H Leslie Foster II + Sadie Greyduck + edua mercedes - Xeno-Euphoria

H Leslie Foster II + Sadie Greyduck + edua mercedes

Xeno-Euphoria

April 26th - May 18th, 2025

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Xeno-Euphoria, a three-person show curated by Ashton S. Phillips, featuring fractured glass sculpture by Sadie Greyduck, surrealist drawings on black velvet by edua mercedes, and a four-channel video installation by H Leslie Foster II centering an all Black, Brown,Trans, and Nonbinary cast performing Mark Aguhar’s iconic “Litanies to My Heavenly Brown Body” as queer/trans liturgy. In the midst of a national crisis fueled by the weaponized fear of the “xeno” or alien, these artists invite us to think and feel differently about the “other” inside and outside ourselves. Conjuring ecstatic dissonance, defiant pleasure, and alien belonging, Xeno-Euphoria opens up a sensual world of fragments, speculative ritual, and sur-real possibilities that defies cis-authoritarian control.

Sadie Greyduck’s pretty and strange fragments of ruptured and unseen wholes become building blocks for new forms. A trinity of fractured votives hold the materiality of embodiment and transformation: bullets cast with raw wool and lead, oil infused with polluted rosemary, and bone fragments of bison and cow. Prismatic and legibly heterogenous, Greyduck presents a xeno-euphoric brew of threat, protection, longing, and magic.  

My euphoria is from the power of the ugly brave gnarled ecstatic bitch goddess who makes me work and teaches me about bones and beetle resin and flesh torn apart with glass.  - Sadie Greyduck

H. Leslie Foster II’s four-channel video installation “Heavenly Brown Bodies” performs Mark Aguhar’s searing poem of Brown Trans rage and benediction as queer/trans liturgy. 

FUCK YOUR WHITENESS

FUCK YOUR BEAUTY

FUCK YOUR CHEST HAIR

FUCK YOUR BEARD

FUCK YOUR PRIVILEGE

FUCK THAT YOU AREN’T MADE TO FEEL SHAME ALWAYS …

Resting in the tension between the need of oppressed peoples to name their pain and their incredible ability to celebrate their existence and dream of far better futures, Heavenly Brown Body animates Aguhar’s electrifying text through the unflinching eyes, mouths, and hands of an all Black, Brown, Trans, and Nonbinary cast. Installed in the center of Monte Vista Project’s gallery space, Foster’s installation confronts the viewer from all sides like an ecstatic tribunal of mythic xeno bodies claiming their rage and power.

Faces become xeno-landscapes and bodies become unsteady architectures in edua mercedes’ series of prismatic surrealist drawings on stretched black velvet. Multicolor caterpillars and leaking buckets of liquid gold play with mythic women bound and blindfolded inside surveillance-topped fencing. Fractured narratives and automatic symbols stretch across the walls like silky black hides reflecting and revealing inner landscapes back to the world. 

Alien among and within each other, Xeno-Euphoria builds a world of fragments, disorientation, and pleasure that defies despair and refuses cis-authoritarian control. Like McKenzie Wark’s xenoeuphoric trans raving, Xeno-Euphoria makes space for the transformation of rage into reverence, the oppressive real into the revelatory surreal, and impurity into possibility. the breaking of old forms as a pathway to new shapes and unimagined possibilities.

H Leslie Foster II, Heavenly Brown Body (video still)

Christine Hudson - Kapwa?

Christine Hudson

Kapwa?

March 22nd - April 13th, 2025

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Kapwa?, a solo exhibition by Christine Hudson. Kapwa? is  an inquiry into the ways we form and sustain relationships within our community, within ourselves, and within the environment around us. What shifts occur when we position selfhood as collective rather than individualistic?

The work throughout the show ruminates on the Filipino concept of “kapwa,” which speaks to the interconnectedness of the self with others. Kapwa is not just about shared space, but a shared inner self—where the boundaries between individual identity and the collective operate in conjunction. The prefix “ka” denotes relationships, companionship, or alliance, while “pwa” (or “puang”) signifies space. Together, they convey the idea of being in relationship with others and shaping our sense of self through those connections. The work delves into the complexities of fostering togetherness, while also considering the implications generated within the formation of this grouping. How can community engender care without homogenizing personhood, allowing room for difference, conflict, and change?

Using ceramics, Kapwa? recreates objects considered supplemental —things that help build or support others—and explores the ways in which we attribute value and power to such objects through the application of ornamentation. Elements of food are also incorporated within the sculptures, accentuating the bonds created and sustained within a community. The connotation of nourishment is imbricated with the notion of hospitality, inviting reflection on how we align our inner selves with the gesture of abundance to cultivate the collective. What role do the additive, the supplemental, and the embellishment play in our understanding of care, reciprocity, and interconnectedness?

Christine Hudson (they/them) is an artist that works in sculpture, ceramics, performance, and installation. Their art situates personal narrative as an entry point to integrate discussions of community, care, resistance, and resilience. Their utilization of objects and space investigate the ways visual language can be employed as a powerful tool for archiving histories that are often erased, overlooked, or rendered silent. By highlighting the subtle tensions between the varying degrees of visibility, their practice imagines a rethinking of what preserving these marginalized untold stories entails, creating a space for healing, remembrance, and empowerment. These explorations prompt viewers to reflect on the enduring influence of history and traditions on our lives and collective consciousness. They received their MFA from the University of California Irvine and their BFA in ceramics from California State University Long Beach.

Ching Ching Cheng - Breathe Through the Lingering Whispers

Ching Ching Cheng

Breathe Through The Lingering Whispers

February 22nd 2025 - March 9 2025

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Breathe Through The Lingering Whispers, a solo exhibition by Ching Ching Cheng. 

Breathe Through The Lingering Whispers evokes the process of finding solace and strength in the faint remnants of a voice or an object of memory. It suggests a dance between presence and absence, where each breath carries the essence of a story not yet faded. These whispers, like soft echoes, entangle with the air around the objects, urging you to listen closely— to let them flow through your soul and draw ritual from the fragments of what once was.

This exhibition features an array of ceramic works, metal wire sculptures adorned with fence spears, and 3D-printed forms, including foo dogs cast from casts of the original, as well as rocks and branches the artist collected from nature. These objects serve as vessels for a hidden soundscape recorded in the artist’s yard in Altadena before the Eaton fire, capturing the calls of chickens, wild parrots, and other birds.

