Curtis Ripley: High Fidelity Opening

Santa Monica, CA - William Turner Gallery is pleased to present Curtis Ripley: High Fidelity, an exhibition of new paintings by Curtis Ripley opening April 25, 5-8 PM, and on view through June 20, 2026. The exhibition unfolds as a visual composition: lyrical, atmospheric, and finely attuned to the rhythms of perception.

In Ripley’s paintings, glimmers of paint flicker and flare across darkened grounds, activating the surface with a sense of movement and light. Gestural curls and swirls interact with lines and dashes that guide the viewer’s eye in a choreographed passage across the picture plane. These marks are not merely expressive—they are structural, establishing a sense of tempo and poetic cadence that gives each work its internal coherence.

Forms in Ripley’s work do not resolve immediately. They hover, coalesce, and dissolve, shifting in and out of focus as the viewer’s attention lingers. Color behaves similarly: shapes emerge from the ground only to recede again, creating a continuous interplay between presence and disappearance.

Curtis Ripley, Dreaming in Color, 2026, oil on canvas, 40 x 30”.

The result is a dynamic tension between flatness and depth that remains deliberately unsettled. This instability gives rise to a pronounced sense of atmosphere. Gestural forms drift across layered fields of tone, while Ripley’s palette moves between moments of luminous intensity and expanses of saturated darkness. Subtle gradations of color produce fleeting effects — recalling distant light, reflective shimmer, or the charged stillness of a landscape at dusk. The paintings unfold perceptually, revealing themselves over time rather than at a glance.

Ripley’s practice occupies a space between the gestural immediacy of Abstract Expressionism and the immersive chromatic sensibility of Color Field painting. His work synthesizes these traditions into a contemporary language grounded in process, layering, and revision. While resonant with historical explorations of light and atmosphere, his paintings remain distinctly present—open-ended, responsive, and experiential.

Curtis ripley, Silver Springs, 2026, oil on canvas, 60” x 48

Presented concurrently with Unrepentant Beauty by Roland Reiss, High Fidelity offers a complementary approach to perception—one grounded not in constructed illusion, but in painterly sensation and temporal experience.

Throughout a career spanning more than four decades, Curtis Ripley has exhibited nationally and internationally, with an extensive record of solo exhibitions. Born in Lubbock, Texas in 1949, he received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1975.

Roland Reiss: Unrepentant Beauty Opening

Santa Monica, CA  - William Turner Gallery is pleased to present Roland Reiss: Unrepentant Beauty, an exhibition of late paintings by Roland Reiss (1929–2020), opening April 25, 5-8PM and on view through June 20, 2026.

A pioneering figure in postwar American art, Reiss spent more than six decades redefining the possibilities of painting. From his early explorations of abstraction and representation to his groundbreaking sculptural works and miniature environments, his practice consistently expanded the boundaries of the medium.

This exhibition focuses on a remarkable development in his final decades: a series of vibrant, dynamic flower paintings that challenge long-standing assumptions about beauty and subject matter in contemporary art. Historically regarded as decorative or peripheral, the motif of the flower becomes, in Reiss’ hands, a site of formal and conceptual innovation. The artist approached these works with full awareness of their cultural baggage, describing the act of painting flowers as requiring “a leap of faith.”

About these paintings Reiss stated, “Flowers are the vehicle for putting everything I have learned about painting into my work.” The resulting paintings move fluidly between abstraction and figuration, combining bold color, gestural energy, and spatial complexity. Rather than depicting flowers, Reiss uses them as a framework for exploring perception, materiality, and the enduring power of visual experience.

The title Unrepentant Beauty reflects the artist’s unapologetic embrace of beauty as both subject and strategy. In contrast to earlier generations for whom beauty was often viewed with suspicion, Reiss’ late work asserts its relevance with clarity and conviction.

At the end of a long and influential career, Reiss produced a body of work that is at once playful, rigorous, and deeply resonant—offering a powerful reconsideration of what painting can be.

Roland Reiss studied at the American Academy of Art, Mount San Antonio College and at UCLA. He taught at UCLA, the University of Colorado, and Claremont Graduate University, where he served as Chair for 30 years, from 1971 to 2001. In 2009 he received the College Art Association Award for the Distinguished Teaching of Art. At CGU he held the Benezet Chair in the Humanities and in 2010 an endowed chair in art was established in his name. He was also the director of The Painting's Edge residency at Idyllwild Arts.

Reiss was the recipient of four N.E.A. grants and of numerous prizes and awards. His work is included in many important public and private collections, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hammer Museum, among others.

