PAST
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THE UNBOXING PROJECT
Sla Cha, Jaiyoung Cho, Goen Choi, Haneyl Choi, Soyoung Chung, Sunpil Don, Gimhongsok, Gwon Osang, Kyungwoo Han, Sang A Han, Jungyoon Hyen, Jiieh G Hur, Byoungho Kim, Hansaem Kim, Inbai Kim, Kim Yun Shin, Ahnnlee Lee, Hyunsoo Lee, Eunu Lee, Eun Yeoung Lee November 2 - December 14, 2024 Los Angeles “The most important sculptures of all civilizations are rather small. Almost all of them.” - Alberto Giacometti (1942–1945) Various Small Fires (VSF) proudly presents the fourth edition of THE UNBOXING PROJECT, an iterative curatorial project by Hyunjoo Byeon and Minjin Chae started in 2022. This exhibition brings together some of... Read more -
Dianna Molzan
Seasonal Charts November 2 - December 14, 2024 Los Angeles VSF is proud to announce Seasonal Charts, a solo presentation of new works by Los Angeles-based artist, Dianna Molzan. Molzan joined VSF’s program earlier this year. Molzan’s paintings draw attention to the materials of painting and the infinite possibilities contained within these simple traditional elements - paint, canvas, and wooden... Read more -
Sarah Ippolito
Liquid Realm September 14 - October 19, 2024 Los Angeles The ocean is what makes the earth habitable, without the ocean life is not possible, “in a way we’re all sea creatures” - Sylvia Earle VSF LA announces Liquid Realm, new sculptures by Sarah Ippolito (b. 1986 Houston, TX). Los Angeles-based Ippolito’s exuberantly biomorphic sculptures are inspired by time... Read more -
The Harrison Studio
Survival Piece #1: Air, Earth, Water, Interface: Annual Hog Pasture Mix, 1970-1971 September 14 - October 19, 2024 Los Angeles This September VSF is excited to present The Harrisons’ Survival Piece #1: Air, Earth, Water, Interface: Annual Hog Pasture Mix, 1970-1971 in alignment with PST: Art & Science Collide. The first in their visionary series of Survival Pieces, “Hog Pasture,” as it is known by Harrison’s fans, emerged from a... Read more -
Sublunary
Jackie Castillo | Mercedes Dorame | Lizette Hernández | Esteban Ramón Pérez | Lily Ramírez June 29 - August 17, 2024 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is elated to announce the opening of Sublunary, a group presentation in the main gallery of our Los Angeles location examining Southern California’s transcendent natural terrain and dynamic social ecology. The exhibition unites the works of five artists: Jackie Castillo, Mercedes Dorame, Lizette Hernández, Esteban Ramón Pérez,... Read more -
Kelly Wall
Time After Time June 29 - August 17, 2024 Los Angeles Los Angeles is a city of fantasy and illusion - a place where nostalgia is currency and product. Kelly Wall’s cheeky sculptural practice engages both earnestly and ironically with this manufactured emotion. Wall has created a series of works for VSF’s courtyard that draw on that ultimate backyard icon: The... Read more -
Linnéa Gabriella Spransy
Againing June 29 - August 17, 2024 Los Angeles In our smaller gallery, Los Angeles-based artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy presents recent paintings and drawings that articulate the interrelation of destruction, transformation and discovery. Spransy works in two primary, divergent media - intricate, art-deco inspired, large-scale figurative drawings in pastel on paper; and mathematical, procedurally determined abstraction in acrylic on... Read more -
Ben Thorp Brown
Cura June 29 - August 17, 2024 Los Angeles In &Milk, recent Guggenheim Fellow, Ben Thorp Brown presents new work in sculpture, photography, and his 2019 video, Cura, filmed in the Neutra VDL House II on the Silver Lake Reservoir. Produced with support from the Jeu de Paume, Paris; CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux; and Museo Amparo, Puebla;... Read more -
Brandon Ballengée
Call of the Void April 27 - June 15, 2024 Los Angeles VSF presents Call of the Void, our first solo exhibition with Louisiana-based visual artist, biologist, and environmental educator, Brandon Ballengée. Following group exhibitions with his mentors, Helen and Newton Harrison at VSF LA and Frieze LA, this exhibition will highlight the breadth of the artist’s elegant and rich transdisciplinary practice.... Read more -
Elisa Jensen