“Especially after the fire and the experience of displacement, the need to find or create new rituals—or modify existing ones—carries a profound weight in daily life. The process of searching raises questions about the very meaning of rituals.”

Ching Ching Cheng is an artist, art educator, and filmmaker who lives and works in Altadena, Los Angeles. 

Image: Water Caltrop, 2024, ceramic, glaze, vinyl, epoxy putty

Julia Masvernat - Fuerza Suave (Soft Force)

Julia Masvernat
Fuerza Suave (Soft Force)

November 2nd - November 24th, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 2nd, 7-10pm

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Julia Masvernat's exhibition Fuerza Suave (Soft Force) opening on November 2nd. Julia Masvernat is an Argentine visual artist who is exhibiting in Los Angeles for the first time. She develops her work based on the observation of her urban habitat, paying attention to the involuntary drawings of the city, sensitive and twisted geometries that she finds on walks through Buenos Aires, where she lives and works. On this occasion, she presents a series of cut paper and wood works, fragile materials that become strong due to the networks that supports their shapes. The assemblage brings together delicate and soft materials such as paper, along with iron recovered from the construction/demolition industry.

Masvernat is a visual artist, educator, organizer and curator based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She works across a range of media including drawing, painting, objects and audiovisual installations. Utilizing industrial and craft materials as well as analog and digital processes, her practice focuses on the observation of specific urban and historical spaces. She collaborates with several socially engaged projects and collectives, including the feminist art and activism collective La Lengua en la Calle (The Tongue on the Street). Operating at the intersection of artistic practice, politics and feminist activism. She is currently working on a monograph spanning the last 20 years of her art practice. Masvernat is represented by the Gachi Prieto Contemporary art gallery in Buenos Aires.

@juliamasv_glosariovisual
@la_lengua_en_la_calle
@gachiprietogaleria

Curatorial interlocutor, in Argentina: Carolina Cuervo.
Curator + Producer, in United States: Kellan King.
Acknowledgements: Jimena Sarno

Irrational Exhibits 13: Juxtaposing Terrains

Irrational Exhibits 13: Juxtaposing Terrains

One night of Durational Performance, Video, Sound Sculpture, and Photography October 26, 7- 9pm, including 17 Artists at 5 Galleries in The Bendix Building in DTLA.

"Juxtaposing Terrains" serves as a platform for these artists to examine the delicate balance between historical precedents and prospective futures. Through the lens of durational performances, moving images, photographic works, and sound art they provide a nuanced discourse on the precarious nature of our present moment.

In five galleries and three floors of the Bendix Building, as well as transitional spaces these 17 artists share their works. This spatial strategy promotes a continuous dialogue between the artists and the audience, blurring the boundaries between observer and observed. Please join for the show and the post show reception!

GALLERIES: Track 16 Gallery, Durden and Ray, Tiger Strikes Asteroids LA, Monte Vista Projects, 515 Bendix

CURATOR: Deborah Oliver @irrationalexhibits + ASSOCIATE CURATOR Jerod Thompson @jepop

Irrational Exhibits 13: Juxtaposing Terrains/October 26, 2024// 7-9pm in the Bendix Building 1206 Maple St., Los Angeles 90015 at Track 16 1st Floor, Durden and Ray, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Monte Vista Projects, and 515 Gallery with a post-show reception ///Designer Aejin

Zoe Alameda and Sebastian Loo Ode to an Honest Mirror

September 28th - October 20th, 2024

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Ode to an Honest Mirror, a two-person show that delves into profound themes of transformation and awakening through the compelling works of Sebastian Loo and Zoe Alameda.

Sebastian’s artwork invites viewers into a journey of inner awakening. His delicate rice paper creations exude a tangible sense of decay and ephemerality, where each mark and layer encourages introspection. His pieces explore deep themes of loss, rebirth, and the desire to reconnect with one’s inner child. The fragile medium and thoughtful composition highlight the transient nature of these personal reflections, urging viewers to ponder their own experiences and transformations.

In stark contrast, Zoe’s art captures an external kind of awakening, reflecting the relentless pace of the digital landscape. Her work is characterized by high-frequency, brain rot imagery that mirrors the overwhelming flow of digital information whilst also employing visual senses of ephemerality. Employing a stark, monochromatic palette, Zoe’s pieces evoke the transient nature of cultural moments and human experiences in the modern era. Her work, set against the ever-changing backdrop of Los Angeles, emphasizes the fleeting and often overwhelming nature of our current digital lives.

Together, Sebastian and Zoe’s artworks create a compelling dialogue between internal and external worlds. Their distinct approaches meld seamlessly, offering a narrative that challenges traditional boundaries and beautifully merges the physical with the digital - internal with the physical. The exhibition is a testament to the tension between vibrancy and decay, permanence and impermanence.

Through their interwoven narratives, Sebastian and Zoe encourage viewers to embark on a journey of self-discovery, seeing themselves through their works, the collective resonance of both motifs highlighting an interconnectedness. Their art invites us to explore the delicate balance between our inner and outer realities, urging a deeper understanding and reflection on how these elements shape our experiences. This exhibition stands as a statement on the nature of transformation and the continuous interplay between our internal thoughts and the external world.

Zoe Alameda (b. 2000) is a multidisciplinary artist sitting and scrolling in Los Angeles. Through a combination of painting, collage, and sculpture, Alameda’s work embodies desires for connection and presentness in navigating our digitally saturated world. Her work lends interest in the overwhelming nature of internet-sourced imagery and the urban decay of Los Angeles. Alameda seeks to create material portraits of her anxieties, leaning on texture but also flatness to express the complexity of being truly open and vulnerable.

Sebastian Loo (b. 1996) is an LA-based painter working with ink and colors on rice paper. His technique engages in pointillism, paper cut-out and collage approaches to join personal symbols with aesthetics from science, mythology, and spirituality. For him, pointillism is a vehicle of transport to the eternal space of interconnectedness: where all things such as matter, icon, and system are unbound by category and suspended within a field of unconditional relationship. Within this space of joining isolated subjects, he attempts to recover the suffocated humanist wisdom buried deep beneath dogmatic truths, canonized icons, and cemented institutions.

2024 Open Call - Material Manipulations

September 20th, 2024

MATERIAL MANIPULATIONS 

Monte Vista Projects presents our fourth annual open call exhibition, Material Manipulations. This exhibition features the work of eleven California-based artists working in a variety of media. The nature of an open call precludes a single overarching theme, and is the result of chance, the unexpected, and the discovery of surprising links. The constellation of works selected for this exhibition push the boundaries of materiality to invite viewers to see the familiar with fresh eyes. Material Manipulations highlights how everyday objects can be reimagined into compelling forms that challenge notions of labor, history, ancestral mythologies, technology, and the body. The works in Material Manipulations demand viewers’ curiosity with a gravitas that is sure to be carried by viewers beyond the gallery walls. 