Now Representing Roland Reiss

William Turner Gallery is honored to announce our representation of the estate of Roland Reiss (1929–2020), one of the most distinctive and intellectually rigorous voices in postwar American art. This partnership reflects the gallery's commitment to championing significant legacies in contemporary art history and ensuring that Reiss's pioneering body of work continues to reach new audiences.

Though widely celebrated for his miniature tableaux, Reiss was first and foremost a painter whose more than sixty-year career left an indelible mark on the Los Angeles and Southern California art scenes. He was included in the 1975 Whitney Biennial and Documenta 7 in 1982, and received fourteen solo museum exhibitions over the course of his career, including The Dancing Lessons: 12 Sculptures (1977) at LACMA. He also received survey exhibitions at the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art (2011–2012) and exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. A retrospective of his work was mounted at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in 1991.

Reiss studied at the American Academy of Art, Mount San Antonio College, and UCLA, graduating with an MA in 1957. He taught at the University of Colorado, UCLA, and Claremont Graduate University, where he chaired the art department for thirty years. In 2009, he received the College Art Association Award for Distinguished Teaching of Art. At CGU he held the Benezet Chair in the Humanities, and in 2010 an endowed chair in art was established in his name. He was also director of The Painting’s Edge residency at Idyllwild Arts.

Reiss received four NEA grants and numerous prizes and awards. His work is held in many significant public and private collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hammer Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Palm Springs Art Museum, UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, Benton Museum of Art, Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, and Oakland Museum of California.

Guillermo Bert's Upcoming Solo Show at the Museum of Latin American Ar

Congratulations to Guillermo Bert on his upcoming solo show, Techno-Empathy, opening at the Museum of Latin American Art on March 29.

This exhibition shows the Chilean-born artist Guillermo Bert bringing the two together in novel and powerful ways. He uses three principal tools, all of them uncommon in most art production: QR codes, 3-D imaging, and laser engraving. In the Encoded Textiles series, weavings include QR codes that literally embed the story of the weaver into the work so that anyone with a smartphone can see and hear them. Through 3-D imaging, the artist creates life-size images of workers whom he has met, allowing us also to meet them face to face from a unique perspective. Media images today often show migrants and refugees, but Bert uses laser engraving to transfer them onto unusual surfaces, such as wood panels that mimic the look of some of the earliest “high technology:” the rectangular panels that encoded instructions for the first mechanical looms in the 19th century.

Guillermo Bert At William Turner Gallery

Charles Arnoldi in The Hollywood Reporter

Congratulations to Charles Arnoldi for his recent feature in Michael Slenske's article "Guns and Glitter: How LA's Top Artists Reimagine the Oscar" for The Hollywood Reporter!

Charles Arnoldi

Slenske writes: For this portfolio, [Arnoldi] did something he almost never does: “I don’t really think about the Oscars, and I don’t make figurative work,” he says. “But there’s a human quality to this particular sculpture because it has legs and these morphing human forms. I guess you could say that’s a commentary on the chaos that accompanies the Oscars race every year.”

Read the full article at the link below!

Mark Steven Greenfield Solo Show at the Boone Family Gallery at Pasadena City College

William Turner Gallery is happy to congratulate Mark Steven Greenfield on his extraordinary solo show, Venerated, at Pasadena City College’s Boone Family Gallery. The exhibition received an in-depth review by Suzanne York which included excerpts of Greenfield’s art practice and activism as well as discussion of the spiritual and historical themes that shape his work. York highlights how Greenfield’s paintings draw on cultural memory, overlooked figures from the African diaspora, and symbols such as the Black Madonna and mandala forms to explore history, resistance, and renewal.

“The Boone Gallery exhibition offers visitors a unique look across the evolving stages of Greenfield’s artistic life. It presents work that is visually striking, historically rich, and unapologetically challenging.”

The show was also cited by PBS SoCal as one of the five best things to do during the week of March 2-8!

LAGUNA ART MUSEUM PRESENTS - ANDY MOSES: INTO THE LIGHT

LAGUNA ART MUSEUM PRESENTS
ANDY MOSES: INTO THE LIGHT

March 21 - September 20, 2026

Location Laguna Art Museum is located at 307 Cliff Drive in Laguna Beach, on the corner of Coast Highway and Cliff Drive.
Hours Tuesday-Sunday: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Andy Moses' mysterious and alluring paintings pose a subtle challenge: do we read them as landscapes, enveloping the eye as they do with forms both aqueous and mountainous? Or should we regard them as abstractions, pure plays of light and form, color and contour, literally bent into physical space? Moses welcomes either comprehension or both. This is art born of visual transcendence, seeking to find a bit of the glory of nature in the properties of paint.  