Heart Off Guard April 27 - June 15, 2024 Los Angeles VSF is pleased to announce a solo project by Elisa Jensen (b. 1965) in & Milk opening on April 27, 2024. Heart Off Guard brings together a selection of Jensen’s paintings made between 2008 and the present. The title of the exhibition is lifted from a poem by Seamus Heaney... Read more -
A'Driane Nieves
self-evident truths February 27 - April 13, 2024 Los Angeles We are pleased to announce A’Driane Nieves’ debut exhibition at VSF, self-evident truths. Combining paintings on canvas and paper with new explorations in neon and audio installation, this ambitious exhibition is also Nieves’ first on the West Coast. Nieves’ dynamic gestural abstractions extend from a writing practice and the therapeutic... Read more -
Jessie Homer French
Normal Landscapes January 13 - February 17, 2024 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is thrilled to announce the opening of Jessie Homer French’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. Following her inclusion in the 49th Venice Biennale and the Hammer Museum’s acclaimed Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living Biennial, Normal Landscapes presents a collection of anti-pastoral paintings that playfully... Read more -
Dyani White Hawk
Reflection November 18, 2023 - January 6, 2024 Los Angeles VSF is proud to announce Reflection, our first solo exhibition with Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota, b. 1976, Madison, Wisconsin, works in Minneapolis, Minnesota) in Los Angeles. The exhibition follows our two-person presentation of work by Diedrick Brackens and White Hawk at Frieze LA earlier this year. White Hawk’s abstract... Read more -
Sara Anstis
The Petal and the Wrist September 23 - November 4, 2023 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is excited to announce the gallery’s second solo exhibition with Sara Anstis, and her first exhibition in Los Angeles: The Petal and the Wrist. Anstis is a world builder and storyteller. On paper, canvas, and in writing, she weaves an auto-fiction that explores the resistance and power... Read more -
Shaping Color | Curated by Diedrick Brackens
Zalika Azim | Oliver Strand | Sarah Crowner | Samatha Bittman | Donald Moffett | Bakari Akinyele August 12 - September 16, 2023 Los Angeles Various Small Fires Los Angeles is pleased to announce the opening of a group show curated by Los Angeles-based textile artist Diedrick Brackens on August 12, 2023. The exhibition Shaping Color brings together six artists to explore the relationships between color and process in their respective practices. Many works in... Read more -
Jose Bonell
Some Stories July 1 - 29, 2023 Los Angeles Various Small Fires (VSF) is pleased to introduce Some Stories, a solo exhibition of oil paintings by Barcelona-based, Catalonian artist Jose Bonell in the Los Angeles gallery’s And Milk project space. Bonell unveils a body of work that bridges the barrier between two seemingly disconnected worlds – the... Read more -
Billy Al Bengston
Sorta Memorial July 1 - 29, 2023 Los Angeles Various Small Fires Los Angeles will host a “sorta” memorial and exhibition of works by Billy Al Bengston (b. 1934 – d. 2022) opening July 1, 2023. Featuring an abundant feast of Bengston’s circa 1980’s Kahuna and Pa’ Pepa watercolor collages and paintings surrounding the artist’s 1971 installation Lumberjack Luncheon,... Read more -
Alex Foxton
Trade May 13 - June 24, 2023 Los Angeles Opening Reception Saturday May 13, 6-8pm Various Small Fires is honored to present the debut West Coast solo exhibition of Paris-based artist Alex Foxton. Trade features new paintings and works on paper that draw the English-born artist’s investigation of cultural symbolism and masculinity into a more intimate, personal realm. In... Read more -
Lumin Wakoa
Greenhouse May 13 - June 24, 2023 Los Angeles Opening Reception Saturday May 13, 6-8pm Various Small Fires is pleased to introduce Brooklyn-based artist Lumin Wakoa in her first solo presentation with the gallery. Greenhouse unveils a collection of eight new paintings, following her participation in Frieze Los Angeles’ Online Viewing Room at VSF LA in February 2023. In... Read more -
Michael Hilsman
