KELLEY JOHNSON: Elusive Spaces

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to present, Kelley Johnson: Elusive Spaces, a solo exhibition by the Los Angeles-based artist featuring abstract paintings that evoke memory, light, and atmosphere. The exhibition runs June 14 through July 19, 2025, with an opening reception on Saturday, June 14 from 4–7 p.m.

Kelley Johnson: Elusive Spaces presents a new body of work that exists in a shifting space between abstraction, landscape, and dreamscape. Built layer by layer, each painting acts as a visual history—an accumulation of gesture, memory, mood, and time, driven by an intuitive process that allows emotion and memory to shape the composition. Johnson’s paintings are deeply process-driven. Each piece begins with repetitive linear marks—grids, lines, and textures—that are gradually disrupted by gestural responses and intuitive decisions. “My paintings are built moment by moment, thought by thought,” Johnson explains. “Each layer responds to what came before, leaving traces of decisions and hesitations visible on the surface.”

Influenced by Color Field painting, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and Hard-Edge Abstraction, Johnson pushes the boundaries of paint to create experiential works. Through the use of geometric patterns, organic and hard-edge grids, vibrant color palettes, and materials like glitter, flashe paint, and burlap, Kelley’s mixed media paintings open and close with the viewer’s position. Surfaces shift between matte and glossy, hard-edge and blurred with a dynamic push and pull that creates optical depth and breathable space for visual meditation.

“I’m drawn to light, space, time, and atmosphere,” Johnson says. “Sometimes a painting is a flicker of memory or a passing impression from the day. It can be specific, but I want it to remain open enough for viewers to bring their own experience. It can be a mood, a temperature, a sense of weather. A visual atmosphere that lives just outside the edge of language.” The paintings in Elusive Spaces invite viewers into liminal spaces—between walking and dreaming, memory and presence—where time slips and emotion lingers— holding space for feeling. In each work the artist’s love for what he deems as the “magic of painting” is palpable —an elusive experience to be felt as much as seen.