Moses grew up in coastal Los Angeles, mesmerized almost from birth by the brilliant vagaries of marine light. When he moved east after college, he immersed himself in the booming New York art scene of the 1980s and 1990s, launching his career and determining how to explore both subject matter and material. But on his return to Venice, he found himself immersed again in the plangent light of his youth. Ever since he has striven to invest every painting with such meditative luminosity, even building round and curved (mostly concave) surfaces to envelope the eye.  

Such perceptual manipulation may be related to the Light & Space movement (whose participants have been Moses’ neighbors his whole California life), but in its reliance on paint it evinces associations with the abstract impressionism of Mark Rothko and the color field canvases of Morris Louis. Ultimately, Moses follows in the footsteps of Claude Monet and JMW Turner, whose contemplations of urban and rural spaces were pretext to a hunt for light itself.  

This exhibition surveys Andy Moses’ work of the last two decades, evincing his increasingly expansive commitment to a kind of painting that at once displays and obscures imagery. This work forces you to decide what it is doing to you, what it is showing you, if and how it is tricking your eyes or playing to their strengths. It’s a kind of magic. 

Andy Moses: Into the Light is organized by Laguna Art Museum and curated by Peter Frank.

About Laguna Art Museum

Founded by local artists in 1918, Laguna Art Museum has celebrated California art and culture at the heart of the community for over a century. The museum offers a welcoming space for artists, donors, members and visitors, each bringing unique energy that drives its mission forward. As “Your Museum,” Laguna Art Museum builds on a legacy of inspiring creativity, sustainability and reflection on California’s natural environment through exhibitions, events and educational programs. The museum presents exhibitions that highlight the California experience and is home to the annual Art + Nature. With each visit, Laguna Art Museum invites people from near and far to join in its journey of community, art and environmental awareness. For more information, please visit LagunaArtMuseum.org and follow the museum on social media:

Facebook: @LagunaArtMuseum

Instagram: @LagunaArtMuseum

X: @LagunaArtMuseum

Laguna Art Museum is located at 307 Cliff Drive in Laguna Beach, on the corner of Coast Highway and Cliff Drive.

Museum Hours: Tuesday-Sunday: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

SURFACE TENSION: Focus Los Angeles - Opening Saturday 5-8PM

Surface Tension: Focus Los Angeles Opening February 28 5-8PM

Santa Monica, CA  - William Turner Gallery is pleased to present Surface Tension: Focus Los Angeles, a major group exhibition of West Coast artists, opening February 28, 5-8 PM, and on view through April 11, 2026.

Surface Tension: Focus Los Angeles explores surface as an active site of meaning, sensation, and perception. The exhibition foregrounds how contemporary practices use texture, layering, and materiality to shape visual and sensory experience. Bridging painting, sculpture, and works at their intersection, the featured artists employ materials ranging from pearlescent and pigmented acrylics to urethane, resin, industrial finishes, and etched line-work.

Together, the works reveal surface as a dynamic interface that captures light, depth, and movement while inviting sustained, close looking. Through extended material experimentation and technical refinement, each artist demonstrates a deep attunement to their chosen medium, using surface to generate tension between control and intuition, precision and discovery, all aimed at igniting a spark of heightened perception.

Featured artists: Dawn Arrowsmith, Casper Brindle, Alex Couwenberg, Shingo Francis, Frank Gehry, Jimi Gleason, James Hayward, Eric Johnson, Peter Lodato, Andy Moses, Ed Moses, Roland Reiss, Scot Heywood and Jennifer Wolf.

Dawn Arrowsmith, Plum Sienna, acrylic on canvas, 56" x 56"

Dawn Arrowsmith produces meditative, color-driven works informed by Buddhist philosophy and extensive travel. Her paintings appear minimal at first glance, gradually revealing optical shimmer and depth through prolonged viewing.

Casper Brindle, LIGHT GLYPH (YELLOW), 2026, VACUUMED FORMED PIGMENTED ACRYLIC

Casper Brindle creates paintings and sculptures that engage light through reflective, industrial materials including resin and automotive paint. His work shifts with the viewer’s movement, emphasizing perception and atmospheric depth.

Alex Couwenberg,  Stranded (I’m), 2025, Acrylic & spray on canvas, 72” x 66”

Alex Couwenberg is a Southern California–based painter whose work draws from Los Angeles modernism and mid-century design. His sleek, glossy paintings are influenced by Hard-edge abstraction and Finish Fetish aesthetics.

