As punctual as this occasion was, 'We' spilled out from itself."

"The welcome Laband survey, organized by gallery director Karen Rapp, begins with student work from the 1980s, when Edmonds, now 62, was enrolled as an undergrad at San Diego State University. Twenty paintings are joined with 18 works on paper, plus a few self-portrait pencil studies and assorted ephemera. Billed as a retrospective, it’s more like a thumbnail sketch for one, given the modest size. But the often-bracing selection does give a good sense of the artist’s development over four decades."

“Black people… ” Edmonds concluded, “No matter what is said to us, no matter what attitudes are brought to us, we have this amazing sense of ownership of where we are.”

"By making figurative paintings in the 1980s when figuration was out of fashion, and pursuing abstraction just when Black figuration is taking the art world by storm, Edmonds continues to defy dominant trends in order to pursue her personal process of discovery based on close observation. Her vibrant paintings weave different stories together in inclusive abstract forms to emphasize process, presence and positivity."

"The artist says she has always been a vivid dreamer and has long made notes about some of the more peculiar ones. “Sometimes I’d wake up and text words to myself so I could convey the feeling or the visuals,” she says. “Like, ‘felt scared.’ Or ‘dancing folclórico.’ Or ‘I picked up a metralleta [submachine gun] and started shooting people.’"

"In 'Your Body is a Space That Sees,' artist Lia Halloran created a series of large-scale cyanotype works — a photographic printing process producing a cyan-blue print. Well into the twentieth century, engineers were using the process as a simple way to copy drawings, thus originating the term 'blueprints.'"

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.

"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."

Owned by Luis De Jesus and Jay Wingate, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is a contemporary art gallery representing emerging and mid-career artists who are engaged in regional and global art discourse with a particular focus on intersectional diversity.

Curated by Anthony White, In Crystallized Time is a group exhibition that will showcase works that are sensible to the speed accruing in societal structures as they develop technologically. Historically, artists have responded to and reflected upon the past, predicted the future, or tried to translate the fleetingness of the present; isolating and recreating experiences. The contemporary practice of painting and sculpture, parallel to the rise of digital processes and the internet, is adapting to consider our perception of time and reality within high-speed environments.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce the accession of six photographs by Ken Gonzales-Day 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. 

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 through December 12, 2021. 

“Peter Williams was a fearless artist,”  Julie L. McGee said by email. “His combination of acerbic wit, social commentary and beauty allowed his work to speak to and transcend the momentary.”

“When I hear spirituality, I think about a connection to something larger than self, however you define that. God, a sense of the universe, a sense of nature.”  

"I started questioning where I come from, something that I had never questioned before, and I started to see myself, well, yes, I'm a Mexican artist, but I'm also a Tijuana artist. So then I started playing with this notion of identity and my identity as a border artist, and then also playing with this folklore about Mexico, about what they think Mexican identity is." 

“Public art brings it to the people, which for now is especially important in La Jolla because the Museum of Contemporary Art is closed [for renovation]. Through programs like Murals of La Jolla, there are these beautiful works of art done by world-class artists, and I’m honored to be among them.”

"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."

"For Pride Month this year, we spoke with artists of the LGBTQIA+ community about their own self-portraiture and the act of expressing oneself through art. From blown glass to photography to painting, these artworks show us how artists can represent themselves across a wide array of media and genres, including both abstraction, realism, or alter egos."

"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."

"I have to be knowledgeable about what came before me, but also use all the tools that are available today. So, I figured out how to domesticate technology. Instead of it feeling cold and distant, I blended it with organic painting texture, and drawings, and with motion capture I created something that, in my opinion, is very human. You feel like you want to touch it, and that’s a feeling that normally doesn’t happen with digital media."

"In recent years, and particularly since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, many of his paintings have focused on issues of systemic racism, including violence against African Americans, slavery and mass incarceration. He has said that he always “believed in the idea of bearing witness to the times in which you live.”