Artist Karla Diaz will speak about We Are Santa Monica in the library courtyard at Santa Monica Public Library on Saturday, October 26 at 2 PM.

Two vibrant artworks, We Are Santa Monica at the Santa Monica Public Library and Youth Powerful Voices at the Virginia Avenue Park Teen Center, are rooted in community workshops led by Diaz last summer at the Juneteenth Festival and the Teen Center. Both sessions focused on storytelling and sharing, and fostered dialogue about racial justice, cultural equity, and community well-being.

The Joyce Foundation today announced the recipients of the 2024 Joyce Awards, marking the 20th anniversary of the foundation's annual awards program supporting artists of color in the creation of new, community-centered works with organizational partners across the Great Lakes region. Expanding each grant from $75,000 to $100,000, this year marks the Awards' largest total amount given to date, with $500,000 in grants to support five projects. The 2024 awardees deeply engage communities through co-creation and collaboration across disciplines to explore diverse cultural identities, invigorate public spaces, and foster healing and connection. 

This year’s JEDI Award (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) will be given to Ken Gonzales-Day, a celebrated artist and scholar, whose impact stretches beyond the space of the photographic image, to include advocacy work with municipal agencies, to public art, walking tours and curatorial projects, all uplifting and focusing on Chicanx and queer bodies in his work.

Edmonds took a biographical approach to the portrait, which features landmarks and elements from throughout her subject's life. It includes the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company Building where Venerable worked and met his wife, Thelma Scott; the McAlpern Hotel he owned and managed; the family's Chandler car; and gears symbolizing the chalkboard eraser manufacturing plant Venerable would later own and manage.

QUEER | ART | MENTORSHIP was founded to develop an intergenerational and interdisciplinary network of support and shared knowledge for LGBTQ+ artists. The program nurtures exchange between artists at all levels of their careers, working against a social separation between generations and disciplines.

The USLAF, a non-profit organization formed in 2015 to address the underrepresentation and underfunding of Latinx art. As part of the year-long Latinx Artist Fellowship program, each artist receives $50,000 in unrestricted funding to support their creative work, as well as opportunities to participate in public programs co-hosted by USLAF. 

Examining ideas of power and contemporary culture, SOLMI – Ship of Fools opens April 18, 2024 in Venice, Italy, concurrent with the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition spotlights new and recent video works, large-scale mixed media paintings, pastel drawings, ceramics, oleographic sculpture, and a virtual reality experience, culminating in a “total work” of art, choreographed by Solmi.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce Hector Dionicio Mendoza as a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2022 Biennial Grant.  

Twenty artists working in painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, craft, and new media are awarded $20,000 USD each in unrestricted grants.  Established in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of the founder of Tiffany & Company, the Foundation remains one of the largest single sources of monetary grants to artists working in America today.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce that gallery artist Edra Soto has been awarded the Bemis Center's 2022 Ree Kaneko Award.  This annual award is bestowed to artists that have participated in Bemis's exhibition or residency programs and is named in honor of Ree Kaneko, Bemis Center co-founder, first Executive Director, and Board Member Emerita. 

The Bemis Center's Ree Kaneko Award was created to award $25,000 unrestricted, by nomination to an alum of the program to provide financial support to increase the capacity of an artists practice.  There will be a conversation held with Edra Soto: March 9, 6–7pm

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, Iowa recently acquired four works by artist Vian Sora.  The works included Eden I,2022, Eden II, 2022, River Bed, 2022, and Thirst, 2021.  Sora's work utilizes a synthesis of styles and iconography taken from both her native, modern and ancient Iraq and adopted cultures, along with a variety of techniques, Vian Sora’s mixed media paintings embody imagery that suggests the struggle of the individual in the face of personal and social upheaval, often employing androgynous figures that transmute into expressionist abstraction.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce Gabriel Sanchez has been featured on the cover of New American Paintings Artist of the West Competition. Sanchez's recent paintings explore how proximity and union, ever-present aspects of Cuban society, inform notions of solitude and intimacy.  Sanchez’s works focus on Cuban current events and politics as seen through the lens of portraiture. 

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day's The Wonder Gaze (St. James Park) was recently acquired by the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Evanston. The Wonder Gaze (St. James Park) is one work from Ken Gonzales-Day's ongoing Erased Lynchings series which he began in 2002. The series seeks to reveal that racially motivated lynching and vigilantism was a more widespread practice in the American West than was believed, and that in California, the majority of lynchings were perpetrated against Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans; and that more Latinos were lynched in California than were persons of any other race or ethnicity. It is Gonzales-Day’s continual engagement with history and his interest in peeling back the layers that makes his work so powerful and continuously relevant.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce Antonia Wright & Ruben Millares have been awarded the Juror's Choice Award for the 2022 edition of No Vacancy. The duo have been awarded a prize of $25,000 for their presentation of Patria y Cida at the Faena Hotel Miami Beach. No Vacancy is a juried art competition that celebrates artists, provokes critical discourse, and invites the public to experience Miami Beach’s famed hotels as destination art spaces. Artists were drawn from a call for submissions and selected by representatives from the City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places Committee, Cultural Arts Council (CAC) and MBVCA. For the second edition of No Vacancy, $35,000 in prizes were awarded, including the $10,000 Public Prize by the GMCVB and the $25,000 Juror Prize awarded by a panel of art experts.