Shingo Francis, Mystery to Explore, 2023, Oil on canvas, 24" x 24"

Shingo Francis creates paintings that shimmer and shift through the use of interference pigments that refract light. Influenced by Southern California’s Light and Space movement and his immersion in LA’s art scene, Francis’s works change with viewer position and lighting conditions.

Frank Gehry, Memory of Sophie Calle’s Flower, 2012, Cast urethane with wood pedestal,
24” x 23” x 18”

Frank Gehry (1929–2025) Known for his de-constructivist approach and creative use of materials, Gehry’s buildings share an artist’s sensibility, where surface texture and dynamic form activate his structures. The undulating, curvilinear forms of his architecture are often echoed in the sculptures and drawings he created throughout his long career.

Jimi Gleason, Untitled, 2018, Silver nitrate & acrylic on canvas, 48” x 126”

Jimi Gleason explores the reflective and perceptual properties of light, using materials such as silver nitrate and pearlescent paint. His mirror-like surfaces shift with the viewer and environment, creating interactive, meditative experiences.

James Hayward, Abstract #247, 2023, Oil on canvas, 25” x 23”

James Hayward paints monochromes that celebrate the nuances of color and sensuality of texture. The surfaces are lavish cake icings of paint, almost daring the viewer to touch, lick, engage. Deft strokes of the artist’s hand remain as deep fissures in the surface, further exciting the senses to embrace their physicality.

Scot Heywood, Stack - Black, White, Canvas, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 70” x 74”

Scot Heywood’s works are indebted to the origins of geometric abstraction. Ranging in scale from intimate to encompassing, his paintings consist of multiple, colored canvases, connected in staggered, patchwork patterns, intentionally misaligned to create delightfully disruptive, staccato visual rhythms.

Eric Johnson, Altamira (Triptych), 1992, Composite, wood, & enamel, 40" x 120" x 18"

Eric Johnson creates resin-based sculptures that merge color, form, and structure, drawing from Southern California’s surf, automotive, and aerospace cultures. His works balance polished surfaces with exposed internal architectures, revealing both depth and construction.

Peter Lodato, Vermilion Green & White, 2023, oil on canvas, 96" x 84"

Peter Lodato (1946–2025) emerged from the Light and Space movement, initially creating immersive light installations before translating perceptual effects into painting. His geometric compositions subtly dissolve through layered brushwork and color vibration, challenging visual certainty.

Andy Moses, Geomorphology 1608, 2023, Acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel,
57” x 90” x 5.5”

Andy Moses is known for his intensive exploration of paint’s alchemical properties. Through complex pouring and mixing processes, his luminous abstractions evoke natural forces rather than representational imagery.

Ed Moses, Sato, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 72” x 120”

Ed Moses (1926–2018) was a pivotal figure in postwar Los Angeles abstraction and a core member of the Ferus Gallery circle. Known for his experimental, process-driven approach, Moses continuously redefined painting over a career spanning six decades.

Left: Roland Reiss, Mirage, 1968, Fiberglass & resin, 46" x 46" x 6
Right: Roland Reiss, Conundrum, 1968, Acrylic, fiberglass, resin, & gelatin coat, 67" x 46.5" x 6"

Roland Reiss (1929-2020) played a significant role in the evolution of postwar West Coast abstraction. Moving from Abstract Expressionism through resin experimentation and conceptual inquiry, Reiss has consistently explored painting as an energetic, interactive field.

Jennifer Wolf, Dye Painting #2, 2021, Natural dyes and mineral pigments on silk with canvas on wood panel, 48” x 48”

Jennifer Wolf uses natural dyes and hand-ground pigments sourced from global expeditions to create subtly shimmering, immersive paintings. Her work explores the elemental qualities of color and surface through fluid, layered compositions that evoke natural environments.

2025 Exhibitions In Review

As 2025 comes to a close, we’d like to thank our artists, collectors, and gallery visitors for making 2025 an exceptional year. View highlights of the year’s exhibitions below, and we hope to see you in 2026!

Catalogs from 2025 Exhibitions

InConversation: Alex Couwenberg (LA) Mark Zimmermann (NY) Talk All Things Art

In a newly shared video interview, artist Alex Couwenberg discusses his art practice and latest show with fellow artist Mark Zimmermann. Couwenberg’s solo show, “Highline” opened at William Turner Gallery on September 13. The show was recommended on social media by art critic Mat Gleason who said, “Couwenberg is at the top of his game… [his paintings] seem improvisational and yet are rigorously constructed and thought out”. You can view the digital catalog for “Highline” at the link below.

