Exhibitions Extended!

As the month of May draws to a close, two exhibits at La Luz de Jesus Gallery have been extended! The overwhelming response to Pop-Sequentialism: Great Comic Book Art of the Modern Age and Peter Shire's Hokkaido Story, have convinced us to prolong them through Monday evening on MEMORIAL DAY.

A lecture will be held on Saturday afternoon (MAY 28TH) at 2PM focusing on the great collaborations of writers and artists in comic books of the Modern Age. Then, on Monday evening, following the close of the shows, we'll be holding a Memorial Day after-party at Ground Control Alternative Karaoke at Jewel's Catch One (4067 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90019). 6:30-9PM will be happy hour with no cover charge.

One week from today, we open a new exhibit of paintings from Glenn Barr, coinciding with the early release of his new graphic album from La Luz de Jesus Press & Last Gasp Books. It's been three long years since Glenn's shown solo, and the work in this new show is well worth the wait. In the other gallery, we'll be showcasing a room full of new Lyle Motley paintings that incorporate hand brazed steel with with his oil on panel meditations of figurative abstractions. In other words, there will be two great reasons to head back into the gallery next weekend. We'll have our old friends at Sino Tequila mixing up the best margaritas in town while our new pals at Perrier supply the soft drinks –and we just might have a food truck or two nearby.
Here's a taste of what's to come. Click the images to access full gallery previews!

La bande dessinée: Pop-Sequentialism in France

Almost immediately after the Pop-Sequentialism exhibition opened, I ventured to Paris to cement international relations with a few, select galleries. To my surprise and delight, the exhibition and the show catalog were enthusiastically received and planning has begun for a European tour. This traveling, European version of the landmark exhibition of modern comic book art will include some of the pieces from the inaugural show, expanding to include more examples of original production pages from several of the same creative teams and a roster of new, landmark collaborations –addressing the slight differences in taste between American and European collectors.

By the time I packed my luggage to embark on this journey, the synergy at home had launched a media storm that could not be contained: Free Comic Book Day resulted in unprecedented "sold-out" status for more titles than ever before; the Frank Miller and Klaus Jansen Dark Knight splash page offered at auction by Heritage realized the record price of $448,125.00 (plus a 19% buyer premium); and Kenneth Branagh's blockbuster Thor movie opened to critical and public praise as billboards for Captain America and Green Lantern began popping up all over the nation. The Pop-Sequentialism exhibit garnered the pick of the week in the L.A. Weekly, and the blogosphere was lit-up with feature reports on Artlog, Newsarama, Gothic.Net, Comic Book Resources, Illustration.org, Campus Circle, ChinaShop, Spectrum, SupahCute, Crackajack, Forces Of Geek, Bleeding Cool, Wizards World, and a little over 11,000 other site pages!

The Pop-Sequentialism exhibition catalog is available now for a limited time. It's formatted like an 80-Page Giant and priced accordingly at $7.95. The print run of 1,000 copies isn't expected to last beyond this year's Alternative Press Expo. Wholesale and retail orders can be fulfilled by emailing info@laluzdejesus.com.

In preparing the catalog for publication along with Peter Shire's Hokkaido Story, I realized that the La Luz de Jesus Press website was well out of date. So I completely redesigned the front page to reflect greater consistency with the La Luz de Jesus Gallery website, and updated the book list to reflect the 25 titles currently available or in solicitation.

In the last two years we've published new art volumes by Dennis Larkins, Chris Mars, Scott Musgrove, Myron Conan Dyal & Jennifer Logan. Next month we'll be presenting a new Glenn Barr book and by the fall, we'll be publishing a massive tome to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of La Luz de Jesus Gallery. By the end of the year, there will be a new Daniel Martin Diaz collection and we'll be announcing new titles from past collaborators alongside a handful of print debuts. A work in progress, the new La Luz de Jesus Press site will soon be expanded to include a selection of antiquarian titles from Billy Shire's personal archive, an easy to use shopping cart, and links to signing events and exhibitions at other galleries featuring our roster of published artists. The gallery site will soon feature a comprehensive, artist search index and a revamped posters & prints menu. These improvements have been a long time coming, and it's my intent to present a better, more user-friendly experience for visitors both actual and virtual.

It's going to be a very exciting summer!

Hokkaido Story Revisited: Previews Tomorrow Night!

"Mystical practical absurdism, amazing, astounding phenomena on a human scale and what is funny about the way we love and hate industrial things...is what interests me." –Peter Shire

I first met Peter Shire in 1991 when I was a register jockey at his brother Billy Shire’s shop, The Soap Plant, then on Melrose Ave. He struck me as a good-natured, gregarious fellow with a penchant for bad puns and a quiet, steady vocal delivery that almost invariably ended with a smile. I’m happy to say that twenty years later not much has changed. His amiability is as delightfully forthright as ever and his puns are even more groan-worthy. What has changed in the two decades past is the sheer volume of acclaim that his work has received.

Peter’s first public art commission in 1986 has grown to more than thirty worldwide. His teapots are ubiquitous and (along with his other ceramics and furniture designs) have caused something of a pop revolution. Whether fashioning delicate-looking flowers from steel or evoking monumental scale via fragile, hand-forged porcelain, his bright and eclectic color palette remains consistent with his colorful and playful personality.

If you’ve ever visited Shire’s Echo Park studio, located mere blocks from the house he grew up in, you’ll have been treated to a proper espresso, ground and brewed from a machine gifted him by his fellow Memphis Group collaborators. His graciousness as a host is a copacetic antithesis to the stimulation overload that doubles as his think tank, office, and work space. Once you’ve recovered from the organized chaos, keen observation will reveal a single pattern that pervades nearly all his multi-faceted work: succinct minimalism, redolent of Japanese flower arrangement. How a Sephardic Jew raised in a predominantly Latino neighborhood came to embody the essence of Ikebana is anyone’s guess, but Japanese Industrialists came to notice it.

The selection of pieces contained in this volume are the beneficiaries of a three-month 1992 design project in Hokkaido, Japan. Salvaged brewing factory materials were transformed into incredible, contemporary and fundamentally Japanese works of art. These sculptures remained on display in Japan until 2008, when they were rescued from receivership and returned to California. In November 2010, they were loaned to Santa Monica College and exhibited in the Barrett Art Gallery.

Now, in May 2011, on the 25^th anniversary of Peter Shire’s first public art project –and nearly twenty years after these seminal works were first constructed, La Luz de Jesus Gallery is pleased to be the first commercial space to not only display these great works of art, but offer them publicly to private collections: Hokkaido Story Revisited.

It is perfectly fitting that Shire’s work should return to the neighborhood of his childhood, and personally gratifying that on the vigintennial of our first meeting, I get to be the one to present it.

Matthew Kennedy

PETER SHIRE
Hokkaido Story Revisited: Late Spring
May 6th - May 29th
Artist Reception & Preview:
Thursday May, 5th 7-9PM

THE SHOW CATALOG IS AVAILABLE FOR $15.00