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La Luz de Jesus Gallery is a commercial art gallery located in Los Angeles, California. It is closely associated with the Lowbrow Art Movement, Kustom Kulture, and pop surrealism.
La Luz de Jesus Gallery was established in 1986 in Los Angeles, California by entrepreneur and art collector Billy Shire. The original gallery was located in a bright pink building on Melrose Avenue, upstairs from Shire's retail store Soap Plant/ Wacko. As Melrose Avenue became increasingly gentrified, the gallery was relocated to the Los Feliz / Silverlake district on Hollywood Boulevard near Vermont Avenue. The early years of La Luz de Jesus gallery, before its relocation to Hollywood Boulevard, coincide with the Golden Age of Lowbrow. In April 2005, Shire opened a sister gallery, Billy Shire Fine Arts, in Culver City, California.
La Luz de Jesus Gallery provides both an exhibition space and a support structure to Lowbrow and pop surrealist artists. The gallery's mission is to make underground artists and counterculture accessible to the general public. In a 1988 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Shire sums up the gallery's philosophy by saying, "Art should be by the people and for the people. It should be something that speaks to you, that entertains and challenges and changes your outlook." The gallery presents a new exhibit each month with an opening reception on the first Friday of every month. The gallery shows primarily figurative and narrative painting and unusual sculpture, with a focus on themes and styles including folk art, outsider art, religious art, and alternative erotica. The gallery has been the first to introduce to the public many then-unknown artists who have gone on to claim their place in the art world. These artists include Manuel Ocampo, Joe Coleman, Shag, and Robert Williams. Other notable artists that have exhibited at the gallery include Marco Almera, and Joe Sorren. In addition to regular solo and two-person shows, the gallery also hosts a variety of group shows, including a much-anticipated annual group exhibition entitled "Everything But the Kitschen Sync" which introduces relatively unknown and emerging artists at the beginning of their careers.
Robert L. Williams, often styled Robt. Williams, is an American painter, cartoonist, and founder of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine. Williams was one of the group of artists who produced Zap Comix, along with other underground cartoonists, such as Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and Gilbert Shelton. His mix of California car culture, cinematic apocalypticism, and film noir helped to create a new genre of psychedelic imagery.
Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, is an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California area in the late 1960s. It is a populist art movement with its cultural roots in underground comix, punk music, tiki culture, graffiti, and hot-rod cultures of the street. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Lowbrow art often has a sense of humor – sometimes the humor is gleeful, impish, or a sarcastic comment.
Todd Schorr is an American artist and member of the "Lowbrow" art movement or pop surrealism. Combining a cartoon influenced visual vocabulary with a highly polished technical ability, based on the exacting painting methods of the Old Masters, Schorr weaves intricate narratives that are often biting yet humorous in their commentary on the human condition.
Josh Agle is an American artist, better known by the nickname Shag.
Gary Baseman is an American artist, cartoonist, and animator who investigates history, heritage, and the human condition. Through iconography and visual narratives that celebrate “the beauty of the bittersweetness of life,” his work brings together the worlds of popular culture and fine art.
Melrose Avenue is a shopping, dining and entertainment destination in Los Angeles, California, United States that starts at Santa Monica Boulevard, at the border between Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. It ends at Lucile Avenue in Silver Lake. Melrose runs north of Beverly Boulevard and south of Santa Monica Boulevard.
Barnsdall Art Park is a city park located in the East Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California. Parking and arts buildings access is from Hollywood Boulevard on the north side of the park. The park is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, and a facility of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Rob Clayton and Christian Clayton are painters based in California.
Elizabeth McGrath is an American artist and singer. She is based in California who works primarily in the fields of sculpture and animation. Her work is often evocative of the darker side of life, and she has been nicknamed Bloodbath McGrath after the subject matter of her works. Along with her career in art, from 1989 to 1999 she was the lead singer for the hardcore band Tongue, and co-founded the fanzine Censor This. From 2000–2011 she was the lead singer of the Los Angeles-born band Miss Derringer, along with her husband/songwriter Morgan Slade.
The Ferus Gallery was a contemporary art gallery which operated from 1957 to 1966. In 1957, the gallery was located at 736-A North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles in the U.S. state of California. In 1958, it was relocated across the street to 723 North La Cienega Boulevard where it remained until its closing in 1966.
Stacy Lande is a contemporary lowbrow painter.
01 Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in downtown Los Angeles, California, U.S., founded by art dealer and curator John Pochna. The gallery is known for its contributions to the lowbrow art movement, as it frequently exhibits pieces with heavy graffiti and street art influences. In April 2007, Pochna partnered with Brandon Coburn, and Jim Ulrich.
Aunia Marie Kahn is an award-winning and collected American contemporary painter, photographer, curator, and entrepreneur. She was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and currently lives in Boise, Idaho. She is also the CEO of Rise Visible.
The Rosamund Felsen Gallery is one of the longest-running art galleries in Los Angeles, California, involved in and influencing the broader American art community since its establishment in 1978. The gallery has operated four locations since its inception: first on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, then on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, later at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, and finally in the Arts District, Los Angeles in Downtown Los Angeles.
Mark Bryan is an American painter. Bryan's work travels in two distinct directions. Satirical works of social, political and religious comment and works which take an inward track to the imagination and subconscious. Humor and parody play a large role in many of his paintings. Style elements and influences in his work include classical painting, illustration, Romanticism, Surrealism and Pop Surrealism.
Anthony Ausgang is an artist and writer born in Pointe-à-Pierre, Trinidad and Tobago in 1959 who lives and works in Los Angeles. Ausgang is a principal painter associated with the lowbrow art movement, one of "the first major wave of lowbrow artists" to show in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. The protagonists of his paintings are cats -- "psychedelic, wide eyed, with a kind of evil look in their eyes".
Shulamit Nazarian is a contemporary art gallery located in Los Angeles, California.
Louis Stern Fine Arts is an art gallery located at 9002 Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, California, in the heart of the city’s Avenue of Art and Design.
Sonia Amalia Romero is an American artist, she is known for her printmaking, mixed media linocut prints, murals, and public art based in Los Angeles. She is known for depicting Los Angeles, Latin American imagery, and Chicano themes in her work.
Bradley Parker is an American cartoonist and painter. His works have been shown at the Kona Oceanfront Gallery and the La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles. Prior to his career as a painter, Parker was an illustrator in the film industry and a cartoonist, working for mainstream publishers such as DC, Marvel, and Chaos! Comics. He is also known for his LGBT-themed comics, sometimes published under the pen name Ace Moorcock.