Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce Unreachable Spring, a group exhibition opening on Saturday, October 17, from 12:00 to 7:00 p.m., and on view through December 19, 2020. Participating artists include June Edmonds, André Hemer, Laura Krifka, Kambui Olujimi, Edra Soto, and Peter Williams.

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 curator 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 lead 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. Individual artist statements and Andrew Berardini's essay will be included in their entirety as wall text in the gallery, as well as a Viewing Room for Laura Krifka’s Unreachable Spring.

For further information and inquiries, please contact us at 310-838-6000, or email: gallery@luisdejesus.com.

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"I was thinking a lot about longing, feeling cut off from the world, and also the way everyone was watching each other from afar with a sort of insatiable desire to report wrongdoing…All of this started to make its way into the work and this painting in particular—the ways we were watching the outside world those first few weeks of lockdown, sometimes with longing, at other times rage and indignation, and then stretches of disorienting disbelief.”

LAURA KRIFKA —

"Those late-night early mornings have become my favorite time of day. Birdsong fills the crisp air, echoing between my terrace and the apartment building opposite. And in that transition from night to day the light changes so quickly that it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment it shifts. Overhead is an infinitely deep blue—not sky exactly, but an actual window into the outer atmosphere. I can imagine floating up and piercing through to space."

ANDRÉ HEMER​ —

"Let Love Win borrows the format of a project I created 15 years ago titled A Year in Review. The process consisted of color coding and tracing selected newspaper photos onto a piece of soft metal resembling a contemporary version of a religious votive or milagro. Traditional milagros are small charms used as offerings or for healing purposes widely popular in Mexico and Latin America folklore tradition. The powerful significance attached to these modest, soft pieces of pushed metal with their enduring, sincere and sentimental value prompted me to respond in a contemporary context."

EDRA SOTO —

"When Monuments Fall is a series of paintings that examine the precarious position of Modernist monumentality and its atemporality. The work intersects with national conversations around the recontextualization, amendment, and removal of monuments. When Monuments Fall uses veiling as a launch point within the work."

KAMBUI OLUJIMI —

“Saying her name, their names, is a hashtag for a reason. What is not talked about doesn’t exist, right? Silence is another dirty and ugly side to White privilege. It has been a tactic exercised in the practice of racism by Americans since the institution of slavery began in 1619 to this very day. Silence—the telling of lies, conscious and unconscious ignorance, and the benefit of presumed innocence—is what I am addressing in this painting.”

JUNE EDMONDS —

"These days are special since my work has a political quotient and a responsibility. The root of my recent journey these last five years has been documenting black life and the repressive nature of the police and mass incarceration. The death of George Floyd hit me like a hammer; the view of him dying in front of my eyes meant I was not in isolation. I would need words and feelings and images to manifest my inner thoughts."

PETER WILLIAMS —