The owners of Royale Projects Contemporary Art, husband and wife duo Rick Royale & Paige Moss, celebrate their recent return to the Downtown LA Arts District by introducing the Los Angeles audience to the gallery’s stable of artists and the new 6,500 square foot location on Saturday, January 30th, with a group exhibition titled “Hello, my name is…Los Angeles”. The opening reception is free to the public from 4:00-7:30 p.m. featuring nine artists including Jane Callister, Kenneth Capps, Alejandro Diaz, Gustavo Godoy, Karen Lofgren, Ken Lum, Kristin McIver, David Allan Peters and Phillip K Smith III. Many of the artists will be in attendance during this special evening and valet parking will be available.

With over 20 years of experience in the Los Angeles art, film and music industries, Royale + Moss see the L.A. gallery as a vibrant reconnection to their roots and a chance to re-introduce the city to its artists. The gallery has carved a niche for itself by often working with artists either based in Southern California or those who channel practices shaped around West Coast artistic dialogues. For example, Canadian artist Ken Lum hails from Vancouver, yet his 30+ year post-conceptual oeuvre, described by art journalist Shana Nys Dambrot as encompassing everything from “color field abstraction to the sampling of industrial materials and commercial semantics, to identity politics and pop culture ironies, to lavishing high-end production value on low-end subject matter” highly resonates with a particularly Los Angeles-minded set of aesthetics. In similar fashion, the New York-based San Antonio artist Alejandro Diaz is known for employing humor and low-brow tactics to reflect on high-brow art, status and culture with exuberant nods toward advertising and pop—a decidedly L.A.-driven milieu. Royale Projects also produced the glowing, mirrored homestead “Lucid Stead” installation in Joshua Tree with desert artist Phillip K Smith III in order to catalyze his career in L.A. and beyond, garnering comparisons to other renowned artists who belong to the California Light and Space movement.

By contrast, Royale Projects has also cultivated many L.A-based artists’ careers in new ways by producing special projects and reaching fresh audiences outside of Los Angeles in the California High Desert. The gallery collaborated with artist Andrea Zittel’s High Desert Test Sites to produce multi-media artist Karen Lofgren’s permanent installation and artist book “Trajectory Object c. 2000 – 2050”. As well, a monumental sculpture by artist Gustavo Godoy, organized in conjunction with The Ranch Projects in Morongo Valley, led way for the artist’s project in the City of West Hollywood.

The upcoming “Hello, my name is…Los Angeles” exhibition provides a re-energized platform for the LA art scene to see these artists anew. “With this exciting selection of works, we will raise awareness levels for our artists who call themselves Angelinos and for all of our artists whose work carries a special torch for the unique energy and vitality of this city,” explained Royale Projects owner Rick Royale.

Gallery visitors will be able to enjoy an array of current and historical work by the featured artists. Highlights include painter Jane Callister’s references to pop art and expressionism on canvases melding thought and method by reinvigorating her interest in the gestural brushstroke. Kenneth Capps explores the abstract and minimal in steel to test classical ideals of balance verses proportion, mass versus void, as well as investigate nature and the industry of man. Alejandro Diaz brings the ersatz to the father of Modernism with his “Glitter Pollock,” and elegantly pokes fun at the classic midcentury color field painting with a golden canvas covered in turmeric. Gustavo Godoy’s concrete sculptures echo architectural ruins of civilizations past while Karen Lofgren’s interlocking brass poles dominate the dance of the “Celestial Pigsty”, taking its name from a constellation of Chinese astronomy. Ken Lum’s color blocking paired with text marries geometric abstraction with psychology and advertising. Kristin McIver’s “Data Portraits” offer deceptively cheery pastel grids alluding to the darker side of social media’s manipulation of technology with the digital mapping of identities. David Allan Peters continues to experiment with process by saving his residual chips and flakes from carved paintings and adding them to slick, twinkling resin works that have a hint of a floating cosmos. Phillip K Smith III reconfigures the original four windows and doorway from his renowned Joshua Tree cabin structure “Lucid Stead” and creates an entirely new experiential installation of reflective color and light