Juxtapoz Magazine – Manuel López Brings Los Angeles to NYC for the Armory Show

We are gearing up for a week of openings in NYC to kick-off the fall season, The Armory Show is sort of the epicenter of all things… fall. Charlie James Gallery from Los Angeles will be presenting new works by Los Angeles-based painter Manuel López at the 2024 edition of The Armory Show, one of the artists we are excited to see outside of the Southland and into the Northeastland. 

From the gallery: The centerpiece of this presentation is the large, bustling painting El Sereno Landscape (The Place of the Flowers). The viewer is led into the composition by two towering, beautifully rendered cypress trees. These frame a vibrant working-class neighborhood, with the ever-present Los Angeles tire shop nestled beside colorful homes and apartments. Peering over the landscape is a small ranch house in the distant hills – a nod to the city’s more agricultural past, but also to its ever-changing future: a U-Haul truck ferries in the city’s newest resident, perhaps. Amid this cycle of constant renewal and displacement, López pays homage to the working class community – those who fix up old cars, care for old houses, and remember the old days. Yet the composition contains no figures, as in early photographs of bustling street scenes whose figures moved too fast for the technology to capture – the image of the figure is lost, but their energy remains.