Jeff Soto's Blog

Took a trip with my friend Regino Gonzales to Los Angeles for some art gallery viewing. Regino (or RG to many) is an accomplished tattoo artist and painter from New York. I know him from when he used to live in the Inland Empire, we took art classes together at community college and then he transferred off to SVA in NY. He’s been making a name for himself there ever since. I think I already said all this in a previous post but ah well, too lazy to check. RG is badass. Here’s some of his work:



He was out here to visit friends and family, tattoo some clients and check out Corey Helford Gallery where he will be showing in May.

First we stopped at BLK/MRKT to find Ben Tour setting up for his opening.....



Kinsey’s office with a Mark Jenkins sculpture of Kinsey. Mark is one of my new favorite street artists.

He sat Kinsey down and made a “mold” of his body out of tape, then used Kinsey’s own clothing to finish the piece. It’s sorta creepy, the faceless ghost of Kinsey sitting across the desk from the real.

Here is a new work by Kinsey.


Gregory Euclid painting...

David Ellis painting (he also has this month’s Juxtapoz cover. Congrats!)....

After talking to the staff at Corey Helford, RG and I drove around the corner (cause “nobody walks in L.A.”) to see the Josh Keyes show at George Billis Gallery.


A Clare Rojas mural greeted us on the front.

I have been following Josh’s work for a while now and this was the first time seeing it in person. I feel that though our work is different stylistically, Josh and I are saying somewhat the same thing. The show was really nice and so was the gallery staff. There was one unsold piece and I almost went for it but didn’t. I’ll probably be regretting that decision. Heres some images....




Then we headed up to Pasadena to see the Irving Norman (1939-1989) exhibit. The show is at the Pasadena Museum of Art which has the garage (free parking!) painted up by old school graffitist Kenny Scharf. Every business should hire artists to beautify boring mundane parking garages....




The Norman show was mind boggling, I highly recommend it to anyone interested in painting, politics, or socialism. This guy’s paintings are amazingly detailed and dense, there is so much to look at and it really makes you ponder what was going on in his mind. It also made RG and feel like very lazy artists. Norman’s work is on such a grand scale, well, it has to be seen in person and then it’s still hard to take in. Unfortunately no photography was allowed. These paintings are giant and jpegs don’t do them justice at all, but here’s some images from the web...





Here is the book available at the gift shop.


Nice spring days here in California. Some amazing clouds the other day.