As a collective, Monte Vista Projects is committed to providing an artist-run venue that is not beholden to any market forces in order to show work we support and believe in. We have much appreciation for the many applicants to the open call, all of whom we hope will continue to be part of our growing network.

Participating Artists

Taylor Caliz

Debbie Carlson

Franco Castilla

Kevin Clancy

Paloma Dooley

April Ford

Juan Gomez

Christine Hudson

Hung Viet Nguyen

Liam O'Connor 

Katie Shapiro

Image Christine Hudson, I Prefer Your Love, 2023

Zara Kuredjian - Sandbox

Zara Kuredjian
Sandbox

July 20th - August 11th, 2024

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Sandbox, by Zara Kuredjian. The exhibition features an installation of objects from Kuredjian’s Blocks series, a scattered constellation of square stone-like objects that combine earth, hydrostone, and silver. Sandbox was inspired by Kuredjian’s fascination with volcanic sites throughout California as well as architectural elements from monastic complexes in the southern Caucasus.

Within Sandbox, Kuredjian explores relationships between density and levity through interactions between material, surface, light, and space. Consideration for various types of architecture, whether it be the mold, the room, or the frame, contributed to the development of Sandbox and the Blocks series. Each form and surface within the installation is both similar and different, with suggestions of the utilization of a mold and controlled process as well as the less governed movement of material through uneven surfaces, light reflection, and varying densities. The scattered, stone-like objects within the gallery also explore notions of chance, material agency, and controlled process through visible traces of activity within each object.

The idea of the frame is one of several important concepts within Sandbox and the Blocks series and takes on a variety of forms. Broadly, the concept of the frame can be thought of as a territorialization of chaos within the cosmos. It has the ability to enclose. To focus. To erase. To curate. It also has the ability to extend. To build outward into another dimension that otherwise may not have been made visible. The frame is an in-between. An abstract concept. An emphasis of isolation and focus on a particular.  It has the ability to transform living bodies by isolating and concentrating some of the excesses of the cosmos. Moments of increased intensity and oscillation. 



Zara Kuredjian is an LA-based artist with an interdisciplinary practice focused on materials relationship to liminality and the ethereal. She is deeply engaged with the porosity and liquidity of matter. Within her practice, material agency is a paramount consideration for how work is developed and the expression of a material's properties are considered through their inherent qualities as well as how they react to other materials and forces. Within her practice questioning human experience and its relationship to material is as important as thinking through matter and its relationship to the cosmos. This tenuous relationship between emergence and return, flesh and earth, is an idea that she often works through by approaching bodily relationships to material and site. Work is frequently presented in the form of sculpture, installation, and photography.

Daniel Tovar - Anti-Frontier

Daniel Tovar
Anti-Frontier

June 8th - July 7th, 2024

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Anti-Frontier, the first solo exhibition by Los Angeles artist Daniel Tovar. The work in this exhibition, which explores and critiques the notion of the American frontier, encompasses a two-channel video installation, field recordings and synth compositions, and a series of concrete-and-steel sculptures.  

Anti-Frontier is the culmination of multiple trips to the Western Mojave Desert over several years, during which Tovar recorded video and collected sound from two adjacent locations: California City and the Tehachapi Pass wind farm, both roughly 100 miles north of Los Angeles. 

These sites might seem disparate at first. The former had once been pitched to homebuyers as a new kind of mega-suburb; the latter is a wind farm housing thousands of turbines. But both are sprawling developments erected on vast expanses of desert, each dependent on the extraction of resources. Each site, too, was once envisioned as a model for the future. One has clearly failed; will the other?

One channel of the video in Anti-Frontier captures scenes of a planned community in decay: empty grids for tract housing that was never built, abandoned cars adorned with graffiti, street signs and fence posts and sidewalks that lead nowhere. The other channel depicts the wind farm and its towering, god-like turbines; squeaky blades casting shadows on ancient creosote. 

There are moments of synchronicity, beauty, and absurdity: the sound of ducks near a man-made pond, the red lights of turbines blinking in the night, a freight train that catches fire and fills the sky with black smoke. These scenes, devoid of humans but brimming with machines, are reminders of the ways industry and technology have altered and reshaped the landscape. 

In one particularly striking image, a steel pole capped on one end with a mass of concrete lies flat on the dirt, an emblem of suburban defeat. Utilitarian yet uncanny, this object inspired the human-size sculptures that occupy the gallery floor, dominating the space like post-apocalyptic beasts. 

The collection of sculptures, which are imposing yet playful, rigid while somehow evoking movement, look like leftovers from a city in ruins; souvenirs from a post-capitalist decline. But unlike the fallen object that inspired them, these stand mostly upright, resurrected into a new kind of desert creature. There’s something hopeful about these bizarre monuments; then again, maybe they’re yet another unnecessary intrusion in the landscape. 

Anti-Frontier represents Tovar’s ongoing interest in the so-called frontier, the geography of hinterlands, and the tolls of technology and human extraction on the natural environment. His work, which primarily takes the form of video, sound, and sculpture, has been shown and/or performed at Wonzimer, Materials and Applications, Coaxial Arts Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Comfort Station, among others. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Northwestern University and teaches in the Liberal Arts department at Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Too Late to Turn Back Now - Esther Marie Hall

Esther Marie Hall
Too Late to Turn Back Now

April 27th - May 26th, 2024

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present a body of new works by Esther Marie Hall. The exhibition is framed around Peggy Phelan’s insight from Unmarked (1993), ”the pleasure of resemblance and repetition produces both psychic assurance and political fetishization.” The selective representation of certain individuals or groups, along with the privileges accorded to them, creates conditions conducive to tokenization, which in turn reinforces established power structures, value, and further marginalizes disenfranchised groups. Building upon this discourse, Hall expands upon Phelan's notion of resemblance and representation entrenched in power dynamics within textile visual culture and flat works. Hall produced over 100 drawings establishing a foundation for new pattern-making, and recognizing the heavy influence of Anglo-American politics in textile visual culture. The act of accumulation, stockpiling, and safekeeping revolves around ensuring an adequate supply, akin to safeguarding against potential scarcity. Conversely, Hall confronts the capitalist belief that prioritizes overproduction with the aim of maximizing returns or expecting a surplus in return for one's efforts.

