Opening Tonight at William Turner Gallery - Greg Miller: True Romance & Jennifer Wolf: Utopalypse

William Turner Gallery is pleased to present True Romance, a solo exhibition by Greg Miller. Celebrated for his visually arresting and conceptually layered collages, Greg Miller continues his decades-long excavation of American mass media, memory, and myth-making. In this newest body of work, True Romance, Miller revisits the imagery that has long defined his practice—pulp fiction, billboard advertisements, vintage comics, magazine spreads, and Hollywood’s golden illusions—reassembling these cultural fragments into densely layered vignettes that are both nostalgic and interrogative.

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: TRUE ROMANCE

JUNE 21 - AUGUST 16, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 21, 2025

William Turner Gallery is pleased to announce Utopalypse, a solo exhibition of new works by Jennifer Wolf. Utopalypse merges two seemingly opposing forces: utopia, the ideal or perfect place, and apocalypse, a moment of revelation often associated with collapse or ending. This fusion forms the conceptual core of Jennifer Wolf’s new exhibition, where the aspiration for beauty, harmony, and renewal exists alongside a deep awareness of fragility, decay, and transformation.

The works in this series live within this tension. Created with natural dyes on silk, the materials themselves embody this duality. The pigments, once used in some of the world’s earliest and most enduring artworks, carry a deep material history—rooted in ritual, craft, and reverence for the natural world. The silk, luxurious yet delicate, becomes a vessel not just for color, but for memory—shimmering with echoes of both ancient practices and personal exploration.

The process resists total control, giving space for accidents, bleeding edges, and organic movement. In this way, the paintings mirror larger ecological and emotional truths: that what is most beautiful is often also most vulnerable. The work asks us to consider what we preserve, what we inherit, and how we carry forward the traditions of making and meaning in an increasingly unstable world.

Utopalypse doesn’t ask us to choose between hope and loss. Instead, it suggests that both exist simultaneously. In an era of synthetic saturation and environmental detachment, Utopalypse is both a reflection and a rupture: a dreamscape touched by the apocalypse of disconnection, and a gentle reclamation of the primal relationship between art, earth, and the human hand. The utopian impulse—toward wholeness, toward peace— is not extinguished by the awareness of collapse, it’s deepened by it. These works invite the viewer to feel that complexity: a moment of beauty caught in the act of becoming something else.

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.

JENNIFER WOLF: UTOPALYPSE

JUNE 21 - AUGUST 16, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 21, 2025

EXPO 2025 - JAPAN PAVILION - A Creator’s Vision - Artist Shingo Francis

Fleeting Colors in Transition and a Circle Symbolizing Circulation

I believe my decision to become a painter was greatly influenced by my parents and my early environment. My father is American, my mother is Japanese, and I lived in Japan until I was 12 before moving to the United States to live with my father. My father was an abstract painter, and my mother was a video artist. Many of their friends were also artists, and they would often gather at our home or in studios, passionately discussing their works and creative processes. Interestingly, my first interest in artistic expression wasn’t painting — it was words. While browsing my father’s bookshelf filled with poetry collections, I became inspired to write my own poems and essays. By the time I was about 15, I discovered William Blake, the English poet and painter, which encouraged me to start adding illustrations to my poetry. Whenever I returned to Japan, my mother would take me to galleries in Tokyo. I remember being amazed by the diverse range of artistic expression — intriguing objects, sound installations, and more — which opened my eyes to the fascinating and expansive world of art.

At university, I studied traditional techniques like croquis, but I soon realized that faithfully reproducing what I saw in front of me wasn’t my strength. Instead, I became more focused on expressing what I felt in my heart. One of the turning points in my life came when I studied abroad in Florence. During that time, I had the opportunity to interact with Joan Mitchell, a friend of my father and an abstract expressionist artist. Upon seeing my work, she immediately urged me to “invent your own way of painting.” Her words were a wake-up call — lines, colors, shapes, depth, techniques, and processes should all be uniquely mine; no one else could express what I wanted to create. That encounter made me seriously reflect on how to translate my inner visions into paintings. Through much exploration, I eventually arrived at the layering technique that I still use today. By building up layers, light, shadow, and depth emerge naturally, revealing a sense of presence. This approach reflects my fascination with the fleeting beauty of light within darkness, much like the world depicted in Junichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows. It’s this delicate balance — the interplay of light and shadow — that continues to inspire my work.

