Unreachable Spring Group Show @ Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

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.

Over many months we watched as the Covid-19 pandemic transformed the world and like an earthquake of biblical proportions exposed the fragile fissures of our deteriorating human ecosystem, turning one crisis into many. As the author Daniel Susskind writes in Life Post-COVID-19, "This crisis is focusing our collective attention on the many injustices and weaknesses that already exist in how we live together. If people were blind to these faults before, it is hard not to see them now."

These crises have also inspired artists to respond in kind, prompted by a desire to take refuge in their work and address this transformational moment in their own personal way. By creating art that inspires contemplation and elicits discourse these paintings, sculptures and photographs bear witness and provide a record of how these artists have experienced life over these past six months.

Participating artists include June Edmonds, André Hemer, Laura Krifka, Kambui Olujimi, Edra Soto, and Peter Williams. Unreachable Spring is on view through December 19 @ Luis De Jesus Los Angeles 2685 South La Cienega Boulevard.

Margie Livingston Presents The Earth Is A Brush @ Luis De Jesus In Los Angeles

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. The Earth Is A Brush is on view through February 15 at Luis De Jesus 2685 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Hugo Crosthwaite: TIJUAS! (Death March, Tijuana Bibles and Other Legends) @ Luis De Jesus In Los Angeles

 In TIJUAS! , Crosthwaite will present selections from several bodies of work that continue his exploration of this ever-evolving transnational culture, among them the Tijuana Bibles , a new series of stop-motion drawing animations and books; graphite, charcoal and ink on canvas and panel paintings; new Tijuanerias  ink drawings; and Death March , a phenomenal 27 foot 30-panel work mural. This will be the first time this work will be presented since it was commissioned in 2010 for Morbid Curiosity: The Richard Harris Collection  at the Chicago Cultural Center. TIJUAS! (Death March, Tijuana Bibles and Other Legends) is on view through through December 21, 2019 at Luis De Jesus 2685 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles . photographs courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus

June Edmonds Presents "Allegiances & Convictions" @ Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

Allegiances and Convictions explores the American flag as a malleable symbol of ideals, promises, and identity. June Edmonds’s new Flag Paintings create space for the inclusion of multiple identities including race, nationality, gender, and political leanings. Each flag is associated with the narrative of an AfricanAmerican, past or present, a current event, or an anecdote from American history. Edmonds investigates the complexities of these stories through the creation of new symbols for Americanness. Allegiances and Convictions is on view through June 29 at Luis De Jesus 2685 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. Click here to read an interview with June Edmonds and gallery owner/director, Luis De Jesus.

Lia Halloran "Double Horizon" @ Luis De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles

Double Horizon presents Passage, a new group of photographs that expand upon Lia Halloran's Dark Skate series alongside the artist's first immersive three-channel video installation, Double Horizon (2019), which offers footage of the artist aerially exploring the space above Los Angeles. Her ongoing investigations into the personal, physical, psychological, and scientific exploration of space are the primary focus of these new works as the viewer encounters Halloran both skateboarding the vast urban landscape of Los Angeles and flying above and around its dynamic terrain. Lia Halloran "Double Horizon" will be on view from March 30 to May 4 at Luis De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles.

Chris Engman "Refraction" @ Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

Refraction features Containment, a site-specific work originally commissioned for the FotoFocus Biennial 2018 in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as new photographs from the Prospect and Refuge and Ink on Paper series. These various photographic projects range from architectural to sculptural to two-dimensional, each acknowledging strategies of seeing. Refraction explores the relationship between illusion and reality by exposing the deceit inherent in photographic image-making while engaging in philosophical and material play around slips in translation.

Chris Engman "Refraction" will be on view until March 23, 2019 at Luis De Jesus Gallery.

Dennis Koch Solo Exhibition @ Luis de Jesus in Los Angeles

Beyond the Funny Farm! Crypto-K, Cutouts, Cut-ups, Copies, Mirrors, Membranes, and Temporal Algorithms marks Dennis Koch's third solo exhibition with Luis de Jesus. In this exhibition, Koch creates a mind-map of relationships that find, build, and amplify meaning in the form of sculptures and drawings. Wooden newsstand-like sculptures display 100 vintage copies of LIFE magazine, each carved page by page to reveal interior images. Known as the first all-photographic American news magazine, LIFE revitalized itself during the 1960s in response to the popularity of television media. Koch's interest in LIFE as a cultural artifact stems from a time-parallel between contemporary political upheaval and the equally tumultuous events of the 1960s. The exhibition is on view through July 28 at Luis de Jesus 2685 S La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles.

"HA HA! BUSINESS!" Group Show Tries to Make Sense of the Hyper Connected Digitial World With Humor @ Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

"The art world is now a global business, of course, as is just about everything else. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Skype have become our new living room, our church, our megaphone—and, some would argue, our toilet, too. And, it seems everyone wants to sit on the throne and be heard. Life is now "all news, all the time" and humor is the unifying force that allows us to look in the mirror, if for no other reason than to get a quick reality check and, hopefully, a little truth. HA HA! BUSINESS! continues my quixotic interest in making sense of it all. Yes, this is definitely a funny business! Ha ha." Text by Luis De Jesus on his group show on view now featuring the likes of Valerie Blass, Lex Brown, Josh Remes, and more. HA HA! BUSINESS! will be be on view until August 15, 2015 at Luis De Jesus gallery in Los Angeles. Photographs by Sara Clarken 

Distance is Where the Heart Is

ZACKARY_DRUCKER_AMOSMAC_distance_LUIS_DE_JESUS

“Distance is where the heart is, home is where you hang your heart” is an intimate collaboration between two near-strangers—Zackary Drucker, the LA-based photographer, video and performance artist, and Amos Mac—the creator and publisher of Original Plumbing. Executed over a long, snowed-in Christmas weekend at Drucker’s childhood home in Syracuse, New York, the images combine elements of personal history, performance documentation, and exhibitionism. The resulting intervention is also an experiment in cross-identity representation; a dialogue between Mac, a trans man, and Drucker, a trans woman. The exhibition marks the official release of this unique suite of 25 limited-edition photographs, a number of which appear in the first issue of Mac’s new publication, Translady Fanzine. "Distance is where the heart is, home is where you hang your heart" is on view at the Luis de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles until January 22.