The gallery is pleased to announce that Hugo Crosthwaite has been chosen to commisson a portrait of public health expert Anthony S. Fauci for Portrait of a Nation 2022 Honoree to be exhibited in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.  Crosthwaite’s portrait will be debuted alongside new commissions by Kenturah Davis, David Hockney, Kadir Nelson, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Robert Pruitt, and Ruven Afanador.  Crosthwaite's innovative piece presents a stop-motion animated piece of Dr. Fauci and will be accompanied by seven drawings.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud ot announce that Laura Karetzky is a Finalist for the 2023 Bennett Prize and Rising Voices 3 exhibition. The Bennett Prize was founded by art collectors, curators, and philanthropists Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt. It seeks to propel the careers of women figurative realist painters who have not yet realized full professional recognition, thereby empowering new artists as well as those who have painted for many years. As a finalist, Karetzky will be in consideration for the $50,000 Bennett Prize and the runner up prize of $10,000. The opening of the exhibition and announcement of the winner of the Bennett Prize will take place at the Muskegon Museum of Art on May 18, 2023, in Muskegon, MI. 

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce that Phung Huynh has been awarded a 2022 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artist Fellows. The CCF fellowships are one of the most "prestigious arts fellowships in the region, which helps artists build successful, sustainable careers that support the thriving Los Angeles arts scene."

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce that June Edmonds has been awarded a 2022 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artist Fellows. The CCF fellowships are one of the most "prestigious arts fellowships in the region, which helps artists build successful, sustainable careers that support the thriving Los Angeles arts scene."

The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will lead a walking tour around historical sites in downtown Los Angeles to that expands on the history of lynching in California. Organized by Bridge Projects, the in person event will take place on Saturday, October 29, 2022 beginning at Union Station at 10 AM. The walking tour will revisit places and events made infamous in the first decades of Los Angeles – a period that was colored by great social, economic, and cultural unrest.

The gallery is pleased to announce Ken Gonzales-Day's participation in "At Home: Artists in Conversation" with Rita Gonzalez, Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Presented by the the Yale Center for British Art, at home: Artists in Conversation brings together curators and artists to discuss various artistic practices and insights into their work.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Lia Halloran will be speaking with Kip Thorne in a discussion, "Poetry & Painting:  The Warped Side of our Universe" on Friday September 23, 2022. The talk will run from 8:30-9:15 AM and is part of the 11th Conference on the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena Programming. 

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to participate in the second edition of Gallery Weekend Los Angeles, presented by the Gallery Association Los Angeles (GALA) from July 27-30, 2022. In conjunction with their current solo exhibitions, the gallery will present John Brooks and Jonathan VanDyke in back to back readings on Saturday, July 30th as part of readings on Saturday, July 30th as part of our Gallery Weekend LA programme. We will begin with John Brooks at 1pm followed immediately by Jonathan Van Dyke. A second presentation will be held at 4pm.

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.

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. 

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. 

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."

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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. 

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 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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.   

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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?

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. 

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.

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. 

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 

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.

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.

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.
 

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. 

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

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

The gallery is pleased to announce that Carla Jay Harris will be included in ARCHIVE MACHINES at Los Angeles Municiple Art Gallery. ARCHIVE MACHINES brings together recent works by Southern California artists that examine the archive as a conceptual vehicle to de-center singular narratives and encourage plural perspectives through the activities of revisioning, resisting, rewiring and relating.  Carla Jay Harris' work explores the Black experience during Jim Crow. Central to the piece is a set of archival images sourced from Library of Congress. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

Register on Zoom

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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 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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

"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

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. 

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.” 

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.

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.  

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. 

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. 

“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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

An interview with Luis De Jesus & Jay WIngate by Anna Bagirov in Artillery Magazine.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.
 

The gallery is pleased to announce that Ken Gonzales-Day will be conducting an artist talk and workshop "Decolonizing the Museum" at Middlebury College, in Middlebury Vermont. Through invited expert speakers/facilitators, this workshop series open to faculty and staff seeks to provide participants with leading insights and methods in rethinking how the institution and instructors can promote change against deep-rooted structures of oppression at a curricular/institutional level while fostering greater equity in the classroom.

October 3, 2019, 12:00pm. Crest Room 

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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 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.

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.

A. Moret interviews Luis De Jesus on the gallery's participation in VOLTA Basel 10.