Official Welcome, an art gallery and consulting office, opens to the public with California Split: June Edmonds, Jay Lynn Gomez, Henry Taylor, José Guadalupe Sanchez III, Barbara T. Smith, and Diane Briones Williams on May 30, 2025 from 6 – 8 pm. Following the opening the gallery will have normal business hours Thursday through Saturday from 12pm – 6pm and also be open by appointment.
California Split is a highly subjective dive into representations of the body in Southern California art from 1974 to now—with big gaps in between and no claim to a comprehensive argument. The gambit is going all in on the consciousness-shifting potential of art’s phenomenological nature. The feeling I (and hopefully we) keep chasing goes beyond aesthetic pleasure (though pleasure matters), beyond sensory or intellectual challenge (though tension—even distaste—is essential), and beyond material novelty or the thrill of concept braided perfectly with material (though that satisfaction is vital). The feeling is about being permeated, shifted—your metaphorical lens prescription changed—so that you not only see the work, but see the world differently. If the outcome is simply that a viewer learns to pay closer attention, ask better questions, or question their assumptions, then the work has done something meaningful. Learning how to see—and staying open to new ways of seeing—can only improve how we move through the world. The artists included in the exhibition are all expert practitioners of making the power of looking and being seen explicit.