I was deeply shocked when I heard a curator say they made all their curation decisions solely through social media, without ever seeing the actual artworks. To me, art is something you must experience with your own eyes — it’s only through that direct encounter that emotions are stirred and a dialogue with the work begins. Sharing space with an artwork and observing it firsthand carries profound meaning. Reflecting on this idea led me to create this series. In these paintings, the colors shift depending on the viewer’s position and the angle of the light, much like a butterfly’s wings or the iridescent patterns of a jewel beetle. The pigments, which include mica, reflect light in a way that alters the visual tone. One of the key themes of this series is the awareness of one’s own physical presence — an invitation to reconnect with the act of seeing through the senses.

When creating abstract paintings, I make a conscious effort to focus on my own awareness. Being fully present in the “here and now” is incredibly challenging, yet I find constant inspiration in Zen philosophy. One particularly memorable experience was a Zen training session I attended at Tōfuku-ji Temple in Kyoto when I was 17. For about ten days, we practiced meditation from early morning until night, sitting in zazen and focusing solely on our breathing. At first, I struggled to concentrate — my mind kept racing with thoughts and memories, like a mental carousel spinning endlessly. The frustration was intense, but by the fifth or sixth day, my chaotic thoughts gradually began to settle. Then, about a week in… it happened — just for a brief moment. Everything before me — the stones and trees in the garden, the monk sitting beside me, and even myself — seemed to merge into one. It was an indescribable sensation, as if I had transcended my physical senses. That fleeting moment of connection has stayed with me ever since.

Throughout my artistic journey, I’ve explored various themes, but it was around 2021 — when I moved to Kamakura — that the circle became a central motif in my work. I see the circle as the simplest yet most powerful symbol of cycles — the endless loop of life and death, the changing of seasons, and the flow of time itself. Kamakura has a remarkably slow pace of life, surrounded by rich nature. Compared to Los Angeles, where I used to live — a place with little sense of seasonal change — I now feel much more attuned to the rhythms of nature and the passage of time. The abundance of temples and shrines here has also been a source of inspiration for my work. On a side note, I recently learned about Ensō, a Zen painting by Sengai Gibon, a monk and artist from the Edo period. In his famous work ○△□, some interpret the circle as symbolizing “nature,” the square as “humanity,” and the triangle as “the universe.” I find that perspective fascinating — another beautiful reflection of interconnected cycles.

Born in Santa Monica, California in 1969, Shingo Francis is an artist based in Los Angeles and Kamakura. His work explores the expansiveness of space and spirituality in painting. Francis has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Japan and internationally, including at the DIC Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art (2012), the Durst Organization (2013), the Sezon Museum of Modern Art (2018), the Martin Museum of Art (2019), Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum (2023), and the Chigasaki City Museum of Art (2024). 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.

CASPER BRINDLE: NUMINA DIGITAL CATALOG IS NOW AVAILABLE

Santa Monica, CA - William Turner Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition catalog for Numina, Casper Brindle’s first solo exhibition at the gallery in four years. In the interim, Brindle has had numerous national and international exhibitions, including an extensive exhibition in 2022 at The Luckman Gallery, Cal State LA. Numina will run from January 25 - March 22, 2025.

Numina, presents two bodies of work, Light Glyphs and Veils, each of which involve dramatic investigations into light, color and the fluid, ever shifting nature of perception.  The exhibition ranges from painting to sculpture, and exemplifies Brindle’s restless experimentation and evolving modes of expression. The works are poetic, sensual and spatially dynamic. Utilizing automotive paints and pigmented acrylic, Brindle has created works that reflect and diffuse light in ways that are nuanced and engaging. 

A printed copy of the book will be available in either soft cover or in a limited edition hard cover. For information regarding obtaining a printed copy of the book please contact us via email.

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation & William Turner Gallery Present A Frieze Weekend Celebration

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation & William Turner Gallery look forward to your joining us for a special evening celebrating Frieze Art Fair and Casper’s Brindle’s stunning solo exhibition, Numina, with cocktails, music & hors d’oeuvres, Friday, February 21, 2025, 5:30 - 7:30 PM at William Turner Gallery. 

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation is renowned for their exceptional collection and preservation of art by some of the 20th Century’s most beloved artists. Currently, under the direction of Billie Milam Weisman, the Foundation continues to make the collection available through loans to museums worldwide, docent tours at the Los Angeles estate, exhibitions in public-art venues, and the funding of several art museums.