Hall cuts, sews, dyes secondhand fabrics reconstructing the psychic significance of the previous owner. Too Late to Turn Back Now also features sculptural work by Hall in an effort to elaborate the spatial condition of how textile works are typically presented – against a wall; on the floor – and addressing the circumstantial relationship between sculpture and wall; sculpture and floor; sculpture and space.

Esther Marie Hall is a multidisciplinary artist with a primary focus on fiber and textile work based in Sacramento, CA. She uses her work to illustrate her cultural identity through the use of traditional Filipino and American crafting techniques such as weaving, crocheting, embroidery, and quilting. Esther utilizes these mediums with the intention of expanding this material’s language and reconfiguring the meaning of what a quilt can and cannot be, by stretching and skewing forms, using an array of material not typically found in traditional quilting, and thinking about them compositionally as paintings. Quilting has a long history of resistance and documenting the current state of affairs, so the use of this medium felt streamlined as her work has long had existentialist, anti-authoritarian, and climate disruption undertones. Hall predominantly collects and hoards fabric related ephemera and uses donated and secondhand materials as a representation of quantum entanglement with the idea of carrying on any energy the previous owner had intended for the material. 

Esther was born and raised in Northern California and has resided in Sacramento since 2011. She attended the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in San Francisco where her practice in textiles began. Hall has worked with organizations such as the Latino Center of Art and Culture, Planned Parenthood, and Facebook, and has shown work throughout California, Florida, Kentucky, and Washington.

Within Reach - Teresa Ho and Yair Sarmiento

Within Reach
Teresa Ho and Yair Sarmiento

March 23rd - April 14th 2024

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Within Reach, a two person show with Teresa Ho and Yair Sarmiento. 

In the 1989 text Le Goût de l’archive, historian Arlette Farge writes, “Archives are neither faithful to reality nor totally representative of it; but they play their part in this reality, offering differences and alternatives to other possible statements.” A dizzying prospect–for every record kept, there are countless more that have been omitted, excised from history, condemned to be inaccessible to us on the other side of the veil. And to add to our sense of mistrust, whatever is retained still fails to capture the enormity of what has past, even if it happened to us.

Within Reach at Monte Vista Projects, the two-person exhibition by Los Angeles-based artists Yair Sarmiento and Teresa Ho, induces viewers to explore the hidden mechanisms of the world through the artists' extensively material-forward approaches.Their parallel bodies of work, comprising paintings, prints, and drawings—demonstrate a commitment to wrestling detail and meaning from oblique surfaces and tools, as well as exploring a fluid, continuously evolving language of disrupted vernaculars ciphers, and other methods of encoded information exchange embedded in quotidian or overlooked materials.

Superficially resembling codices or variants of asemic writing, Sarmiento’s Surfeit is the result of a durational investigation into the expressive potential of everyday materials—permanent marker, pens, and graphite. For the artist, these are associatively inscribed as accessible, pedestrian tools that can be wielded by anyone, in addition to recalling formative memories of mark-making. Innumerable small dots inundate the flat, white plane of the canvas, which acts as an arena activated by the repetition, revealing the gestural act’s sculptural and mutable nature. Tundra, a large drawing composed of similarly abundant, meticulously applied blue ballpoint pen, vacillates between degrees of saturation and phantasmic variances in opacity. Like Surfeit, Tundra is inscribed with a dynamism that possesses no referent other than itself, proposing a universal value that circumscribes the treachery enjoined by lexical particulars.

The paintings by Ho, with their use of image transfers and vestiges of plausibly familiar landscape signifiers, recall a photographic, archivolithic impulsion. While almost anyone can take or source photographs to be harnessed as reference material, their total material transformation in these works evokes the process of ‘redescription’, a paradigm defined by and often associated with the artist Vija Celmins. As Frances Jacobus-Parker writes in Redescribing the Photograph, “In approaching photographs as ready-made templates to meticulously redescribe, Celmins arrived at a methodology that combined abstraction’s attention to the formal properties of a medium with representation’s observation of the world.” Oyster is a painting where the natural world is effectively redescribed–grass, clouds, water, and other geological features are reconstructed spatially, becoming a monument to the transient interval which they were observed, as well as a steady armature for the artist’s layered marks. Spillage, with incongruous dimensions, recalls organic structures from both within and without-in presenting a moment of potentiality, the viewer has the opportunity to observe the mediation present in their own world, as they traverse both personal and global realms.

Through their work and chosen tools, both artists connect us to a previously intangible dimension of the everyday, encouraging a heightened awareness of the intricate workings of our environment, awareness, and perceptual limits. By creating a space to contemplate surface as an archive of highly methodical, spatialized gestures, (which are themselves transmuted associations), Within Reach asks viewers to examine their relationship to memory, the distortion of which is intrinsic to human experience.

- JASMINNE MORATAYA

Teresa Ho (b. 1996, Da Nang, Vietnam) is currently based in Los Angeles. Their practice explores space, time, and memory through subversion of self-constructed painting systems. They received their BFA from Art Center College of Design in 2020 and is currently an MFA student at the University of California, Irvine. Within Reach is their first duo exhibition in Los Angeles.

Yair Sarmiento (b. 1994, Mexico City) is currently based in Los Angeles. His practice explores universal connectivity through an inquiry on materials and inscription as documentation of presence. He received his BFA from Art Center College of Design in 2021. Within Reach is his first duo exhibition in Los Angeles.

Caca - Dorian Wood

Dorian Wood
Caca

February 17th - March 10th 2024

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Caca, the first U.S. solo exhibition of multidisciplinary artist Dorian Wood’s visual work. Caca emerges from Wood’s nightly ritual of documenting the world’s troubles and follies through ink-based illustrations that depict swirling genitalia, gender-absent bodies, distorted icons and coprophagic musings. Over the past 10 years Wood has amassed hundreds of these “disruptive self portraits.” Caca collects a selection of these illustrations, grouped into series by ink color, and will include a mural on the gallery's north wall created by Wood specifically for the exhibition, keeping with the artist's ongoing intent of "infecting" spaces. 

Dorian Wood (b. 1975, pronouns: she/her/they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her intent of “infecting” spaces and ideologies with her artistic practice is born from a desire to challenge traditions and systems that have contributed to the marginalization of people.