Man In Water March 25 - April 29, 2023 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to introduce a solo show of new works by Los Angeles-based artist Michael Hilsman. Comprising large and small scale oil paintings, Man In Water is Hilsman's first solo show with the gallery, following his participation in Frieze Los Angeles' Online Viewing Room at VSF LA... Read more -
Jammie Holmes
Somewhereinamerica February 14 - March 11, 2023 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to introduce a solo show of new works by Dallas-based artist Jammie Holmes. Somewhereinamerica includes paintings, sculptures, and watercolors and is Holmes' first show with Various Small Fires. Jammie Holmes, a self-taught artist, illuminates themes of community, tradition, class, authenticity, resilience, and the... Read more -
Lily Wong
I Will Wade Out November 12, 2022 - January 21, 2023 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present I Will Wade Out, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Lily Wong. The exhibition of new works on paper is the artist’s first solo show on the West Coast. In her latest body of work, Wong reflects on seeking ancestral and spiritual connectivity... Read more -
Donghoon Rhee
Woman November 12, 2022 - January 21, 2023 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Korean artist Donghoon Rhee at its 'and Milk' project space. The presentation of new wooden sculptures and paintings marks the artist’s international debut and first show with the gallery. Rhee’s practice mainly revolves around capturing gestural movement by chiseling... Read more -
VSF Sound Program by Szu-Han Ho
The suffering pond November 12, 2022 - January 21, 2023 Los Angeles Opens Saturday November 12, 2022 in conjunction with Lily Wong, I Will Wade Out and Donghoon Rhee, Woman The suffering pond is constructed from found frequencies inspired by stories of anti-colonial resistance in Taiwan. Like objects stacked to form a street barricade, the sounds in this piece are stacked to... Read more -
Alex Becerra
Descarga Heavy September 24 - October 29, 2022 Los Angeles Various Small Fires (VSF) is pleased to present Descarga Heavy, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Alex Becerra at the gallery’s Los Angeles location. This is Becerra’s first solo presentation as a VSF-represented artist. Descarga Heavy–Spanish slang for a music jam session–encapsulates the exhibition ethos: a rhythmic constellation of... Read more -
Wendy Park
OFF THE CLOCK August 6 - September 10, 2022 Los Angeles Various Small Fires (VSF) is pleased to present OFF THE CLOCK, a solo exhibition of new work by Wendy Park at the gallery’s Los Angeles location. The exhibition brings together ten paintings and debuts an augmented reality experience (AR) that investigates and reconstructs Park’s childhood memories of growing up as... Read more -
Eco-art Work: 11 Artists from 8 Countries | Curated by Newton Harrison
Salma Arastu | Brandon Ballengée | Barbara Benish | Nathalie Blanc | Tim Collins & Reiko Goto | Edgar Cruz | The Harrison Studio | Jorgge Menna Baretto | Aviva Rahmani | Åsa Sonjasdotter | Ruth Wallen | Yangkura June 25 - July 30, 2022 Los Angeles Various Small Fires proudly presents Eco-art Work: 11 Artists from 8 Countries, a group show curated by the legendary founders of the Ecological Art Movement and gallery artist Newton Harrison (b.1940) of The Harrison Studio, an esteemed collaborative endeavor with his late wife Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018). This exhibition brings... Read more -
Christian Quin Newell
Siena May 21 - June 18, 2022 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present Christian Quin Newell’s debut solo exhibition in Los Angeles, and in the United States. Newell’s new works invite us to explore his mysterious, internal world. Loose gestures and a slightly flattened or warped painterly space depict a landscape out of time, part chess... Read more -
Amelia Lockwood
Eighth Lane May 14 - August 27, 2022 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present Amelia Lockwood's Eighth Lane, the artist's first time presenting with the gallery. Where is home again? The unknown home is the one you're always moving towards, the one you haven't lived in yet but dream of. Lodged between lucid dreams and foggy memories,... Read more -
Betty Brown
