Luis De Jesus Los Angeles presents two exhibitions – June Edmonds: Meditations on African Resilience, as well as YRNEH GABON: Spirit Leads Me. An opening was held on February 24, 2024 for both exhibitions. Aditionally, the gallery held a brunch in conjunction with Frieze Los Angeles. The exhibitions run through April 13, 2024.
June Edmonds
This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, on view in Gallery 1. For over 35 years, June Edmonds has cultivated a practice that synthesizes abstraction, spirituality, and meditation with her contemplations on her African American roots, Black history, and experience in America. Her paintings memorialize historic and contemporary figures as well as events. She accomplishes this with narratives that embody Black strength, endurance, joy, harmony, power, and resilience. Exploring the depth and breadth of color, Edmonds’ paintings communicate a language uniquely her own, deconstructing symbols through repetitive linework and bands of color, visceral impasto textures, and a psychologically charged lexicon of brilliant color.
June Edmonds, River Leaf, 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 75 x 56 in; Yrneh Gabon, Garvey Speaks, 2023, Acrylic and mixed media on paper, 84 x 48 in
June Edmonds: Meditations on African Resilience presents a series of contemplations on the river leaf symbol, combined at times with the vesica piscis, in fields of color pulsing with subtle energy: circles within circles, overlapping depths of hue and intensity, and their echoing intersections, to induce an expansive range of chromatic awareness — what she calls “deep color” — exploring the deepest potentialities and experiences of color. Edmonds shares, “I believe that the deep color palette I’m continuing to delve into carries a profound and resonant quality, tapping into a part of our psyche linked to an ancient memory that exists within all of us.”
Yrneh Gabon
Spirit Leads Me is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, on view in Gallery 2 and Gallery 3. This exhibition presents the boubous that Gabon designed at The Museum of Black Civilisations. Also on view is a series of visually rhythmic paintings in which they are depicted worn by himself and also subjects the artist befriended during his trips to the African continent. These includes Senegalese twins Sena and Sana, and the Jamaican supermodel and fashion designer Lois Samuels.
In addition, the exhibition includes four paintings that highlight the role of African children in a fast-changing Africa. The works exhibit the criticality of empowering them by encouraging curiosity and the search for purpose and prospect. Several mixed-media floor and wall sculptures join these works. These employ a range of materials including bronze, steel, crystals, salt, clay, wood, glass, water, and paint.
On view: February 24, 2024 – April 13, 2024
What: New Exhibitions
Where: Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, 1110 Mateo Street, Los Angeles (in the Arts District)
When: Running thru April 13, 2024
Website: https://www.luisdejesus.com/
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