 Wood has performed at institutions that include The Broad, Los Angeles, CA (2018), REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA (2019), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, CA (2010), Museo Nacional Del Prado, Madrid, Spain (2019), the City Hall of Madrid, Spain (2015), Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris, Mexico City, Mexico (2019), Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2017), Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany (2014), Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany (2014) and Moods, Zurich, Switzerland (2019), and at festivals that include Pacific Standard Time, Los Angeles, CA (2011), OUTsider Fest, Austin, TX (2019), Festival Cruilla, Barcelona, Spain (2017), WorldPride Madrid, Spain (2017), Festivals Kometa, Riga, Latvia (2016), Moers Festival, Germany (2017), Cully Jazz Festival, Switzerland (2015) and Saint Ghetto Festival, Bern, Switzerland (2017).  

 From 2019 to 2020, Wood completed several successful international tours with their chamber orchestra tribute to Chavela Vargas, XAVELA LUX AETERNA. In 2022, Wood debuted their tribute to the singer Lhasa De Sela, entitled LHASA, at the Festival Internacional de Arte Sacro in Madrid, in collaboration with singer Carmina Escobar and composer Adrián Cortés. That same year, Wood presented Mares Ocultos, a multimedia chamber music project exploring the nature of male heterosexuality, at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. In 2023, Wood premiered the 12-hour composition/installation Canto de Todes at REDCAT in Los Angeles.

As a visual artist, Wood has created illustrations and video installations that have been exhibited in galleries around the world, including Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles (2022), La Carboneria, Huesca, Spain (2020), Fierman Gallery, New York (2020) and the Queer Biennial, Los Angeles (2018). They have also directed several short films, among them "The angel" (2023), Low's "Disappearing" video (2021), “American Savagery” (2021), “FAF” (2021), “The World’s Gone Beautiful” (2020), “PAISA” (2019, co-directed with Graham Kolbeins), “O” (2014) and “La Cara Infinita” (2013).

 Wood is a recipient of a Los Angeles County Performing Arts Recovery Grant, a City of Los Angeles Individual Master Artist Project Grant, a NALAC Fund for the Arts Award, a Creative Capital Award and an Art Matters Foundation grant, and a past artist-in-residence at MacDowell Residency, Loghaven Artist Residency, Building Bridges Art Exchange, Etopia, Centro de Arte y Tecnologia and MASS Gallery. 

Wood has released over a dozen recordings, most recently the albums You are clearly in perversion (with Thor Harris) (Astral Editions, 2023) and Excesiva (Dragon's Eye Recordings, 2023).

Anima Reflections - Olivia Booth

Olivia Booth
Anima Reflections

January 13th - February 4th
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 13th, 7-10pm

Monte Vista is pleased to present Anima Reflections, an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles artist, Olivia Booth. Booth creates assemblages of glass and chalk drawings that explore perception, mediation and the role of technology in personal and collective reflection.

In Anima Reflections, she presents a new, eponymously titled diptych for the corner wall. It is accompanied by glass floorboard pieces opposite, and an artist’s book identifying and expanding on the images tracked across the work.

Booth’s medium is a mesh of elements, familiar yet unexpectedly configured. Elements of transparent, semi-transparent, opaque and mirrored glass (along with plastic) frame, contain, shape and obscure drawn elements rendered by hand in soft chalk. Visible hardware operates functionally and aesthetically– punctuating space and yielding details of interest.

Drawing is central to Booth's practice, from notational sketchbook drawing (as seen in her artist's books) to the wall works. Her hand is fluid and gestural as she records encounters from daily experience. Subjects range from informational, to entertainment, to family life. Across the moments that call her attention, Booth is conscious of both the image and its mediated delivery— a mirror, a window, a vitrine, or so often, the screen.

In Anima Reflections, and throughout Olivia Booth’s work, glass is removed from its picture window role. It is glass that has been modified with artistry– blown, slumped, fused, cobbled, drilled or cut. (To create these elements Booth often collaborates with glass artists.) Layered into her assemblage-tableaux, the sculptural glass generates a dynamic interplay between image and surface. This enmeshment, which includes the varied hardware and implements that structurally and conceptually adjoin them, is the pictorial substance of the artwork. It is a uniquely robust– responsive and inclusive– kind of picture making, one that contains and reflects on itself, and the forms of mediation central in contemporary life.

“Anima Reflections is about the daily dance between opacity and transparency, and how we transition between those rightful states as we interconnect with our worlds. It’s about how self-reflection comes to pass– individually and collectively– in those undulating states, and how glass– as mirror, window and, above all, screen– are inextricably involved in this dance.” — Olivia Booth

Olivia Booth has been making art and teaching in Los Angeles since moving from New York City over 20 years ago. In recent years her work could be seen at Irenic Projects, LA, UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, Goldfinch Gallery in Chicago, and Pilchuck Gallery in Seattle. Over the years her work has been shown at spaces like Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, SculptureCenter, The Finley Gallery and The Schindler House, in addition to other exhibition spaces, and has been written about in Art Forum and the LA Times among other publications. She teaches college classes in drawing and also teaches drawing from her own studio, The Drawing Studio, and she feels fortunate to be in constant dialogue with students. She was last a student herself at Art Center College of Design, where she received her MFA in 2003, and before that at Cornell University, where she received her BFA and BA with honors.

Laugh Now, Cry Later - CSUDH Alumni Exhibition

Laugh Now, Cry Later

December 2nd - December 17th

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Laugh Now, Cry Later, the inaugural California State University Dominguez Hills Art and Design alumni exhibition. Organized by alumni, the exhibition presents work by Southern California based artists that graduated before 2023. The artists utilize their practice as an often poignant and darkly humorous critique of living in the socio-economic context of contemporary Los Angeles.

The shared cultural experience of the alumni is evident in the diverse yet parallel visual languages presented in Laugh Now, Cry Later. The work examines the influence of class, race, gender, sexuality, and religiosity with a tongue in cheek approach.

Featuring work by: em aguilar, Edmund Arevalo, Cody Cerna, Bee Correa, Jose Espinoza, Hope Ezcurra, Gabe Medina, Santos Nuñez, Ann Pickard, Eduardo Rodriguez, Juan Rosillo and Kali Victoria

Curated by Alumnus: Hope Ezcurra, Kellan King, Gabe Medina

”tell your heart that i’m the one” - Joey Veltkamp

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present “tell your heart that i’m the one,” Joey Veltkamp's first Los Angeles solo exhibition. For “tell your heart that i’m the one,” Veltkamp aims to collapse the distance between the Pacific Northwest and Los Angeles through the filter of Twin Peaks, a fictional town set less than sixty miles away from where he works and lives.