April 2 - May 7, 2022 Los Angeles I really didn’t know Betty Brown’s work or anything about her. I had driven almost an hour from my lake house to meet Tubby Brown. I had seen the pieces in a few galleries and at Folk Fest over the years. Bright colors were painted on chairs and benches with... Read more -
Billy Al Bengston
Safer at Home March 19 - April 30, 2022 Los Angeles BEING SAFE AT HOME MAKES LIFE SIMPLE. BILLY IS EXACTLY RIGHT. IT’S VERY HARD TO BE SIMPLE. BUT HE SUCCEEDED AND FOUND A TREASURE ONCE AGAIN. SIMPLE BUT MASTERFUL. FULL BENGSTONS! _ Billy Al Bengston (b. 1934, Dodge City, Kansas, lives, and works in Venice Beach and Honolulu) moved to... Read more -
Will Gabaldón
This must be the place February 15 - March 19, 2022 Los Angeles VSF is pleased to present This must be the place, an exhibition of ten oil paintings by Chicago- based artist Will Gabaldón, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. This group of small, visionary paintings depict specific pastoral landscapes and environments the artist has observed over time and rendered... Read more -
Snake whisky still life and other stories | Curated by Todd Bockley
Julie Buffalohead | Andrea Carlson | Jim Denomie | Jonathan Herrera Soto | Pao Houa Her | Tom Jones | Brad Kahlhamer | Postcommodity | Eric-Paul Riege | Lauren Roche | Cara Romero January 15 - February 19, 2022 Los Angeles VSF is pleased to present Snake whisky still life and other stories, a group exhibition curated by Todd Bockley featuring new works by Julie Buffalohead, Andrea Carlson, Jim Denomie, Jonathan Herrera Soto, Pao Houa Her, Tom Jones, Brad Kahlhamer, Postcommodity, Eric-Paul Riege, Lauren Roche, and Cara Romero. This exhibition highlights... Read more -
A Concept is a Brick
Ravi Jackson | Lizette Hernandez | Thalia Rodgers | Curated by Joshua Nathanson January 15 - February 5, 2022 Los Angeles VSF is pleased to present A Concept is a Brick, a group exhibition curated by Joshua Nathanson and Anthony Salvador that brings together new work by Lizette Hernandez, Ravi Jackson, and Thalia Rodgers. In order to address their origin stories, intellectual pursuits, and personal histories, these artists have dispensed with... Read more -
Kyungmi Shin
citizen, not barbarian November 20, 2021 - January 8, 2022 Los Angeles VSF is pleased to present citizen, not barbarian, Kyungmi Shin’s first exhibition with the gallery. Shin’s exhibition explores her family’s histories, identities and migrations by interrogating global colonialism, its relationship to and effect on the multiple languages that frame who we are, how we see and what we know. The... Read more -
Ashley Bickerton
Landscapes, Seascapes, and Interiors September 25 - November 6, 2021 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Ashley Bickerton (b. Barbados, 1959, lives in Bali, Indonesia) and the artist’s first solo show with the gallery. Bickerton, while known as an American artist, has lived and worked on the south coast of the island of... Read more -
Lucia Hierro
Gates: LA September 25, 2021 - January 8, 2022 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present Lucia Hierro's first exhibition at VSF, a site-specific outdoor installation that coincides with Hierro's concurrent exhibition at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles. An extension of the artist's ongoing sculpture series, Gates, which debuted at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 2021, Lucia... Read more -
Mark Yang
September 4 - November 20, 2021 Los Angeles VSF is pleased to present a focused exhibition of paintings by New York-based artist Mark Yang (b. 1994, Seoul, South Korea), the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Yang’s recent dynamic, multi-figure paintings are rooted in the artist’s experience as a member of his high school wrestling team, a... Read more -
Sean Raspet
July 28 - September 11, 2021 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present Sean Raspet’s first show at Various Small Fires, and debut solo exhibition in Los Angeles. Raspet’s exhibition features three interrelated projects created over the past several years, consisting of: a selection of plants that have been exposed to radiation and chemical mutagens to... Read more -
Psychosomatic
