Kristopher Raos: Can I Live

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present Can I Live, a solo exhibition of paintings by Los Angeles artist Kristopher Raos, his third with the gallery. Raos invites the world into the space of painting, using his unparalleled eye for the aesthetic possibilities of the city’s neglected corners and discarded debris to elevate the quotidian to a higher realm. His crisp lines, sharp colors, and chic abstractions only seem detached; their cool exterior hides a deeply personal body of work whose razor-sharp humor playfully comments on class, struggle, and the hustle necessary to make it in a world that often feels made to keep you down.

The exhibition takes its title from a track off of Jay-Z’s 1996 debut album, in which the rapper alludes to the mental toll of the hustle and a foundational desire to rise out of poverty. Raos brings his own experience of scarcity to this body of work. The key to the exhibition lies in its smallest painting: the diminutive canvas of Untitled (Product of Poverty) sits snug within an appropriated cardboard box that once held a block of so-called government cheese, that highly processed product distributed for free to low-income households since the Reagan administration. Raos, himself a product of the Reagan ‘80s, has debossed his own birthday into the soft cheese-orange canvas in the style of On Kawara, stamping his own identity into the annals of art history and reclaiming what was once a source of shame.

Raos brings to his work a deep knowledge of and admiration for his art historical precedents. The vibrant bands of color in Untitled (Outchea getting bread, if you wonder where i’ve been) read like Ellsworth Kelly’s iconic Red, Yellow, Blue paintings turned ninety degrees. But the work also refers to the Wonder Bread factory outlet, whose discounted near-expired foods were a staple of the artist’s childhood. Untitled (Never had the tools), meanwhile, takes its subject and altar-like shape from John Baldessari’s 1988 Banquet, calling into stark contrast the states of plenty and lack on display. Raos gives himself a seat at the table, though, his name playing like  alphabet soup across the oval bowl of the spoon.

Mingling high and low referents has become a signature for Raos, whose elegant lines often conceal collected bits of the gently decrepit Los Angeles he inhabits. His eye is attuned to the comic potential of the city’s palimpsest, finding aesthetic value in juxtapositions and refuse. Untitled (Space Kraft, Miracle Whip) recreates a fractured plastic jar lid picked up off the street. Its shaped canvas carefully reproduces the sheared edges of its referent, transforming a beat-up found object into a vehicle for precision and perfection. The elevated, vibrant blue retains roots in the scratched-up Kraft plastic, the same scratched blue of the plastic chairs that filled the waiting rooms of government assistance offices. The color palette of midcentury idealism, filtered through high-art minimalism on one hand and the aesthetics of administration on the other, reconverge in Raos’s confident hand. 

Raos pushes his use of shaped canvas and embossed detail to new heights in Untitled (Out of options). The painting takes its shape and color from the iconic Le Creuset frying pan, its raised rounded edge painstakingly recreated in layer after layer of built-up paint. The French brand is a luxury in any kitchen, and that the model for this work came from the artist’s own is a symbol of how far he’s come since his childhood, when it wouldn’t be unusual to find someone cooking drugs in the family kitchen. Raos found escape in art, and inspiration everywhere: from the aspirational bravado of 90s rap to the bright, flat colors of signage and commercial packaging to bits of trash fished off the streets. Techniques honed over years of self-taught practice have coalesced into a robust and singular vernacular confident enough to plumb this very personal material with polished élan.