“We live inside a dream.”

Throughout time, humans have wrestled with the concept of reality. From Daoist Chiang Tzu’s Dream of the Butterfly, to René Descartes, up to present day philosopher-physicists like Nick Bostrum.

Are we the dreamer? Or are we the dream?

Cinematic auteur David Lynch has created an entire career around the concept of challenging the notion of a conventional reality. Through his queer Northwest-folk lens of quilts and soft-paintings, Veltkamp explores this idea through key moments in Lynch’s (and Twin Peaks' co-creator Mark Frost's) world-building to explore topics of alternate realities, nostalgia, and queer politics. Veltkamp’s work functions equally as a shelter and a beacon for those that need its shelter, a safe space for those unaware they needed the safety and comfort of the spaces he creates.

Joey Veltkamp (born 1972 in Helena, Montana) is a queer artist who uses bright and colorful imagery to comfort the viewer. By elevating every day common items, such a list of summer berries or a plastic bucket of flowers, he reminds us to celebrate life and look for joy in unexpected places.

His inaugural solo museum exhibition, SPIRIT!, opened at Bellevue Arts Museum in 2022. Joey’s work has been collected by Seattle Art Museum, Microsoft, Meta, Starbucks, King County Portable Works, and others. He received an Artist Trust GAP Grant in 2019, and is a previous Neddy Award Finalist (2010, 2014). His "soft paintings" have been shown at Tacoma Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, Bellevue Arts Museum, Seattle Art Museum, and San Luis Obispo Museum of Art. Joey has lived in the Puget Sound region since 1996. He has five cats and one husband. He is represented by Greg Kucera Gallery.

Who is afraid of matter - Heidi Schwegler

Heidi Schwegler
Who is afraid of matter

September 16th - October 8th

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Who is afraid of matter, a solo exhibition by Yucca Valley artist, Heidi Schwegler.

Artist Statement:

There is a frozen slurry between the cushions of everyday life. Here lies the miscellaneous deaths of unnamed stuff–a melted piña colada-flavored gummy bear, matted strands of human hair, a faded corner of a torn-up lottery ticket, billions of molecules of pollen and dust–coalescing into a sticky joint that holds it all together. This incoherent accumulation is not separate from you; find yourself here amidst these fugitive substances. Who is afraid of matter: it is not a question. And you are the fear.

About Heidi Schwegler:

Heidi Schwegler combines found objects with traditional craft techniques to create enigmatic sculptures with complex narratives and cryptic associations.

Born in 1967 in San Antonio, Texas, Schwegler studied at the University of Kansas and the University of Oregon, where she received her M.F.A. in 1998. Her work has been presented at the Bellevue Art Museum (Washington state), the Portland Art Museum (Oregon), Disjecta Contemporary Art Center (Portland, Oregon), as well as in numerous one-person and group exhibitions. In 2015, The Art Gym at Marylhurst University (Portland, Oregon) held Schwegler’s fifteen-year retrospective, Botched Execution.

Schwegler has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, Oregon Arts Commission, and Ford Family Foundation. She was artist-in-residence at Yaddo, the 18th St Arts Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and Bullseye Glass Company.

Work by the artist is represented in the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum (Oregon), the Crocker Museum (Sacramento, California), Schneider Museum of Art (Oregon) and the Hallie Ford Museum (Oregon). Formerly a professor and graduate program chair at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, Schwegler is the founder and executive director of Yucca Valley Material Lab, a not-for-profit artists’ workshop and residency program. She lives and works in Yucca Valley, California.

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A conversation between Heidi Schwegler and Sarah Granett on the occasion of Heidi’s show “Who is afraid of matter” at Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles. 17 September 2023 - Download PDF

Sarah Granett: There’s an invitation for me to put my body into the works in this show which are often partial bodies. Like imaginatively putting on a hand, a pair of knees, stepping into a foot, or the mirrors that mix my image with the imagery of the works. It’s pretty dramatic— And also there’s a reference to fear as a subtext in the works. Is this show a dare?

Heidi Schwegler: That made me chuckle. It totally reminds of that kid’s game ‘Truth or Dare’, and now that you say it, truth or dare might actually play a part in everything I do. Since most of my work is existentialist in nature there are truths that I dare you to consider (I dare you to look). Most of what runs through this work oscillates between notions of mortality, my future broken body and the broken things I notice in the world. ‘It cannot be helped’ (the beaten up piece of cardboard now cast in aluminum) had been trapped between our chain link fence and a creosote bush for about a year. For some reason I never hauled it to the trash, but I would occasionally hear it flapping in the wind. Suddenly one morning I noticed its beauty and brought it into the studio. The brutality and the forces that make up the desert shaped it. Back in 2010 when you and I were artists in residence in Beijing, I once saw a huge pile of something I didn’t recognize at the end of a Hutong. I had to try really hard to see what was in front of me. When I realized it was just a pile of cardboard boxes I was struck with its beauty, mostly because that experience allowed me to see a cardboard box again for the first time. I suppose that’s what I try to do with my work, I dare you to look closer in order to see the beauty in something we’ve deemed worthless. For me that’s sublime.

In terms of the telepathic potential in the things I make, hopefully there is something in what you recognize (a braid that has slipped between the knees, a gummy bear squished between two chunks of concrete) that allows your body to become the object and the object your body.

SG: You’re saying my body becomes the object and the object becomes my body? A play back and forth?

HS: Yes, and it may not even be conscious, it may just be a sudden physical sensation somewhere deep. I have been drawn to discarded things for years and tend to anthropomorphize mundane objects. I wander a lot in the hopes of accidentally stumbling over something compelling on the sidewalk ( a still life composed of wet panty hose, a single nike shoe and a tousled braided hair extension), or discovering something humorous shoved in the 2” gap between buildings (like a half eaten almond croissant). That said, I am not drawn to ALL trash - there are certain characteristics that need to be present: what it used to be, where it is now and its position in space. If these three things align, I am instantly reminded of my mortality and think about (and more importantly feel) my body. This is what I try to do with most of my work. Can an object be so compelling you begin to feel things virtually.

SG: I like to think about how objects communicate. And it’s fascinating to think of a non-art object having its own voice through the circumstances and conditions of its experience.