Erin Bagley | Olivia Erlanger | Trulee Hall | Dwyer Kilcollin | Anne Libby | Amelia Lockwood | Nevine Mahmoud | Kristen Morgin | Amanda Ross-Ho | Alison Saar | Anna Sew Hoy | Alison Veit | Rosha Yaghmai | Amy Yao | Isabel Yellin June 4 - July 16, 2021 Los Angeles Isabel put together another sculpture show. It’s going to be an ongoing thing, folding in new artists and works along the way but with a throughline of those who have been with it from the beginning. The first show was called Your Presence is Encouraged and when she told me... Read more -
Alexander Harrison
Midnight Everywhere April 24 - May 29, 2021 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present Midnight Everywhere, Alexander Harrison’s (b. 1993, Greenville, South Carolina) West Coast debut and first solo exhibition at the gallery. Rendered in painstaking detail on an intimate scale, Harrison’s work conjures the illusive intricacy of Juan Sanchez Cotán’s still lifes of hanging fruit on... Read more -
Che Lovelace
From the Edge of the Rock March 6 - April 17, 2021 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present Che Lovelace: From the Edge of the Rock, the artist’s (b. 1969, San Fernando, Trinidad) second solo exhibition in the United States and his first exhibition at VSF. Lovelace’s vibrantly-colored paintings are rooted in the flora, fauna, and culture of the artist’s native... Read more -
Neha Choksi
The Weight of the Cave March 6 - May 29, 2021 Los Angeles Neha Choksi (b. 1973, New Jersey, raised in India, lives between Los Angeles and Bombay) works across a range of mediums, including performance, sculpture, painting, video, and installation. The Weight of the Cave is representative of Choksi’s long-standing interest in the history, craftsmanship, and manipulation of stone in her sculptural... Read more -
Clarence Holbrook Carter
American Surrealist January 23 - February 27, 2021 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present the first West Coast solo exhibition in five decades of works by the late American artist Clarence Holbrook Carter (b. Portsmouth, OH, 1904-2000) as part of an ongoing collaboration with WOLFS gallery (Cleveland, OH). An artist whose oeuvre is as hard to define... Read more -
Glen Wilson
Slim Margins | Organized by jill moniz October 30 - December 19, 2020 Los Angeles Glen Wilson is determined to excavate the margins, to investigate and focus his attention toward what resonates there. His discovery, evidence as a reflection of cellular memory comprising the sometimes slim connections of our instincts, spiritual remembrance and our comfort, weave together forming a visual poetics. His vocabulary embodies and... Read more -
Diedrick Brackens
the pondkeepers September 26 - October 17, 2020 Los Angeles Lake Mexia is a thousand-acre span of abundance, celebration, nostalgia, and grief. From above, it appears as a bat flying out of a cave, two wings beating against a star-studded night. At only 20 feet deep, its sediment is a 60-year layer of history and community. “I am thinking about... Read more -
Gwynn Murrill & Billy Al Bengston
GWYNN + BILLY August 22 - September 16, 2020 Los Angeles Gwynn Murrill and Billy Al Bengston go far back enough that they can’t seem to remember the exact moment that they met. Billy says it was during his last year of teaching at UCLA and “Gwynn was the best student in the art department,” while Gwynn recalls meeting Billy through... Read more -
Juan Capistran
Play Dead May 7 - July 2, 2020 Los Angeles Play Dead is LA-based artist Juan Capistrán’s first exhibition at Various Small Fires. Originally made in 2014 for the Hammer Museum, the sculpture I wanna be your dog takes on new meaning as it is re-installed today after several events have passed in the last six years attaching new cultural... Read more -
Jessie Homer French
Chernobyl April 21 - July 2, 2020 Los Angeles Two years in the making, Jessie Homer French’s much anticipated solo exhibition at VSF Los Angeles, which includes paintings of untamed wild fires, recently visited cemeteries, and French’s most current obsession with the Chernobyl “exclusion zone”, suddenly feel like prescient visions of our contemporary world. For most of us, sheltered... Read more -
Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork
Variations in Mass, #1-3 February 12 - March 18, 2020 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present its first solo exhibition with Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Variations in Mass, #1-3, in the gallery courtyard and sound corridor. Gork, whose multi-media practice meditates on the relationship between sound, architecture, time and the body, debuts her first outdoor work – an immersive, polysensory... Read more -
