Edge City

Paintings by Jesse Vogel

Sept 27 - Oct 5, 2025

Opening reception Saturday Sept 27

6-9pm

Keystone Gallery is pleased to present Jesse Vogel’s latest exhibition of paintings. ‘Edge City’ opens to the public September 27th and is on view in the gallery through October 5th 2025.

Jesse Vogel investigates the edges of Los Angeles seeking, witnessing and capturing moments in the lives of subcultures strewn across the city. Each image is a memory, some developed and new; others, faded and aged with time. Fireworks - new, immediate and fresh feels like it was painted the moment they lit up the sky. The Park shows visitors slowly blurring as they walk, and feels like a memory from some years ago. The Welders are a memory bleached and faded. Its time so far in the past, it’s become an abstraction - a flash of a memory.

Vogel not only elevates seemingly normal moments to ones imbued with beauty. He shows the viewer the ephemeral nature of our shared moments, and the fleeting nature of our lives’ experience. Dramatic light sources break up the shadows in obscure natural settings while figures are rendered as esoteric cultural groups or contemporary secular micro icons.

Vogel’s tenure as a craftsperson in the motion picture industry has not only influenced his painting technique, but has also seeped into the cinematic framing of urban-adjacent subject matter. The title of the show, Edge City, was inspired by a scene from the famous LA cult classic, Repo Man - a film that used lesser-known Los Angeles locations within the city as an unflinchingly dystopian and starkly beautiful backdrop.

In aggregate the works are an homage to the cultural activities taking place on the edges of Southern California. Subcultures. Gatherings. Dramatic everyday escapes. Events on the edges of city, and on the fringes of the chaparral. The edge of the desert and the ocean. They explore and depict the city’s ability to change all the time while somehow essentially staying the same.