HS: I often think about those objects in our homes that are ‘malleable’ versus those that I would consider ‘hard’. What I mean by this is that there are certain things that have somehow absorbed our memories, and in extreme cases the actual bodies of those who used to own them. Hard objects on the other hand are just things, they have a function, we use them, we only think about them when we need them or when they break, but they don’t emotionally or psychologically transport us to those who are long gone. So what I like is that the malleable objects can become triggers for our memories. An example would be this little buddha lamp that used to be in my grandparents house. We had holiday dinners next to it, I would pass by it when I visited, it had a very specific click when you turned it on, it was always present. It now has a prominent spot in our house in Yucca Valley, even though it no longer works. I’ve tried to repair it many times with no avail, but I just can’t get rid of it since my grandparents are somehow embedded in that object. When I pass by it I am flooded with memories from Lawrence, Kansas, certain sounds, colors, sensations and smells and a perpetual and surreal sadness knowing they are forever gone. In a way I will have to continue to carry that little object until my life is over.

SG: About place and positioning in space, some of the the objects in the gallery seem to recreate a sort of found object experience by being on the floor. Like the two feet in Little King and the paving material in You are the Fear. How do you decide when an artwork should go on the floor?

HS: In terms of how to position objects, I actually feel more strange putting the forms on pedestals. In fact I used to put a lot more work on the floor. I’ve never really considered why, it was mostly intuitive and felt like a more authentic way to present the pieces. Maybe because they have a more direct relationship with the architecture and space that we inhabit? Or maybe because that’s how my initial relationship develops with them in my studio?

And I suppose how they are positioned in the gallery also then more directly relates to how I found some of them (the aluminum cardboard sheet leaning against the wall and the broken concrete from a driveway are perfect examples). The pedestal can seem too clinical, which is why I was so excited how the pedestals in this show were resolved. They were initially unpainted plywood but I quickly realized they overpowered the objects once they were placed on top. The pedestals began to take on a yellowish orange hue, the grain became visually stronger, and the glass objects dulled out and almost became invisible. Thinking my only other option was to paint them solid white I realized I would have had to completely remake them because the grain would have been an issue with the paint’s surface. So I opted for a transparent white stain. I love how the grain still came through and the color has turned into a soft pink, they really came to life and the green in the glass now pops.

SG: Yes! The white-pink staining on the pedestals is really cool. It seems to set off the palette of the show. Especially, to me it contrasts beautifully with the cool greenish white of the cast glass. That green-white color is evocative too. And it takes a different role in each piece. How did you come to that color?

HS: I knew I wanted a soft foamy look and the basic clear glass from Bullseye has a perceptible greenish tint, versus their crystal clear which is more pink. If you use small enough grains the clear also starts to shift the transparency into a milky white (technically this is caused by the air bubbles around each grain, which I love - you’re actually seeing the effect of the bubbles). And I don’t know if you noticed but I also didn’t want it all to be the same level of translucency so I threw in different sizes of glass grains, and even large chunks from former castings. This brings out a marbling which I felt really added to the depth. I also didn’t mention that I had to remake those knees four times. They kept failing in the kiln for a variety of unpredictable reasons, and normally after the third failure I would walk away. I wrestled that piece knowing it was something I really needed to make, and it was well worth it. It’s one of my favorite pieces in the group.

SG: The imagery you work with is mostly cast. Which means there was an original and its external form has been replicated with great accuracy. What are your thoughts about the technical part of castings? Including from a point of view of meaning— what does it mean to replicate a form in another material?

HS: I’ve been drawn to casting for a long time and for several different reasons. I sometimes make molds of things as a starting point for transformation and abstraction, but mold making also allows me to copy and use the unaltered form. Once I have a mold I can iterate with multiple materials and capitalize on the alchemical potential, that is: casting an object in a material that is antithetical to its original function forces you to renegotiate your relationship with it. A concrete or glass pillow may make you reconsider comfort. Casting a lead foot with misplaced toes from different people, casting a fragmented piece of packing foam in glass or memorializing a cardboard lid from a Home Depot toilet bowl by casting into an aluminum ‘tombstone’ can conjure overlapping notions of mortality, consumption, beauty and disquieting humor. My ultimate goal.

Bulb and Seed - Charles Hickey

Charles Hickey
Bulb and Seed

August 12th - September 3rd, 2023

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Bulb and Seed, the first Los Angeles solo exhibition of Charles Hickey.

Working entirely with the 3D Pen, Hickey champions the genre of still life through painting and sculpture. In his 3D pen paintings, Hickey employs the tool's voluptuous mark-making to capture movement and time, etching the hand's motion in seductive plastics. The plastics and basic functions of the pen are identical to those of a 3D printer, and each work created with this tool pays tribute to the precision and rhythmic skill of 3D printing. When the tool is placed in the human hand, the mark-making changes, producing delicate wobbles and waves that record the hand's path and serve as a memento mori, documenting the passage of time.

Hickey utilizes the full breadth of the still life genre, using it both as an armature on which to explore the technical craft of the 3D pen and also as a tool to play with the loaded potential of objects and symbolism as a means of communication.

When drawing fruits and vegetables using the 3D pen, the drawings engulf the objects they represent, coating them in perfect plastic and leaving them to decay. The fruits and vegetables are rendered inedible and stripped of their ability to provide physical sustenance, while the plastic drawing freezes the object in time with melting rhythmic marks. The plastic's glossy and alluring surface mirrors the sheen of the fruits and vegetables, inviting desire while denying fulfillment and function.

About Charles Hickey:

Charles Hickey (he/him) is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary artist from Atlanta, Georgia. Working primarily with digital modeling and digital fabrication, Hickey creates still lives, drawings, and 3D pen sculptures to explore movement and aging of the body. Engaging with how we see and how we represent objects in space, he pulls from the traditions of still life painting and sculpture, using the genre as a means to experiment and communicate.

Hickey received a M.F.A. in Studio Arts from Syracuse University in 2020 and a B.F.A. with a concentration in sculpture from Winthrop University in 2017. His work has been shown at Field Projects and The Invisible Dog Art Center in New York City, the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY and the Olive Tjaden and Experimental Galleries at Cornell University. He has had solo exhibitions at Random Access Gallery in Syracuse, NY and The Novella Project curated by DJ Hellerman in Savannah, GA.

Brico Studio - Charlotte Lethbridge

Charlotte Lethbridge
Brico Studio

July 8th - July 30th

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Brico Studio, a solo exhibition of recent work by Charlotte Lethbridge.

Brico Studio is a grouping of objects made from the remnants of the artist’s studio practice. Typically, the time an artist spends in the studio manifests into a selection of objects, carefully curated to present to the viewer. Lethbridge’s paintings are the central focus of her practice, though she considers the materiality of a canvas to be as important as the image depicted on its surface. It is this consideration for material that led to the creation of these correlated objects.

