La Luz de Jesus Gallery is a

commercial art gallery An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells Work of art, works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art. An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and build ...

located in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, California. It is closely associated with the Lowbrow Art Movement,

Kustom Kulture Kustom Kulture is a neologism used to describe the artworks, vehicles, hairstyles, and fashions of those who have driven and built custom cars and motorcycles in the United States of America from the 1950s through today. It was born out of the h ...

, and

pop surrealism Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, is an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California area in the late 1960s. It is a populist art movement with its cultural roots in underground comix, punk music, tiki culture, graffiti, and h ...

History

La Luz de Jesus Gallery was established in 1986 in

, California by entrepreneur and art collector Billy Shire. The original gallery was located in a bright pink building on

Melrose Avenue Melrose Avenue is a shopping, dining and entertainment destination in Los Angeles that starts at Santa Monica Boulevard, at the border between Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. It ends at Lucile Avenue in Silver Lake. Melrose runs north of Beve ...

, upstairs from Shire's retail store Soap Plant/ Wacko. As Melrose Avenue became increasingly gentrified, the gallery was relocated to the

Los Feliz LOS, or Los, or LoS may refer to: Science and technology * Length of stay, the duration of a single episode of hospitalisation * Level of service, a measure used by traffic engineers * Level of significance, a measure of statistical significance ...

/ Silverlake district on

Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It begins in the east at Sunset Boulevard in the Los Feliz district and proceeds to the west as a major thoroughfare through Little Armenia and Thai Town, Hollywoo ...

near

Vermont Avenue Vermont Avenue is one of the longest running north–south streets in City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, California. With a length of , is the third longest of the north–south thoroughfares in the region. For most of its length betwe ...

. The early years of La Luz de Jesus gallery, before its relocation to Hollywood Boulevard, coincide with the Golden Age of Lowbrow. In April 2005, Shire opened a sister gallery, Billy Shire Fine Arts, in

Culver City, California Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. Founded in 1917 as a "whites only" sundown town, it is now an ethnically diverse city with what was called the "third-most d ...

Mission and influence

La Luz de Jesus Gallery provides both an exhibition space and a support structure to Lowbrow and pop surrealist artists. The gallery's mission is to make underground artists and

counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...

accessible to the general public. In a 1988 interview with the

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

, Shire sums up the gallery's philosophy by saying, "Art should be by the people and for the people. It should be something that speaks to you, that entertains and challenges and changes your outlook." The gallery presents a new exhibit each month with an opening reception on the first Friday of every month. The gallery shows primarily figurative and narrative painting and unusual sculpture, with a focus on themes and styles including

folk art Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...

outsider art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates e ...

, religious art, and alternative erotica. The gallery has been the first to introduce to the public many then-unknown artists who have gone on to claim their place in the art world. These artists include

Manuel Ocampo Manuel Ocampo (born 1965) is a Filipino artist. His work fuses sacred Baroque religious iconography with secular political narrative. His works draw upon a wide range of art historical references, contain cartoonish elements, and draw inspiratio ...

, Joe Coleman,

Shag Shag, or Shagged, or Shagger, or Shagging, or Shags may refer to: Animals * Shag or cormorant, a bird family ** European shag, a specific species of the shag or cormorant family ** Great cormorant another species of the family People Pseudonym ...

, and Robert Williams. Other notable artists that have exhibited at the gallery include

Marco Almera Marco Almera is a Southern California artist. Biography Growing up in Orange County, Marco Almera's artistic career emerged from the Southern California surfing, skateboarding and rock 'n' roll subculture of the late 1980s. A Southern Californi ...

, and

Joe Sorren Joe Sorren (born 1970 in Chicago) grew up in Arizona and began painting in 1991. Two years later he earned a BFA from Northern Arizona University. His artwork has appeared in various publications, including ''The New Yorker'', ''Time'' and ''Rol ...

. In addition to regular solo and two-person shows, the gallery also hosts a variety of group shows, including a much-anticipated annual group exhibition entitled "Everything But the Kitschen Sync" which introduces relatively unknown and emerging artists at the beginning of their careers.

References

{{reflist
La Luz De Jesus website

* The Los Angeles Times, 17 July 1988, "Folk Art with a Touch of Madness" by Denise Hamilton * http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2010/08/08/publish/2348910398.html * http://www.losangeles.com/la-luz-de-jesus-gallery-b95553 * http://forthmagazine.com/events/around-town/2010/05/la-luz-de-jesus-gallery-presents-rogue-taxidermy/ Contemporary art galleries in the United States Art museums and galleries in Los Angeles 1986 establishments in California Kustom Kulture Underground culture Art galleries established in 1986 Silver Lake, Los Angeles