as-is.la is an art gallery and exhibition space focusing on modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on local Los Angeles history and regional culture.
April 22 - June 10, 2023
“These still life works were started in 2008 and continue, on and off, to this day. I have been in a deep immersion with books from early on when my dad would regularly take me to the Gardena Public Library – he hated buying books and loved to read. From being an avid reader I went to work at The Strand Bookstore in New York City in 1980. I was also the Acquisitions Librarian at the Art Center College Library in Pasadena from 1989 to 2017.
March 4 - April 15, 2023
Tom Eatherton (1934–2023) was one of the most accomplished of the California Light and Space Artists, that cohort of 1960’s and 1970’s era figures who’s gallery-filling, controlled-light room environments directed attention to the specifically “perceptual” qualities of the art viewing experience. Even more than the others, Eatherton doggedly pursued the alluring if ultimately quixotic dream of producing a direct and unmediated art experience detached from history and cultural context. “Not ‘symbolic’ but entirely ‘experiential,’” he would insist about his own work. If the results sometimes diverged from the artist’s sweeping ambitions, if “the ideal” struggled valiantly against the limitations of “the real,” then this, as they say, was “not a bug but a feature,” as now, particularly with the passage of time, the surviving material artifacts of this practice are practically aching with poignancy.
January 14 - February 25, 2023
“Poetics,” according to one old Structuralist, is largely a matter of reconciling “the pole of selection” with “the pole of combination.” Some hundred years later, and operating in a far more crowded media environment, Los Angeles painter Brian Sharp has come to a similarly stark conclusion: That making art might be a matter of finding things “hidden,” so to speak, in plain sight (selection) and then interpreting and presenting them in new and meaningful ways (combination).
November 5 - December 23, 2022
Throughout the history of theatre, theatrical props and sets have been used to support and complement the actors performing on stage. The 1970’s era plays of artists Guy de Cointet (1934-1983) and Robert Wilhite (b 1946) challenged this hierarchy, provocatively suggesting that stage actors may sometimes be serving the interests of their sets and props even more than the other way around. Acting on this insight, as-is.la presents “Robert Wilhite and Guy de Cointet,” an exhibition featuring sets, props and artifacts from “Iglu” (first performed, Los Angeles, 1977) and “Ethiopia” (first performed, Los Angeles, 1976 and again, most recently in October of this year), the two plays co-authored by this pair of historically important if sometimes insufficiently recognized artists.
September 17 - October 29, 2022
Ron Griffin’s paintings have been aptly described as “readymades in reverse.” They deliver the cool alienation of Marcel Duchamp’s famous strategy while accepting none of the accompanying labor-saving advantages so prized within today’s neoliberal economies, art and otherwise. Quite the contrary. For while Griffin’s artworks are similarly under-committed along the axis of content—often featuring small bits of paper and plastic detritus casually plucked off the sidewalk—they are wildly over-committed along the axis of form, as Griffin exactingly “reproduces” his found objects in paint materials at a precise 1:1 scale. A related body of work begins with wax paper toilet seat covers (Duchamp again) of the sort found in public bathrooms.
July 30 - September 10, 2022
“Katy Crowe: A Wrinkle in the Macula” is presented in conjunction with “Paul Tzanetopolous: Silk Series.” Artists’ reception on Saturday, July 30, 2-5 pm.
This tightly focused exhibition consists of four medium-sized (52 x 40”) oil on linen paintings and a single smaller (16 x 22”) painting, all executed between 2019 and 2022. Here, irregular geometric shapes—often full or partial circles—jostle against passages of vivid if loosely applied paint color, resolving in a tense if finally stable equilibrium.
July 30 - September 10 , 2022
The centerpiece of “Paul Tzanetopoulos: Silk Series” is four hand-painted, rear-lit, wall-mounted painting constructions occupying two walls of the ever-so-slightly darkened main gallery. The show continues upstairs where similar plaid pattern imagery is presented in a wider array of “packaging,” so to speak: a vintage microfiche reader, video loops, a manual typewriter and, even, paint on canvas.n with “Katy Crowe: A Wrinkle in the Macula.” The artists’ reception is Saturday, July 30, 2 - 5 pm at as-is.la.
June 11 - July 23, 2022
In advance of this year’s career-spanning survey show at the Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw, Poland, veteran Los Angeles artist Susan Mogul offers local viewers a tantalizing preview in the exhibition “Susan Mogul: Sneak Peek” at as-is.la.
April 23 - June 6, 2022
An arrangement of cut flowers: Hopeful or despairing? Wedding or funeral? “Why not both?” proposes Eileen Cowin in see you tomorrow, an exhibition of new and recent photo-based and video artworks by this veteran Los Angeles artist that opens on Sunday, April 24 and continues through Saturday, June 6 at as-is.la.
February 26 - April 16, 2022
as-is.la presents an exhibition of artworks, documents and artifacts drawn from the collection of the Los Angeles curator Hal Glicksman.
October 30, 2021 - December 18, 2021
LA based artist Jackie Castillo’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.
October 30, 2021 - December 18, 2021
Los Angeles artist Bob Burchman (b. 1946, New York, NY) makes medium size paintings (often 48 x 36,” though sometimes larger) in the style of the 1970’s American photorealists.
September 11, 2021 - October 23, 2021
For his second show at as-is.la, veteran Los Angeles artist Merwin Belin returns to the themes, materials and procedures that have occupied him throughout his career.
July 17, 2021 - August 28, 2021
as-is.la presents new artworks by Kristopher Raos
July 17, 2021 - August 28, 2021
as-is.la presents new and recent works by Ron Griffin
May 15, 2021 - June 12, 2021
Flame from the Dark Tower is a collaborative installation between Leila Weefur and 5/5 Collective *(Troy Chew, Nkiruka Oparah, Tania Balan-Gaubert) at the Los Angeles gallery, as-is.la.
November 1, 2020 - January 30, 2021
New works by Renee Petropoulos: Like a Street Full of Friends: Studies for Speculative Monuments
March 1 - April 18, 2020
Artist’s reception: Sunday March 1, 2020
2:00 pm to 5:00 pm
New works by Kristopher Raos.
March 1 - April 18, 2020
Artist’s reception: Sunday March 1, 2020
2:00 pm to 5:00 pm
With a six-foot pinhole camera lined with photographic paper, Los Angeles artist Julie Shafer traveled to landscapes in various California locations marked by the presence of American pioneers mining for gold, silver, and other minerals in the mid 1800's.
January 5 - February 22, 2020
Artist’s reception: Sunday January 5, 2020
2:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Typed Series by veteran Los Angeles artist Paul Tzanetopoulos at the entrance gallery at as-is. This exhibition coincides with the main exhibition of new work by Aram Saroyan, also opening Sunday January 5th.