Luis de Jesus Los Angeles celebrated three new exhibitions with an opening art party on June 22, 2024, from 6-8pm.  The solo shows include: Melissa Huddleston: Primordial Spring, Phung Huynh: Return Home, as well as Luis Emilio RomeroFortaleza de Luz (Fortress of Light).

Melissa Huddleston: Primordial Spring

This is the Los Angeles artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Primordial Spring features a new series of paintings on paper. Images from  a prehistoric swamp come to life. In addition to single-celled organisms, imaginary archaic life forms, and also humanoid amphibian figures are the central figures.

Huddleston uses various processes adapted from historic print and book arts techniques. Using an experimental monoprint-style method, the artist applies paint to the surface of a water bath, manipulates it, and then transfers it to paper. The resulting paintings are dense with organic activity, and buoyant swirls of colors floating with mysterious levity. Paper marbling techniques are commonly associated with European scriptural arts, as well as the Japanese art of suminagashi.

L-R: Melissa Huddleston, All nighter in the Mariana Trench, 2024, acrylic on paper, 60 x 43 in. (66 x 49.5 in framed); Phung Huynh, The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco Head of a female deity B60S100, 2024, graphite on paper, 30.25 x 22.25 in (41 x 33 in, framed); Luis Emilio Romero, Fortaleza Vertebral / Spinal Fortress, 2023, oil on linen, 58 x 52 in.

Phung Huynh: Return Home

The artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery features an installation of ornately framed graphite drawings and photographic banners. These works unite fragments of sacred Khmer Buddha statue heads looted from Cambodia.

The artist examines Cambodian sculptures that memorialize the Golden Age of Khmer culture from the 9th to the 15th centuries, particularly the Buddha heads that are currently housed in American art museums and the remnants of the statues’ bodies remaining in the temples of Cambodia.

Luis Emilio Romero Fortaleza de Luz (Fortress of Light)

Luis Emilio Romero links his geometric abstract paintings to ancestrally passed traditions of woven textiles, connecting his process to the ritual of creation. Romero’s work speaks to the lifeblood of cultural methodologies, employing spirituality as well as indigenous craft as the structural logic in his intricate compositions. His paintings are vessels of process imbued with intention, energy, and devotion. Romero’s process starts by drawing linear compositions on delicate paper.

On view: June 22, 2024 – August 3, 2024

What: New Exhibitions
Where: Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, 1110 Mateo St., LA, 90021
When: Running through August 3, 2024
Website: https://www.luisdejesus.com/