COAGULA Curatorial Reviews Alex Couwenberg: HIGHLINE

Coagula Curatorial

Mat Gleason founder of Coagula Curatorial reviews Alex Couwenberg’s exhibition Highline that closed at the gallery November 8.

View the catalog for this important exhibition by clicking HERE. You can view the instagram reel review of Highline by clicking the image or the button below.

Alex Couwenberg: Highline - Digital Exhibition Catalog & Video is Now Available

Alex couwenberg: Highline (70-Pages Fully illustrated print catalog available october 20)

A 70-Page Exhibition Catalog Available Soon - Contact Gallery to Reserve a Copy

Couwenberg’s work taps into the visual rhythms of Southern California, where headlights and taillights play a noir contrapuntal beat to sunlight skittering across waves or filtering in gentle patterns through window blinds on a summer morning. In fact, Couwenberg likens his process to navigating a city: full of green lights, stop signs, and unexpected turns and views. This interplay between control and spontaneity animates the work, producing compositions that simultaneously convey tension and resolution. The resulting pieces are both formally rigorous and emotionally resonant—vivid reflections of an artist deeply attuned to the aesthetics of movement, light, and the layered complexity of memory and lived experience.

Born and based in Southern California, Couwenberg channels the contradictory dialectics of the region: the soft luminosity of ocean vistas and open sky versus the relentless linearity of urban freeway systems. His method—a reductive and additive layering ritual—recalls an abstract archaeology: excavated textures meet precise hard‑edge forms in a personal vernacular built from cultural signifiers and industrial gestures.

A graduate of Art Center College of Design and Claremont Graduate School, Couwenberg studied with Karl Benjamin, a pivotal figure in defining Southern California’s hard‑edge abstraction. Other influences are deeply woven into Couwenberg’s practice as well, ranging from the Finish Fetish movement—surfboard, custom‑car gloss, resin surfaces created with industrial rigor—to Light & Space’s subtle manipulations of perception. Couwenberg’s work is represented in numerous museum collections, including the Frederick R. Weisman Museum, the Long Beach Museum of Art, Lancaster Museum of Art & History, Laguna Art Museum, Crocker Art Museum, and the Daum Museum of Art in Missouri. In 2007, he received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for painting.

Jody Zellen Reviews Greg Miller: True Romance

Greg Miller: ‘True Romance’

Graphically and Intellectually Complex Puzzles

by Jody Zellen

Greg Miller’s works are filled with images appropriated from the mass media that appear to be chaotically combined to create messy surfaces with painted drips and ripped newspaper fragments. Each melange is encapsulated in varnish or a glossy medium that unifies the disjointed surface. Many of his works allude to Hollywood movies and movie stars. The paintings have a nostalgic aura, yet are clearly created in the present. Scenes suggesting love, desire and loss, as well as dramatic comic book fist fights fill his colorful panels. Large painted figures are combined with actual magazine excerpts to create narratives. Like other accomplished collage artists, Miller’s refined skills at unifying disparate and unrelated content are clearly evident. He also has a keen wit and sense of humor.

Greg Miller, Beautiful, Acrylic and collage on canvas, 48” x 48”

Many recognizable figures from the past and present fill his canvases: be it Mr. Bubble, The Jolly Green Giant (the well-known advertising mascot for the Green Giant brand of peas), vintage macho comic strip detectives and cowboys, or seductive, smiling women with bright red-lipstick. Miller also inserts book covers, maps and street signs (Mulholland Drive), as well as reproductions of Life Saver candies and pieces of popcorn. Significant scale shifts create an interesting back and forth between the painting and collage. Recognition plays a large part in how Miller’s works are interpreted. For those who know the original context of his appropriated materials, the references are automatic and embedded in nostalgia. Those who don’t, might need to delve deeper into the history of popular culture, but all can applaud Miller’s inventive ways of presenting them in new scenarios and combinations.

Greg Miller, Mr Bubble, Acrylic and collage on canvas, 36” x 72”

Many of Miller’s large-scale horizontal paintings allude to widescreen proportions connecting them to the world of cinema. Love Between Hard Covers (all works 2025) and Mr. Bubble are diptychs that are twice as wide as they are high. Centered in the large, bright and aggressively gestural two panel piece, Here it is, is an illustration of a red and white striped popcorn bag character adorned with gesturing arms and legs. This iconic figure waves as it saunters across the composition. Filling the background is a stylized fist fight between two cartoon characters. As one appears to hit the other, all that is missing is the word WHAAM![aka Roy Lichtenstein, though it appears in another painting so titled and installed across the wall]. Giant pieces of popcorn float across the scene. A banner reading Pain Proof Man sits at the top of the picture. Scattered about the composition are full-size magazine and book pages that also wrap around the edges of the panel. Within the composition are carefully chosen clippings with words or sentences that inform the reading of the densely layered work. It is necessary to read the fine print, as well as follow the flow of the images to fully understand Miller’s intentions.