Kindly RSVP Here

LIGHT MATTER Closing This Saturday - PHENOMENA Phase Two of PST Opens November 16

Phenomena features a range of work, from representational depictions to abstract expressions,  celebrating the power and visual splendor of the natural world as a resource for creative expression and investigation. For centuries, artists have pictorially documented their observational studies of natural phenomena and the world around us. Manuscripts such as Natural History (77 CE) by Pliny the Elder and The Book of Miracles (1552), chronicled divine wonders and horrors in illustrations, often serving as warnings of the consequences of human deeds upon their environment and the mysteries of the natural world. Utilizing these extraordinary codexes as a genesis for Phenomena, the exhibition explores related themes.

In the 16th century, “cabinets of curiosities” or “wonder rooms” in Europe served as spaces to showcase collections curated for the artistic and scientific interests of their patrons and served as precursors to museums. With missions to both amuse and enlighten, “cabinets of curiosities” functioned as sources for entertainment and educational resources, thus intersecting art and science. In the late 19th century, scientific inquiry shifted from museums to university laboratories bifurcating the two discourses. Phenomena merges the two disciplines as they once had been integrated in the cabinets of curiosities.

Artists in Phenomena: Charles Arnoldi, Natalie Arnoldi, Ryland Arnoldi, Kelsey Brookes, Alex Couwenberg, Franco Defrancesca, Lawrence Gipe, David Lloyd, Ed Moses, Jeff Overlie, Melanie Pullen, Jennifer Wolf

HYPERALLERGIC Names Mark Steven Greenfield a top 10 show to see in October

Mark Steven Greenfield, “Saartjie Baartman” (2020), gold leaf and acrylic on wood panel, 24 x 24 inches (~61 x 61 cm) (photo by Rob Brander, courtesy William Turner Gallery)

Auras features two bodies of paintings by Mark Steven Greenfield — Black Madonna (2020) and HALO (2022) — that reconsider the breadth of the Black experience in the Americas by excavating and reframing contested histories. HALO comprises portraits of influential Black figures, from the revered to the lesser-known, including Haitian Revolution leader Toussaint Louverture, famed magician Black Herman, and silhouette artist Moses Williams — formerly enslaved by Charles Willson Peale — portrayed as saintly icons surrounded by gold leaf. Black Madonna depicts a beatific ebony Madonna and child, while Ku Klux Klan members and monuments to white supremacy are vanquished and toppled in the background.

LIGHT MATTER - PST ART: ART & SCIENCE COLLIDE - Exhibition Catalog Now Available

William Turner Gallery is pleased to present Light Matter, the first of two exhibitions, in partnership with the Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, which explore the intersections and influences between art and science.

Light Matter showcases the influences of scientific research on artistic process and intention, and builds on a collaborative experiment that began with LACMA’s innovative Art & Technology program, a collaboration between artists and industry that ran from the late 60s to early 70s.  As part of this initiative, Robert Irwin and James Turrell collaborated with NASA scientist and psychologist Ed Wortz at the Garrett Corporation. Together they developed a series of art and science-based investigations into the dynamics of perception, with a special emphasis on sensory deprivation. This intrigued Irwin and Turrell, who began to notice that perceptions were heightened after sessions in sensory deprivation tanks. Perhaps, they reasoned, the purpose of the work of art wasn’t as much about the work, as it was about the experience of perceiving the work.  Enter Light & Space in Southern California, where the emphasis shifted from looking at art as “object”, to art as “experience”.

Artists in Light Matter continue to expand on this notion, experimenting with the possibilities of their materials, often through scientific research and innovation, to achieve heightened visual effects that engage the viewer in the wonder of the phenomenology of perception. They utilize materials and approaches that  inspire the viewer to reflect - not only on “what” they are perceiving, but “how”. Many of the pieces require the viewer to interact with the works in unexpected ways - either by encouraging unusually active movement around, or stillness before, their works. The act of viewing engages the senses and heightens our sense of perception.

Light Matter includes work by Dawn Arrowsmith, Larry Bell, Casper Brindle, Shingo Francis, Jimi Gleason, Eric Johnson, Jay Mark Johnson, Peter Lodato, Andy Moses, and Roland Reiss.

PETER LODATO: DIAMONDS/DIVISIONS/VOIDS - Exhibition Catalog Now Available

Santa Monica, CA - William Turner Gallery is pleased to present, solo exhibition of exceptional new works by Peter Lodato, opening  January 13th, 2024. 

