Raid Projects is pleased to present New Empire, a group exhibition featuring work by Mark Batongmalaque, Ryan Perez, Conrad Ruiz, Kristofferson San Pablo, Emilio Santoyo and Ashkahn Shahparnia on view from August 13 – 19.
Opening reception: August 14th, 6 – 10pm
Spanning across a broad range of media, from painting to installation, New Empire draws from the idioms of hyped popular culture, to create works that are both visually ecstatic and politically engaged. Eschewing the cliché of teenage rebellion, the assembled works explore the vast indeterminate space of summertime leisure, exploring its iconography, fantasies, and socio-economic formations. Along with themes of listlessness and recklessness, the artists also scrutinize questions of class, masculinity and privilege, key issues that shape the de-centralized sprawl of the Los Angeles area.
The collected works range from the photo based abstractions of Ryan Perez to Conrad Ruiz’s large scale water color paintings inspired by Hollywood disaster movies and video games, as well as a site specific-sculptural installation by Ashkahn Shahparnia.
This is the third exhibition from the Boys of Summer, a Los Angeles based collective of artists mining the ongoing currency of media culture.