In the diptych Mr. Bubble, Miller juxtaposes a painting of a woman in a red bathing suit floating in dark blue water with a painted replica of a Mr. Bubble box. The woman appears to be just below the surface, her face obscured by the water above. The illustration of a box of 1970s vintage bubble bath is presented alongside a historical advertisement for the “1st National Surf Show,” a clipping of an old 35-mm camera, magazine cutouts of purple flowers, a bird and a compass. Newspaper fragments are scattered across the piece. Depending on the order in which they are read — ‘Know Something’ ‘five’ ‘beauty’ — they cohere poetically.

Greg Miller, Whamm, Acrylic and collage on canvas, 60” x 84”

In the large piece Whaam, Miller features a cropped close-up of a glamorous woman’s face presumably from a 1950s era advertisement and a hand pinching a red Life Saver candy. Other painted Life Saver candies in yellow, orange and green appear behind the hand, each collaged with letters that spell out words including LIFE, FREE, PLAY or REAL THING. The word WHAAM! is painted in bright yellow and outlined in black in the background amidst an explosion. Covering these painted elements are cutouts of liquor bottles, a camera, the American flag, as well as a tree labeled “High Sierra.” When combined with painted drips and newspaper fragments — Miller’s signature style — these elements create a nuanced narrative that weaves through different generations of popular culture.

Greg Miller, Here It Is, Acrylic and collage on canvas, 72” x 120”

In Beautiful, the word spans edge to edge horizontally. Behind it is a beach scene with a woman in an old-fashioned bathing suit. A pair of red high heel shoes is collaged toward the bottom left covered by a small line of text that reads “With thoughts of the path back.” A collaged hand holds a camera and is overlaid with texts that state “But not so; there was more” and “…if sensing the wilderness of …” A pair of disembodied eyes looks out at the viewer. The scene is beautiful and charged simultaneously. Miller is clearly infatuated and seduced by advertisements and printed ephemera from the past. He carefully selects and arranges aspects from what must be a huge archive of materials, to create graphically and intellectually complex puzzles that are a joy to read and decipher.

Jody Zellen is a Santa Monica-based artist and writer. She has been writing art reviews for more than 25 years and currently contributes to Artillery, ArtScene, Afterimage and Art and Cake. For more information on her art and writings please visit www.jodyzellen.com

Greg Miller: True Romance & Jennifer Wolf: Utopalypse - Extended to September 6, 2025

Ongoing shows at William Turner Gallery “Greg Miller: True Romance” and “Jennifer Wolf: Utopalypse” extended until Labor Day

William Turner Gallery is excited to announce that the summer exhibitions “Greg Miller: True Romance” and “Jennifer Wolf: Utopalypse” are extending their run! You now have more time to experience these works in person — don’t miss your chance to visit before they close in September.

GREG MILLER: True Romance - Exhibition Video

Working in his signature blend of photorealism, gestural abstraction, and mixed-media collage, Miller constructs what might be described as visual archaeology. His compositions are not passive reflections of bygone Americana but rather active interrogations of how memory, media, and identity are constructed. Like an anthropologist of postwar culture, Miller peels back the layers of the American psyche, embedding his canvases with found texts, clipped advertisements, and iconographic symbols that shaped mid-century ideals of beauty, power, and romance.

While rooted in the seductive visual language of the 1950’s and 60’s, Miller’s work resists simple nostalgia. The cracked surfaces, distressed textures, and time-worn materials suggest not preservation but erosion—an acknowledgment that the past is as much invention as recollection. The romanticism embedded in these works—echoed in the exhibition’s title—is deliberately ambivalent, positioned somewhere between genuine longing and critical detachment.

Los Angeles, Miller’s longtime home and an enduring muse, reappears here as both setting and subject. Its palm-lined streets, glamour-soaked iconography, and ever-present mythos provide the perfect backdrop for the artist’s ongoing dialogue with American visual culture. In Miller’s hands, LA becomes a collage of its own: sexy, mysterious, dangerous. 

True Romance is more than a nostalgic ode; it is a cinematic montage of American desire, loss, and reinvention. Like the pulp novels and romance comics it references, each piece in the show contains a narrative—some suggested, some obscured, all inviting exploration. In Miller’s world, nothing exists in a vacuum; every image, every word is part of a larger, layered story. And in tracing those layers, we find not just echoes of a collective past, but clues to how that past continues to shape our present.

