Installation view of June Edmonds Full Spectrum at LMU Laband Art Gallery.
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.
Consisting of more than forty works created in diverse media between 1980 and 2021 – including paintings on canvas and paper, drawings, and studies for public art commissions – this show is the first opportunity to place Edmonds’s artworks in dialogue with one another and to offer overdue critical attention to the artist’s lifelong commitment to portraying Black positivity in her artistic practice.
Beginning in 1980 during her undergraduate studies, Edmonds (b. 1959, Los Angeles, CA) brought a vitality to her figurative canvases by depicting her personal and authentic experience as a Black woman in detailed portraits of her domestic space. Given that many young artists today, especially young Black artists, have reintroduced the representational genre into the fore, Edmonds’s scenes of Black domesticity are viewed within a contemporary light.
Edmonds’s creative spectrum expanded from portraying narratives of Black people from her milieu to recuperating and commemorating the stories, events and people of color who have shaped our nation’s history. Her methods have changed too: over the last dozen and a half years, she has invented a fresh language in her painting practice by embracing more abstracted visual forms.
Her celebrated recent compositions of female subjectivity and American flags are made up of palpable, luscious abstracted brushstrokes applied methodically. These newer bodies of work have extended the metaphorical possibilities of her palette from the brighter earlier pictures to sublime shades of color that are inspired by a spectrum of dark skin tones.
This unprecedented viewing experience allows us to consider how Edmonds’s dedication to producing vibrant and intellectually rigorous work centering Black American experience is manifest throughout her career. Indeed, Edmonds has always been on an experimental trajectory to complicate and claim vital narratives that speak to a more culturally rich art world.
The exhibition June Edmonds: Full Spectrum will be accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by jill moniz, Ph.D. The publication was designed by Blacvoice Design and will be released in mid-November.
“June Edmonds: Full Spectrum” runs through Feb. 20, 2022. The Laband is open to external guests from noon to 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Due to COVID safety protocols, advance reservations are required; no walk-ins will be permitted.
Laband Art Gallery is located at 1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90045. Tel. 310-338-2700.
Request a reservation here.