Peter Lodato’s (b. 1946) artistic journey reflects an evolution, from immersive light installations, to captivating paintings that explore the complexities of human perception over the course of his six decade-long career. In addition, Lodato would himself influence a number of artists, teaching Art History at Art Center in Pasadena, and University of California Irvine with notable students such as James Turrell and Chris Burden.

His initial foray into art consisted of environmental light installations,  characteristic of the West Coast's Light and Space movement in the 1960’s, which sought to transform physical spaces into immersive experiences for viewers. He credits the Roman Pantheon’s oculus for his interest in interpreting his experience. This body of work led to his inclusion in the 1981 Whitney Biennial.

As Lodato transitioned back to painting, he carried forward his fascination with perception, creating works that initially appear as austere, geometric abstractions but upon closer inspection, reveal layers, brushstrokes, and vibrant colors that play with space and depth. The dichotomy of vision—its capacity to both reveal and conceal—serves as a thematic cornerstone in Lodato's artistry. His reductive compositions, often featuring divided forms and bold colors, engage viewers in a visual dialogue between simplicity and complexity. Inspired by the Abstract Expressionist’s Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, Lodato's use of vertical bands of color draws viewers into the canvas, inviting them to experience the artwork both physically and transcendentally. Hard edges feather out into diaphanous atmospheric vapors, creating luminous, Color-field suspensions floating on a colored ground– the formal consequences appear to both recede and project, dematerializing the art object and simultaneously constructing a void of flat, hard-edge, matted pigment. The artists hand is evident in the textural materialization of paint executed with an expert hand. In reasserting the picture plane in favor of the flat form, the abstractions are not in fact “subjectless”, regardless of their  reductive nature, they are intended to elicit a deep emotional response and expose the paradoxical nature of human perception.   

Informed in part by Eastern philosophy, Lodato’s palette observes the color schema assigned to the various corporeal chakras and their corresponding color assignments. Red for example symbolizes the root chakra at the base of the spine, characterizing strength and vitality, whilst white on the other end of the spectrum, illustrates the crowning light of spiritual wisdom.    

Lodato holds a Graduate degree from California State University. His artistic contributions have been recognized through a solo retrospective curated by the Frederick Weisman Foundation (2000), and exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as PS1 in New York City (1978), Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial (1981), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His works grace esteemed collections in various public and private institutions, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. This extensive presence in renowned collections underscores the impact and significance of Lodato's artistic vision within the realm of contemporary art. He lives and works in Venice, California.

Opening Tomorrow, Saturday, January 13 from 5-8PM - Peter Lodato: Diamonds/Divisions/Voids & Koji Takei: Intertwined

Vermillion Green & White, 2023, oil on canvas, 96” x 84”

PETER LODATO

Lodato holds a Graduate degree from California State University. His artistic contributions have been recognized through a solo retrospective curated by the Frederick Weisman Foundation (2000), and exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as PS1 in New York City (1978), Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial (1981), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His works grace esteemed collections in various public and private institutions, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. This extensive presence in renowned collections underscores the impact and significance of Lodato's artistic vision within the realm of contemporary art. He lives and works in Venice, California.    

Cello, wood, stains & varnish on metal stand, 53” x 14” x 7”

Through his background in photography and graphic design, Takei first began piecemealing his disparate photographs (pre-Photoshop) and constructing them into sculptures to be photographed. This in turn, led to Takei becoming a sculptor.

Drawing from the discourse of Picasso, Braque and the Surrealists, Takei’s sculptures reference, yet expand upon these oeuvres in a playful syncretism of the two. His work transcends the cacophony often associated with Cubism, offering a vocabulary suffused with irony. that engages in the contemplation of diverging vantage-points in-the-round. The minimal yet commanding presence of his pieces draws parallel to the interlocking sculptures of the late Isamu Noguchi, echoing a profound artistic resonance. Through Intertwined, Koji Takei continues to redefine the boundaries of Cubism. As much as Takei’s pieces are Cubist in nature there is also an unmistakable Asian influence in the working method of the Japanese native.

As a Japanese-American residing in Los Angeles, Takei's influence extends far beyond his innovative work. He has taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California; Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles, and is currently a faculty member at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and Academy of Art University in San Francisco. This underscores his commitment to shaping the next generation of artistic visionaries.