Averting focus from the paintings Lethbridge traditionally exhibits, this project highlights all that falls through the cracks during the creative process — the riff raff, the castoffs, the unpresentable. Components include fabric scraps, old wood, leftover paint, and flotsam and jetsam collected along the way.

Charlotte Lethbridge is a Los Angeles based artist. With a primary focus on painting, she processes memories by revisiting landscapes and objects through her work. Material is a common thread in Lethbridge’s practice, typified in canvases built from scratch and repurposed fabrics. Lethbridge received her BFA from The School of Visual Arts. She has had solo shows with Deborah Berke Projects and Post Gallery Zurich and has been in group shows with My Pet Ram, White Columns, Triggering DJ Gallery, and Test Site Projects.

Felled, not Fallen - Alicia Cheatham

Alicia Cheatham
Felled, not Fallen

June 3rd - June 25th

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Felled, not Fallen, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Alicia Cheatham.

Artist Statement

“Growing up in the Pacific Northwest instilled in me a wonder for the woods. There were forts and treehouses and nooks and crannies to play in. Backyards bled into backwoods. Fairytales told me of hidden dangers and how to navigate them. Trees came to life in books and movies. There was even one that gave everything to a man.

I flew a lot as a kid. I could get a distance from the trees and look down over the wider landscape. There were all the visual narratives of human and environment playing out for me on a grand scale. I saw bursts of wild untouched forest intermingling with the refined lines and color fields of agriculture. As years went on, I watched the changing geometry of this patchwork. There became more and more regular shapes and measurable angles. And though the massive grid kept forming, it still had to bend to the landscape and trees still grew out of the seams.”

-Alicia Cheatham, 2023

Alicia Cheatham is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator living and working in Pasadena, California. Her most recent venture, Ruth Gallery, is an artist-run space in her home, where she organizes exhibits with friends; contemporary, funny, and abstract. Earlier this year, she guest curated a two-artist show for the East Gallery at Claremont Graduate University. Cheatham came from a design and technology background before pursuing her fine art career. She studied painting and ceramics at CSU Los Angeles (2015) and earned her MFA at Claremont Graduate University (2022).

Push & Pull - Wendy Duong and Connor Walden

Push & Pull
Wendy Duong and Connor Walden

April 29th - May 21st

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Push & Pull, an exhibition featuring Wendy Duong and Connor Walden. Push & Pull combines Wendy Duong’s paintings and Connor Walden’s sculptures in a two-person exhibition that makes the tensions of relationships visible. The exhibited works activate each artists’ complex feelings borne by intimate connections with loved ones. Inner worlds are transformed into externalized objects, inviting reflection and connection.

Duong’s paintings depict semi-abstract representations of human figures and flowers that are part of emotionally heightened personal narratives while Walden’s sculptures explore gendered expectations passed down to us by family through the interplay of steel and yarn. While employing different media, both artists approach their art making similarly—with playfulness, letting intuition and impulse drive the creation of dynamic movements with intermingling forms. Pushing and pulling, the primary forces in physics, are foundational forces in relational dynamics as well; the artworks in Push & Pull respond and engage these forces with both tenderness and gravity, inviting the viewer to be drawn in or repelled by what they encounter.



Wendy Duong is a Vietnamese American artist residing in Santa Ana, California. Growing up immersed in American culture while having immigrant parents, Wendy experiences obstacles navigating communication between generations. In result, Wendy uses her artistic practice as a bridge to form universal connections. Portraying human emotions such as grief, regret, guilt, and joy in dramatic narrative acrylic paintings, Wendy unveils peculiarities in the mundane and human relationships.

Raised with a twin brother in a conservative Christian suburb of Dallas, Connor Walden is an artist currently in Los Angeles. After spending his formative years as an adult in the liberal secular cities of Austin and Seattle, Connor finds himself in a state of ambivalence, holding a complex of feelings, ideologies, and communities. In order to continue this dialectic move, Connor’s studio becomes a playground to feel around for common threads and dropped stitches. His current body of work investigates the relationship between steel and yarn, two materials he learned to work with from his grandfather and grandmother, respectively. The gendered expectations fostered by these complimentary people set up a false dichotomy of strength and gentleness he continues to contemplate in his studio and in his life. Connor has exhibited throughout the US, including Seattle, Austin, Los Angeles. He is in collections in California, Washington, and Texas.

2023 Open Show

2023 Open Show
March 24th - April 15th, 2023

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to announce our 2023 Open Show, which brings together 39 Los Angeles-based artists working in diverse media.

Participating Artists

Ekta Aggarwal, Nurit Avesar, Noel Becerra, Julie Bernadeth, Olivia Booth, Laura Cerón, Jinseok Choi, Trent Christensen, Lauren Denitzio, Paloma Dooley, Wendy Duong, Vivien Ebright Chung, Malado Francine, Sarajo Frieden, Marisa Futernick, Melora Garcia, Emily Gordon, Sam Herrera, Charles Hickey, Alexander Hill, Adrienne Kinsella, Zach Kleyn, Kimberly Kyne, Caitlyn Lawler, Amy MacKay, Harvey Opgenorth, Brett Park, Giovanna Pizzoferrato, Amanda Quinlan, Ghazal Rahimi, Michelle Robinson, Gabriel Rojas, Nadine Schelbert, Willis Stork, Connor Walden, Zachary Warwas, Stacey Wexler, Andrew Wharton, Nate Zoba

Curatorial Statement

Featuring selected work from our Open Call, we put together a group show of 2D and 3D work that best met a criteria of excellence in formal and/or conceptual terms. We received over 120 submissions from which 39 artists were selected. While we are regretful that we were unable to accommodate many fine works, we are excited about the blend of voices to be presented, and are grateful for the enthusiasm of all the applicants.

As lead curators of the 2023 Open Show, our goal was to facilitate an accessible, inclusive display of artistic excellence by local artists. We used a dense, salon-style hang because we believe this approach to be the most open and inclusive hanging strategy. It also allowed us to showcase the greatest number of artists.

As we hung the show, we focused on the associations and connections that could be drawn between works and which would generate a visual conversation. It is our hope that this show will encourage and support the community of makers in Los Angeles as they continue to make their creative contributions to life in our shared city.

-Sarah Granett and Amanda Mears
MVP Members and Lead Curators of the 2023 Open Show