|
ADORNO
Group Exhibition
January 10–February 14, 2026
Amy Adler
Josh Callaghan
Victoria Fu
Ricardo Galvan
Adam Braly Janes
Christian Olid-Ramirez
Opening Reception Saturday 1/10 6–8pm
Oolong Gallery
6030 La Flecha Rancho Santa Fe CA 92067
Tuesday–Saturday 11–5pm appointments advised
Contact info@oolongallery.com for a Preview
Upcoming: Raul Guerrero & William Leavitt February 21
view this email if your browser
⸻–––––
The ADORNO group exhibition revisits the enduring question of artistic autonomy in an era saturated by images, circulation, and online spectacle. Drawing its title from the critical legacy of Theodor Adorno, the exhibition stages a contemporary inquiry into art that resists easy consumption—works that operate according to their own internal logics, slow down immediacy, demand presence and emphasize experimentation.
Adorno defended the autonomous artwork not as decorative indulgence (l’art pour l’art), but as a historically necessary stance against the flattening effects of mass culture. For him, rigor, technique, and formal discipline were not ornamental excesses but carriers of knowledge—ways for art to register social contradiction, historical pressure, and the possibility of freedom within an administered world. Autonomy, in this sense, was not an escape from reality but a form of resistance within it.
At the same time, the exhibition plays with a double entendre of ADORNO as adornment—particularly within the context of the group show, a format often dismissed as curatorial malaise, where works may appear to decorate one another in both intentional and unintentional ways. Here, ornament, aura, and display are treated not as superficial embellishments but as unstable sites of tension: between fetish and freedom, pleasure and critique, image and experience. Seen in person—rather than reproduced and scrolled past—the works in ADORNO reclaim a renewed auratic encounter and contextual grounding within the gallery space, one that cannot be reduced to documentation or feed-based consumption.
In contrast to Walter Benjamin, who located utopian promise in mechanical reproduction and new media, Adorno anticipated how such systems would be absorbed by capitalism’s logic of circulation and high-speed consumption. This exhibition does not attempt to resolve that disagreement; it inhabits it. The artists presented here lean into playful freedom, coded messaging, and formal experimentation, expanding what constitutes “fine” or “high” art today while reaffirming the necessity of autonomy for encountering art fully in a gallery or museum space.
As Adorno wrote, “The consistency in the pursuit of technical laws of the autonomous art changes this art and instead of rendering it into a taboo or fetish, brings it close to the state of freedom.” ADORNO at Oolong Gallery takes this claim seriously, proposing that even under conditions of unfreedom, art can still insist—quietly, rigorously, and mischievously—on the necessity of freedom itself.
Amy Adler
“Adler first came to prominence in the 1990s through a distinct process. She drew intricate representations from photographs, photographed these drawings, then destroyed the original sketches. Only photographic reproductions remained, directly challenging traditional boundaries between photography and drawing. Adler continues this exploration of painting and photography, reflecting on the historical moment when photography disrupted painting’s dominance in portraiture. Fast forward to today, her current work mixes classical painting techniques with contemporary digital practices, resulting in a compelling reflection on our obsession with smartphone selfies.”
— Tyler Stallings | click here for CV
Josh Callaghan
"Callaghan describes himself as a ‘Romantic Structuralist.’ His work is rooted in real world materials and images that are modified to unlock poetic and psychological potential. The ubiquitous, mass produced built environment that we all share, he states, is a field of mutual connection. These shared spaces eg.: consumer goods, corporate aesthetics, ubiquitous standardized materials like cinderblocks, are hegemonic totems that require dissection. By manipulating objects and images in these shared spaces, often with handicraft processes, his work is not intended to make sense of the world as much as open up the familiar / banal / understood surface to unexpected / gooey / human complexity." — Callaghan studio
“Callaghan’s sculptures uncover the relations between commodity and culture, creating humanistic forms out of consumer products. For Callaghan, quotidian objects are a kind of societal gauge; their forms are reflections of our common values and therefore, ourselves.”
