Raffi Kalenderian: Call The Curtain / Raise The Roof / Spirits On Tonight

About

Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to announce its second solo exhibition of new paintings by Raffi Kalenderian. CALL THE CURTAIN/RAISE THE ROOF/SPIRITS ON TONIGHT is on view 8 June through 22 July 2023 at 515 West 22nd Street. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Barbara A. MacAdam. 

Raffi Kalenderian seamlessly interweaves art historical influences and popular culture references with an autobiographical thread. The portraits on view are more than painterly odes to the artist’s friends and family; their visual contexts—patterned wall coverings, weathered wooden floorboards, radiant beams of light—command just as much attention as the subjects themselves. With this exhibition, Kalenderian takes his painting to a new dimension, where an insistent sense of dark cheerfulness, melancholy, mystery, punk music, poetry, and romance prevails throughout. 

“Raffi Kalenderian can wrap the nineteenth and twentieth centuries neatly into the twenty-first,” writes Barbara A. MacAdam, “Once we begin engaging with his paintings, we find ourselves incidentally connecting them with so much else around us, visual and verbal.” 

The work in this exhibition conjures intense and varied emotions, inviting the viewer to associate freely and embrace dissonance. That is what excites Kalenderian about music, art, movies, jokes, etc. He says, “I love when something hits this discord, like throwing a wrench in a piano.”

Raffi Kalenderian (b. 1981, Los Angeles, CA) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, CA, and completed residencies at St. Barthélemy, French West Indies, and the Idyllwild Arts Academy, Idyllwild, CA. 

Kalenderian has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich, Switzerland; Vielmetter Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; Nassima Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv, Israel; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany; Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy; Marc Jancou Fine Art, New York, NY; Medium, St. Barthélemy, French West Indies; and Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles, CA. 

He has been included in recent group exhibitions at ABR Contemporary, Miami Beach, FL; Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich, Switzerland; Vielmetter Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; BB&M Gallery, Seoul, South Korea; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; Tif Sigfrids, Comer, GA; McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Setareh Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany; Lundgren Gallery, Palma de Mallorca, Spain; Galerie Lefebvre & Fils, Paris, France; and the Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom. 

His work may be found in the collections of the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach, CA; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA. 

The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.