Calida Rawles
A Dream for My Lilith February 12 - March 18, 2020 Los Angeles “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” -Toni Morrison VSF is pleased to present A Dream for My Lilith, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Calida Rawles. Reflecting on topographical matters which shape and hold black life, Rawles merges realism... Read more -
Liz Magic Laser
People Per Hour November 22, 2019 - January 25, 2020 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present Liz Magic Laser’s third solo show with the gallery, People Per Hour. The exhibition marks the U.S. debut of Laser’s most recent institutional works, Handle / Poignée (2018), commissioned by Centre Pompidou for MOVE Festival, Paris and In Real Life (2019), commissioned by... Read more -
Robin F. Williams
With Pleasure September 7 - October 26, 2019 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present the West Coast debut of Robin F. Williams and her first solo exhibition with VSF. In a series of new paintings that reimagine the coded narratives of American media, Williams isolates and derails the sexual suggestiveness, pandering strategies, and gendered objectifications utilized in... Read more -
James Herman
Yardwork August 10 - October 26, 2019 Los Angeles “I worked on the hill – or property, compound, whatever you want to call it – for 5 years building a home and systems for off-grid living while still being only 10 minutes from beautiful downtown LA. The best way to fix up a place is to live in it.... Read more -
The Harrisons
Counter Extinction Work June 7 - August 24, 2019 Los Angeles Various Small Fires is pleased to present its second solo exhibition by The Harrisons. Newton Harrison worked from 1969 to 2012 with his wife Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018), and has continued to work alone since her passing. After reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the late 1960s, The Harrisons decided... Read more -
Anna Sew Hoy
The Wettest Letter March 16 - May 11, 2019 Los Angeles VSF is pleased to present The Wettest Letter, Anna Sew Hoy’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. Working with clay for over twenty years, Sew Hoy’s sculptures express a multitude of textures, exchanges, and active states by way of the body – hers, the onlooker’s, and the clay’s own physicality,... Read more -
Diedrick Brackens
unholy ghosts March 16 - May 11, 2019 Los Angeles I stand waist deep in the decadence of forgetting. The vain act of looking the other way. Insisting there can be peace and fecundity without confrontation. The nagging question of blood hounds me. How do I honor it? – Essex Hemphill, The Father, Son and Unholy Ghosts, 1996 VSF is... Read more -
VSF Sound Program by Dawn Kasper
Everybody is Somebody’s Family March 16 - May 11, 2019 Los Angeles Everybody is Somebody’s Family is an audio recording of an improvisational performance with Zeena Parkins at David Lewis Gallery on December 21, 2018. It was inspired by Claudia La Rocco’s Poem (2018). Everybody is Somebody’s Family was the fourth and final in a four-part performance series inside of the exhibition... Read more -
Korakrit Arunanondchai
Courtyard Screenings: With history in a room filled with people with funny names 4 and No History in a Room Filled with People with Funny Names 5 February 12 - 17, 2019 Los Angeles Shown for the first time in Los Angeles, Korakrit Arunanondchai’s newest video works, With history in a room filled with people with funny names 4, 2017 and No History in a room filled with people with funny names 5 (in collaboration with Alex Gvojic), 2018, will screen outdoors for four... Read more -
Nikki S. Lee
Parts and Scenes January 26 - March 2, 2019 Los Angeles Parts and Scenes is Nikki S. Lee’s first exhibition of the Parts (2002-2004) series in the United States in nearly a decade. The show also presents Scenes (2014), a series of short videos that VSF is proud to debut. Parts and Scenes both feature the artist in tableaux of her... Read more -
DIS | Katja Novitskova | Christopher Kulendran Thomas