— Sci-Arc | click here for CV
Victoria Fu
“Fu’s new series of glass artworks are at once sculptures, paintings, photographs, and prints. Reflecting her ongoing interest in the mediation of perception through technology, these works quote the visual qualities of LCD screens through material and figural representations of iridescence. By layering digitally-derived, lens- and scanner-based imagery onto painted glass and aluminum surfaces, light and color are constructed and refracted in physical ways to evoke—and to riff off of—the idiosyncratic and seductive apparatus of our engagement with the virtual world. The exhibition also includes a video on a monitor, filtered through a glass sculpture, blurring further the boundaries between screen and object. This body of work continues her exploration of how material processes and technological aesthetics intersect to challenge the viewer’s engagement with surface, depth, and temporality.”
— DOCUMENT Space | click here for CV
Ricardo Galvan
“Galvan works in a wide range of mediums; his work is invested in the region of Baja California. He deals with images of the landscape and culture in regard to perceptions of Mexican-Americans specifically those in Southern California. Pulling from both memory and research he creates images grounded in the playful.”
— Galvan Studio | click here for CV
Adam Braly Janes
“Interested foremost in drawing, Janes works primarily as a book maker, thinking about images in a sequential manner, the timing of one thing after another and the space that’s in between. His sculptural practice is influenced by his experience as a carpenter in the construction trade. Janes’ current work seeks a reduction of materials and palette. The drawings are made with pigmented wax on paper mounted on board. The sculptures are crudely painted wood sketches of minimal structures (a table, a ladder, a window or door). The installation is a flow of drawings and realized constructions attempting a nonspecific narrative, perhaps a poem. ‘I invite people to make their own connections between the objects. The work is in a provisional state, a sketch-like state — a semi-permanent existence that allows for change, bordering on the humorous. The intention is simple honesty.’ “
— Janes Studio | click here for CV
Christian Olid-Ramirez
Olid-Ramirez makes paintings and painted sculptures. The paintings are concerned with resolution and the organization and distribution of space. The sculptures engage with perspective and our movement through space. The artist categorizes these paintings as grids, nets and anomalies. The grids are preplanned, predetermined, totalitarian. There is little room for expression, only errors. The nets on the other hand are improvisational and in dialogue. They rely on accommodation, negotiation, and compromise, in contrast to the grid paintings where control, precision and subordination dominate. The anomalies attempt to escape from these present conditions.
The cartonería works refer to the traditional paper-mâché crafts found in Mexico. With their textured surfaces, these carton piedra forms echo relief sculpture, like that found in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican architectural sites. These sculptures are painted with vinyl Flashe and inspired by a myriad of sources including the architecture of Luis Barragán, the poetry of Octavio Paz and the vivid piñatas, alebrijes, paper dolls and other folk crafts of Mexico. The newest works include hybrids, bringing together the relief works with flat paintings.
— Olid-Ramirez studio (click here for CV)
––––––––––
Amy Adler works across the disciplines of drawing, performance, photography, and film. Her practice explores media and process considering subjects that exist between paradigms and identities. Born and raised in New York City, Amy is a graduate of LaGuardia High School of Music and Art. She attended Cooper Union and went on to receive her MFA in art practice from UCLA and an MFA in film production from USC School of Cinematic Arts. She has had multiple international and national gallery and museum exhibitions including solo projects at MOCA Los Angeles, the Aspen Art Museum, the UCLA Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Her drawings, films and photographs are included in permanent collections worldwide. Amy’s work is featured in multiple publications including Art and Queer Culture (Phaidon 2019). Her short films have screened at international film festivals including Frameline, Outfest, and BFI Flare. Amy Adler is a recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship and participant of the 2024 Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab.
Adler is Professor of Visual Art at UC San Diego where she has been teaching since 2004.