Greg Miller (b. 1951) was born in Sacramento, California and holds a Master of Arts Degree from San Jose University. Once a long-time Venice, California resident, he currently resides in LA, CA & Austin, Texas. His work is featured in numerous museum and private collections, including those of: the San Jose Museum of Art, Newport Harbor Museum, Crocker Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, Riverside Art Museum,  Frederick R. Weisman Foundation and Charles Saatchi Foundation. The Get Go, a volume of his writings, photography and paintings was published in 2010, and the first comprehensive monograph of the artist, Signs of the Nearly Actual, was published in 2009.

Peter Lodato (1946-2025)

It is with profound sadness that William Turner Gallery announces the passing of Peter Lodato—beloved artist, friend, and a vital figure in the Venice and greater Los Angeles art communities. Peter was a defining presence at the gallery for nearly 30 years, and his loss is deeply felt.

Peter’s quiet, gracious demeanor belied an unwavering dedication to his craft. He painted every day in his intimate Venice studio, producing works that were often monumental in scale—radiant with a meditative, almost spiritual energy. His paintings emanated a quiet intensity that reflected the depth of his inquiry into light, perception, and the unseen.

Peter’s artistic journey began in the late 1960s with a series of environmental light installations, part of the burgeoning West Coast Light and Space movement. His 1971 installation at LACMA’s “24 Young Los Angeles Artists” exhibition—an interplay of light, mirrors, and shadow—garnered early acclaim. He often cited the oculus of Rome’s Pantheon as a formative influence, inspiring his lifelong pursuit to shape space through light. His early work culminated in his inclusion in the 1981 Whitney Biennial.

As he moved from installations to painting, Peter brought with him the same rigor and fascination with perception. At first glance, his works appear as refined geometric abstractions—but closer engagement reveals subtle brushwork, nuanced layers, and vibrant fields of color that shift the viewer’s sense of space and depth. His paintings operate within a paradox: at once reductive and expansive, minimal yet emotionally resonant.

Influenced by Eastern philosophy, Lodato’s palette often referenced the color symbolism of the body’s chakra system—red for the root, signifying vitality and grounding; white for the crown, invoking spiritual clarity. His visual language—rooted in simplicity and suggestion—invited contemplation and emotional response. Lodato’s lineage is evident in the influence of artists such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Agnes Martin, all of whom shaped his understanding of painting as a physical and transcendent experience.

Peter earned his graduate degree from California State University and taught at ArtCenter College of Design and UC Irvine. In 2000, the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation presented a major retrospective of his work spanning two decades. In addition to the Whitney Biennial, Lodato’s work was exhibited at leading institutions including PS1 in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His paintings are held in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, among others.

Beyond his artistic accomplishments, Peter was a cherished companion—curious, warm, and deeply attuned to the worlds of music, literature, and art. He was a painter’s painter, whose works graced the walls of fellow artists and admirers. In recent years, Peter had found joy and fulfillment both personally and creatively, producing some of the most profound work of his career. He is believed to have passed peacefully, playing his guitar—a fitting farewell for a man so attuned to harmony.

Peter is survived by his beloved son, Nicholas Lodato (“the other Lodato,” as Peter affectionately called him), his former wife Tatyana Thompson, and stepsons Alexander and Theodore Leshnick. He leaves behind a vast community of friends, collectors, and fellow artists who will miss him dearly.

Memorial arrangements will be announced at a later date.

William Turner Gallery

Digital Exhibition Catalogs for Greg Miller: True Romance & Jennifer Wolf: Utopalypse

William Turner Gallery currently has two solo shows on view: "Greg Miller: True Romance" and "Jennifer Wolf: Utopalypse". Jennifer Wolf’s art practice is deeply rooted in her personal connection to the Southern Californian landscape: she makes her own dyes and pigments, combining organic materials with state-of-the-art acrylic mediums. Her latest series –  “Utopalypse” – consists of highly evocative abstract pieces on silk mounted on wood. Greg Miller combines layered collages of ephemera collected from the 1950’s and 1960’s with large-scale, photorealistic paintings styled after the golden age of advertising and Americana. Much like an archaeologist delving into the layers of the earth to uncover fragments of the past, Miller digs into the layers of images and text to uncover hidden clues and meanings. Both “True Romance” and “Utopalypse” are ongoing through Saturday, August 16, and digital catalogs are available to view on the William Turner Gallery website.

Jennifer Wolf holds a BA in Art History from UCLA and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design. A lifelong California resident, she has exhibited widely and has collaborated with William Turner Gallery since her first solo show in 2004.