up the river down the tide November 8, 2018 - January 12, 2019 Los Angeles The Aymara, an indigenous people native to the Andes mountains, maintain in their language a spatial conception of time distinct from the global mainstream. Whereas in most cultures the future is conceptualized as ahead of the ego, with the past behind it, for the Aymara the opposite is true –... Read more -
Joshua Nathanson
An Idea Because They Ate It September 15 - October 20, 2018 Los Angeles A woodland princess, a Pumpkin-headed spirit guide, a gargantuan creature drafted only in its contours, licking unseen wounds, a pale pink perspex shoe, possibly one lost by the princess, a chlorophyll canopy, a colour study: Joshua Nathanson’s paintings unfold with the keen interest of an enfant terrible who could care... Read more -
Lauren Bon & The Metabolic Studio
Portable Wetland for Southern California September 15, 2018 - February 2, 2019 Los Angeles Closing performance, February 2, 2019, 3–5pm Lauren Bon, an Ecological artist, holds Los Angeles’ first and only private water right—Permit #21342—which allows her to annually divert 106 acre feet of water from the Los Angeles River. This river water is redirected under railway tracks to Bon’s riverfront interdisciplinary atelier of... Read more -
David Leggett | Ryan Richey
Mixed Emotions July 14 - August 25, 2018 Los Angeles “I can’t tell if you’re serious or not,” said the driver. “I won’t know myself until I find out whether life is serious or not,” said Trout. “It’s dangerous, I know, and it can hurt a lot. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s serious, too.” Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions VSF... Read more -
Julie Curtiss
Altered States May 19 - June 23, 2018 Los Angeles Opening May 19, 6 – 8pm Various Small Fires (VSF) is pleased to present Julie Curtiss’ West Coast debut and first solo exhibition with VSF, Altered States. Curtiss, whose painting and sculpture practice is informed by the playful yet radical figurations of the Chicago Imagists, the graphic precision of Japanese... Read more -
VSF Sound Program by Clinton King
FATHOMS May 19 - June 23, 2018 Los Angeles FATHOMS emulates a deep-sea descent, a pressurized vacuum where tensions dissolve between the reality outside and one’s inner world. A fathom is a unit of length used in reference to the depth of water. — Clinton King (b. 1976) is a painter, sculptor and musician based in Brooklyn, NY. King... Read more -
Amir Nikravan
World of Interiors March 3 - April 28, 2018 Los Angeles My name performs a paradox of representation: admonishment and celebration, exoticism and familiarity, a positive record of an inclusive America or a negative report on immigration. As a US citizen and artist a catalyzing awareness awakens me to politicized forms, words, signs, and codes of identification. I explore this in... Read more -
Kathryn Garcia
A Tanit March 3 - June 23, 2018 Los Angeles A Tanit is an offering, a sanctuary, a portal. It is a space for communion. The intention of this installation, informed by matriarchal cultures, is very simple – construct a temple. The temple proposes several questions: What is the body’s relationship to form / its relationship to emptiness? How does... Read more -
Judith Linhares
The Way She Goes to Town January 12 - February 24, 2018 Los Angeles “In the high desert, where I was raised by Amazons, the days were long and the nights were longer, alas, Cinderella had left twenty years before my arrival. I was borne to a red headed body builder: whose sister was a blond disk jockey, a spinner of fast and loud... Read more -
Hecate | Curated by Sara Hantman
Katherine Bradford | Julie Curtiss | Jessie Homer French | Cy Gavin | Anna Glantz | Sanam Khatibi | Rainen Knecht | Lazaros | Nicky Lesser | Ana Mendieta | Walter Price | Anna Sew Hoy | Marianne Vitale November 11 - December 16, 2017 Los Angeles “W.I.T.C.H. is an all-women Everything. It’s theater, revolution, magic, terror, joy, garlic flowers, spells. It’s an awareness that witches and gypsies were the original guerrillas and resistance fighters against oppression — particularly the oppression of women — down through the ages. Witches have always been women who dared to be:... Read more -
Billy Al Bengston
