Artist Walkthrough: Manuel López Stepping into the Light
Charlie James Gallery is pleased to host a walkthrough of Stepping into the Light with artist Manuel López on Saturday October 28th at 11am. Coffee and donuts will be served. The show is on view through November 4th.
In Stepping into the Light, Manuel López captures the vitality and beauty of the everyday, bringing together urban landscapes and intimate narratives in precisely rendered, idiomatic compositions that speak to the current moment. The paintings call upon personal and art historical sources as wide-ranging as David Hockney, commercial sign painting, the New York School, and Saturday morning cartoons; resulting in work that synthesizes the vibrating vital energy of López’s native Los Angeles into his own aesthetic vernacular. These are his largest canvases to date and this new scale allows for freer, more painterly expression that seems to grow organically from the tightly controlled finish of his previous work. If the focused gaze of the near past was necessitated by the strictures of pandemic life, these new works embody a newfound freedom of movement and embrace of community.
Manuel López’s (b.1983, East Los Angeles, CA) drawings and paintings are informed by his immediate surroundings. Each piece is a careful examination of elements found around his environment: books, records, boxes, houseplants, various elements from his home, his neighborhood, and studio. López relies on observation, memories, materiality, touch, and presence to evoke a feeling of familiarity in the compositions. Manuel López grew up in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. He attended East Los Angeles College, transferred to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where he earned his BFA in painting and drawing. He has been included in numerous group exhibitions in institutions, galleries, and museums nationwide including Ni de Aqui, Ni de Alla, Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Youngbloods; Quotidian, Los Angeles, CA, Gardens; Last Projects, in Los Angeles, CA; Now(n) person, place, or thing; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, in Chicago, Il,Dark Progressivism; The Built Environment, at the Museum of Art and History, in Lancaster, CA; Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Friends Do Not Fear, at New Image Art, in West Hollywood, CA; Dia de los Muertos Exhibit at Self-Help Graphics, Boyle Heights, CA; Surface Place at Abrazo Interno Gallery at The Clemente, New York, NY; Spill at the Betty Rymer Gallery,Chicago, IL SAIC Undergrad Exhibition, at Sullivan Galleries, Chicago, IL, Solo Exhibition- So Mundane and incomplete (Some drawings and paintings); at Eastern Projects, Los Angeles, CA. He lives and works in East Los Angeles and is represented by Charlie James Gallery.