2315 Jesse Street
Los Angeles, CA 90023

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 27, 8:00pm – 12:00am

On view through June 17, 2017
Open Saturdays, 12 – 6pm and by appointment

Oro En Paz

curated by Andres Guerrero

John de Fazio
Elizabeth Huey
Kara Joslyn
Terry Powers
Joe Roberts

“Oro En Paz” (“Gold In Peace”) are the words emblazoned beneath a rising phoenix on San Francisco’s city flag. Alongside are the words “Fierro En Guerra” (“Iron In War”) but we’ll disregard those for now. Unsurprisingly the flag persists as a strong symbol for the city, reflecting its origins within the Western perspective as a frontier town during the area’s gold rush, a state we once again find ourselves in as venture capital money flows unbridled through the city’s veins funding yet another means to get a lukewarm fusion wrap delivered at 11:24 pm.

And while the city is certainly not the place it was fifty years ago as countercultural and revolutionary tides have become muddled by our current state of “smart” technologies and tech-hypercapitalism–communities of artists persist still, embodying and carrying on the social and creative movements that have defined the Bay Area. In this sense, Terry Powers, John de Fazio and Joe Roberts serve as contemporary liaisons: Powers as a descendent of the Bay Area figurative painting tradition, de Fazio as a master of ceramic “piss-elegance” and Gay aesthetics, and Roberts as a psychedelic explorer relating both the forays into his mind and California’s rugged landscapes via painting.

Connecting with these three are Los Angeles based artists Kara Joslyn and Elizabeth Huey, two painters pulling from vastly different traditions. Joslyn, who spent a number of years in the Bay Area, creates lush monochromatic paintings utilizing the shimmering materials and airbrush techniques of LA car culture, depicting singular forms that exude ritualistic aura. Huey’s, on the other hand, portray sprawling psychological landscapes, populated by disparate forms, places, and people, providing the work a cinematically nonlinear and dreamlike quality.

As the interconnecting highways once functioned as a vital artery for the cross-pollination of artists and ideas between the two California capitals of creativity, the digital era has pushed the dissemination of artistic traditions into the cloud allowing for both a democratization of information as well as a new sort of placeness. Nonetheless the challenges and joys that we face within our respective art communities are unique, and we will always be stronger when we work together–from the Bay to LA there’s “oro en paz.”