It is the Moon Doggie September 16 - November 4, 2017 Los Angeles Billy Al truly doesn’t give a shit what you think about these paintings. He’s only ever given a shit as to what his close circle of friends and mentors – Kenny Price, Ed Ruscha… the other Ed (Moses), Craig Kauffman, John Altoon, Larry Bell and Peter Voulkos thought about his... Read more -
Sascha Braunig | David Gilbert | Jay Heikes | D'Ette Nogle | Carol Rama | Lee Relvas | Claude Wampler
Hurts To Laugh | Curated by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer July 8 - August 19, 2017 Los Angeles According to contemporaneously scribbled memos of the gripe-filled meeting, at points animatedly ranting and at others dragging: She said, it hurts to read the headlines. It hurts to open my laptop. It hurts to check my phone and hear the chime of notifications. It hurts to stay home and it... Read more -
Andrea Longacre-White
New Sculptures 2016-17 April 15 - May 27, 2017 Los Angeles A state of release cannot amount to much without the hardship that precedes it, a logic that underpins Andrea Longacre-White’s New Sculptures 2016-17. The fringe benefit of this logic was a rare chance to rebuild anew in a manner that may not have otherwise existed, and it was in the... Read more -
Jessie Homer French
Food Chain April 15 - May 27, 2017 Los Angeles Jessie Homer French (b. 1940, New York City) is a self-proclaimed “regional narrative painter” who routinely, perhaps even obsessively, paints archetypes of death and nature. In addition to painting, Homer considers fly fishing, mapestry-making and hook-latch as other forms of her creative outlet. The candidly dark themes and consistently earnest... Read more -
The Harrisons
The Harrisons January 24 - March 25, 2017 Los Angeles “Our work begins when we perceive an anomaly in the environment that is the result of opposing beliefs or contradictory metaphors. Moments when reality no longer appears seamless and the cost of belief has become outrageous offer the opportunity to create new spaces — first in the mind and thereafter... Read more -
Lena Daly
Night Bell November 5 - December 17, 2016 Los Angeles Various Small Fires (VSF) is pleased to present Lena Daly’s Night Bell, the artist’s debut solo exhibition. — An image of a sound on the other side of night. I’d always heard sound was a wave, but the wave part refers to its frequency not its shape. Ultra sound gets... Read more -
Jeff Zilm
Relics of the Epoch September 17 - October 22, 2016 Los Angeles Various Small Fires (VSF) is pleased to present Jeff Zilm’s Relics of the Epoch, the artist’s Los Angeles debut and first solo exhibition with the gallery. In his latest series of “emulated paintings” Zilm sources digital image files recovered from his defunct Macintosh computer installed with the System 7.1 operating... Read more -
GRIND | Curated by Joshua Nathanson
Ellen Berkenblit | Body by Body | Vanessa Conte | Robert Gober | Lothar Hempel | Natalie Labriola | Paulina Olowska | Asha Schechter | B. Thom Stevenson | Mateo Tannatt | Nathan Zeidman July 23 - August 27, 2016 Los Angeles I grew up with the feeling that our cities would evolve toward some kind of extreme state; utopian commune, technological wonder, total apocalypse etc. I think I absorbed these notions from our culture. But I’ve come to believe that the current nature of the city is likely its default state.... Read more -
No! I am No Singular Instrument | Curated by Samuel Kenswil
Hannah Black | Brian Khek | Ian Markell | Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings | Ellen Schafer | Hans Jacob Schmidt | Jala Wahid June 4 - July 9, 2016 Los Angeles Built environments sculpt and erode us, permeable and penetrable. Architecture and signage move us through structures erected to suit flows of capital first, and people perhaps somewhere down the line. Notice your chair: is your spine in a C or S formation? Design molds us into shapes; so do politics,... Read more -
VSF Sound Program by Claire Tolan | Presented by Paloma Powers
Maybe it wants what it wanted inside out June 4 - July 9, 2016 Los Angeles Paloma Powers, the futurist art agitator and dark materialist, is fascinated by the body as an interface for aesthetic intervention, inside and out. As the line between art object and lifestyle accessory is increasingly blurred, does corporeal sensation itself also become commodity? This summer, Paloma is pleased to present a... Read more