Josh Callaghan (b. 1969, Doylestown, PA) holds an MFA in New Genres from the University of California, Los Angeles and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of North Carolina Asheville and is a Fulbright Scholar (Nepal). He has had solo exhibitions at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Long Story Short, New York, NY; Harmony Murphy Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; among others. Group shows include Weather Report at the Aldrich Museum of Art, Ridgefield, CT, Special Relationships at the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; FALA COISA at Carpintaria by Fortes d’Aloia & Gabriel, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Arturo Bandini at Ballroom Marfa, TX. Public Art presentations by Callaghan include Social Block at Flatiron Plaza in New York City, as part of Armory Off-Site, 2021, and MAST, a collaboration with Daveed Kapoor at Current LA: Public Art Biennale, Los Angeles, 2016. His work has been written about in publications including Art & Object, Hyperallergic, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Interview Magazine, LA Weekly, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Callaghan lives and works in Los Angeles
Victoria Fu (b. Santa Monica, California, USA) is a visual artist who received her MFA from CalArts, MA in Art History/Museum Studies from University of Southern California, and BA from Stanford University. She attended the Whitney Independent Study Program and was in residence at Skowhegan. Fu has received grants from Art Matters, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Harpo Foundation, and is a Guggenheim Fellow. Her artwork is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA. Fu's art installations have been exhibited in solo presentations including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ; California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, CA; Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; Center for Ongoing Research & Projects (COR&P), Columbus, OH; The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD; University Art Gallery at UC Irvine, CA; among others. Group venues include the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA; 52nd and 53rd New York Film Festivals, New York, NY; IX Nicaragua Biennial, Managua, Nicaragua; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA. In 2017, she and Matt Rich began a collaborative studio practice, combining aesthetic sensibilities and working processes, which was awarded the San Diego Art Prize in 2018. Their collaborations have been exhibited at La Jolla Athenaeum, La Jolla, CA; Miller/ICA at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA; and in solo presentations at The Suburban, Milwaukee, WI; Angels Gate Cultural Center; San Pedro, CA; University Hall Gallery, UMass Boston, MA; Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA; Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. They are currently in production for an artwork commission by LA Metro for the new Purple Line.
Fu is Professor of Visual Arts at University of San Diego.
Ricardo Galvan (b.1987) lives and work in Chula Vista California. He holds a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and recently his MFA from Yale School of Art in Painting. He has participated in residencies at The Royal Drawing School in Scotland, The Keyholder Residency at Lower Eastside Printshop in New York City, and others. Galvan has shown Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, Spurs Gallery in Shanghai, and various others.
Adam Braly Janes is a Los Angeles based multi-discipline artist. Born in 1976 in Hurst, Texas, he was raised in Seattle, Washington. After arriving in Southern California, he worked as an artist assistant for Jason Rhodes, Richard Jackson, and Paul McCarthy. Adam’s first solo show in 2004 was with Thomas Solomon in Los Angeles. His handmade books were acquired by MOCA’s library and the museum acquired a large scroll drawing shortly thereafter. He continues to work with Galerie Vallois in Paris and has done projects at Tim Van Laere in Antwerp, Belgium, Blum and Poe in Los Angeles, and the historical China Art Objects in Chinatown. LACMA and the Jumex collection in Mexico City are other institutions that have collected drawings and sculptures.
Christian Olid-Ramirez (b. 1980, Pomona CA) is a first-generation Mexican-American artist born and raised in SanGabriel Valley, CA. ramirez completed his MFA at Michigan State University with honors as a distinguished University Enrichment Fellow in 2023. Prior to pursuing his MFA, ramirez worked regionally, nationally and internationally as an admissions counselor for over a decade, assisting artists and students through the development of their portfolios. In addition to exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions throughout California and nationally, ramirez was the founder and director of Basement Projects (2016-2020), an arts project space in Downtown Santa Ana, CA. he is currently an instructor at local colleges and art institutions.
|