Greg Miller (b. 1951) was born in Sacramento, California and holds a Master of Arts Degree from San Jose University. Once a long-time Venice, California resident, he currently resides in LA, CA & Austin, Texas. His work is featured in numerous museum and private collections, including those of: the San Jose Museum of Art, Newport Harbor Museum, Crocker Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, Riverside Art Museum,  Frederick R. Weisman Foundation and Charles Saatchi Foundation.  Greg Miller was the first exhibition at William Turner Gallery in 1991.  

MARK STEVEN GREENFIELD - RE/DEFINED - Opening at the IAAM, Charleston, SC on June 12, 2025

On Thursday, June 12th at 6 pm the International African American Museum, (Charleston, SC)  is hosting Blackness re/Defined | An Evening of Art & Conversation (IAAM Community) a special celebration marking the public opening of our newest special exhibition, re/Defined: Creative Expressions of Blackness from the Diaspora. 

This dynamic evening will explore the transformative role of Black artists and cultural producers in shaping identity, resisting systemic erasure, and redefining Blackness across generations and geographies. Through conversation and performance, the IAAM will examine how creative expression serves as both a reflection of lived experience and a powerful assertion of agency within the African Diaspora.

The evening will feature a live jazz performance, a curated dialogue between artists and scholars, and exclusive curator-led exhibition tours with Suzanne DiBella and Isabelle Britto. Curator-led tours will begin at 6:00 pm and 6:30 pm with the Music & Conversation Program beginning at 7:00 pm.

Mark Steven Greenfield, Dessalines, 2022, AcrlYic and Gold Leaf on Wood Panel, 20" X 16"

RE/DEFINED

14 Wharfside Street — Charleston, SC 29401
843-872-5352

SHINGO FRANCIS INTERVIEW - Fondation D'Entreprise HERMÉS

William Turner Gallery is pleased to share a recently released interview with Shingo Francis where he discusses his artwork, influences, and inspirations for the “Interference” exhibition at Maison Hermès Le Forum in 2023. Le Forum is an exhibition space housed in a glass-brick building designed by Renzo Piano. Flooded with natural light that forms an integral part of its identity, it is an oasis of contemplation inviting visitors to discover contemporary art in the heart of Tokyo’s dynamic Ginza neighbourhood. Directed by exhibition curator Reiko Setsuda, Le Forum offers an international programme bringing Japanese artists together with others from all over the world.

In addition to sharing Francis’ newly released interview with Foundation d’enterprise Hermès, William Turner Gallery is thrilled with Francis’ participation in the Japanese Pavilion at the Ōsaka Expo 2025.

Born in Santa Monica, California in 1969, Shingo Francis’ work explores the expansiveness of space and spirituality in painting. Francis has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Japan and internationally. His works are held in collections such as the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, Banco de España, the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, the Mori Art Collection, the Sezon Museum of Modern Art, the Oketa Collection, the Tokyo American Club, the Ueshima Collection, and Tiffany & Co.

INTERVIEW WITH SHINGO AT FONDATION D’ ENTREPRISE HERMÉS

TIME LAPSE OF THE INSTALLATION

Le Forum is an exhibition space housed in a glass-brick building designed by Renzo Piano. Flooded with natural light that forms an integral part of its identity, it is an oasis of contemplation inviting visitors to discover contemporary art in the heart of Tokyo’s dynamic Ginza neighbourhood. Directed by exhibition curator Reiko Setsuda, Le Forum offers an international programme bringing Japanese artists together with others from all over the world.

What is “interference”? Under this title, the first exhibition of 2023 invites the public to find answers through experience. Four artists explore our perceptions through the effects on the body of stimuli such as light, vibrations or soundwaves. Through stripped-back aesthetics, each of these artists highlights the subtle variations caused by the interferences to which our bodies are subjected in everyday life. Visitors are invited to contemplate the nature of perception through deeply felt sensations both physical and unconscious. The title, “Interference”, is borrowed from a series of paintings by artist Shingo Francis (b. 1969, United States): containing pigments that interfere with light, the colours of these canvases shift according to the viewer’s position. Nearby, an installation by Susanna Fritscher (b. 1960, Austria) immerses the viewer in a sensory experience of vibrations and pulsations beyond the frequencies that we are capable of hearing. Finally, Bruno Botella (b. 1976, France) presents pieces that stimulate our subconscious perception through tactile sensation, while Aiko Miyanaga (b. 1976, Japan) invites visitors to embark on a cosmic journey – the ultimate sensation, transcending time and space – through a tea ceremony shared online.