Summer 25

June 28 – August 16, 2025

Opening Saturday, June 28, 5-8 pm

Jesse Benson

Olivia Gibian

Andrés Janacua

Kyle Knodell

Natalie Lerner

Ruhee Maknojia

Tucker Neel

Pau S. Pescador

Maddy Peters

Carolyn Lockhart Schoerner

Joshua Smith

Yunghun Yoo

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Summer 25 is the gallery’s second annual group exhibition, gathering artists represented by 839 alongside invited collaborators and friends. The show isn’t shaped by a fixed theme, evolving instead out of ongoing conversations, growing community, and the rhythms of the artists’ own practices. Presented in the shadow of escalating authoritarian violence, from Los Angeles to Palestine, we continue to believe in progressive expression and the reimagining of public space.
 

Jesse Benson (b. 1978, Orange, California) lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design and a BFA from California State University Long Beach. Selected solo exhibitions include Organizer at as-is.la, You Are Someone I Can Tell My Secrets To at LOCKER, John Marshall High School, Miracle Grow at Michael Benevento, and Jesse Benson at Michael Benevento (all Los Angeles). Recent group exhibitions include Gene’s Dispensary / Leroy’s Happy Place (Los Angeles), Weatherproof (Chicago), ASHES/ASHES (New York), and Night Gallery (Los Angeles).
 

Olivia Gibian (b. 1988, Selma, Alabama) is an artist living in Los Angeles. She received her BFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2011. 839 presented her exhibition Selected Ambient Works in Los Angeles in the fall of 2024. She has exhibited at Utopia (Kingston, NY), Other Places art fair (OPaf, San Pedro), Treasure Town (Brooklyn), William King Museum of Art (Abingdon, VA), and the VCU FAB Gallery (Richmond, VA). She has also designed costumes and sets for dance, theatre, and video. In addition to her primary focus on painting, she enjoys making clothing, ceramics, and textile objects. She also works as a floral designer.
 

Andrés Janacua (b. 1982, possibly Los Angeles). P’Urhépecha. Received a BFA from the University of Southern California and an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. He was an artist in residence at MFAH CORE (Houston), Queens Museum (New York), SOMA (Mexico City), and more. He has exhibited at Rio Hondo Art Gallery (Whittier, CA), CSUN Art Galleries (Northridge, CA), Charlie James Gallery (Los Angeles), Elephant Art Space (Los Angeles), Shelter in Place (Boston, MA), Vitrine (Albuquerque, NM), and Commonwealth and Council (Los Angeles). His solo exhibition with 839, My Dad Drips, was on view in the fall of 2024. He currently resides in Los Angeles, and works at times in Chilchota, Michoacán.
 

Kyle Knodell (b. 1984, Indianapolis) is a fine art and commercial photographer living in New York and Berlin. Photographing both personal and public spaces, his work is a search for an alignment of light, form, and feeling within his surroundings. He seeks to capture the often-overlooked everyday objects that populate our built and natural environments, imbuing them with a sense of reverence and beauty. He has exhibited in various group shows In New York and has had a solo show at the Public Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden. He received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2008. His first solo exhibition is scheduled for April 2026.
 

Natalie Lerner (b. 1992, Sarasota, Florida) lives and works in Brooklyn. Lerner received her BFA from Ringling College of Art & Design in 2014. She attended the AICAD/NY Independent Study Program in 2013 and the Orein Arts Residency in late Summer of 2023. She has exhibited in the United States and abroad, including Feinkunst Krüger (Hamburg, Germany), Picture Theory Gallery (New York), Underdonk (Brooklyn), Stockton University (Galloway, New Jersey), Mouse Gallery (Detroit), Camayuhs (Atlanta, Georgia), Left Field Gallery (Los Osos, California), Underground Flower X PeePee Gallery (Fremantle, Australia), and Geoffrey Young Gallery (Great Barrington, Massachusetts). Her solo exhibition, Inheritor, was recently on view at 839 in spring of 2025.
 

Ruhee Maknojia (b. 1993, Houston) is a painter, animator, and installation artist based in Houston. Her work explores how literature, philosophy, history, and legal systems undergo fragmentation when transferred across new frameworks. She earned her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2019, and was recently appointed Dean at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture for the summer of 2025. In 2024, she was the Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she also served as visiting faculty. She has exhibited at institutions and galleries including the Lenfest Center for the Arts (New York), Subliminal Projects (Los Angeles), LeRoy Neiman Center for the Arts (New York), and Rice University Moody Center for the Arts, Asia Society Texas, and Anya Tish Gallery (all Houston).

Tucker Neel (b. 1980, Washington, DC) lives and works in Los Angeles. His practice uses disruption and redirection to examine how ideology is encoded in overlooked objects, communication systems, and aesthetic conventions. He received a BA from Occidental College and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design, where he is an Associate Professor in the Liberal Arts & Sciences department. In addition to unaffiliated public projects, he has exhibited at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Samuel Freeman, and Control Room (Los Angeles), and Ogge (Brussels). He has curated exhibitions for CB1 Gallery, Highways Performance Space, and the Tom of Finland Foundation (Los Angeles). Neel’s work has been reviewed in the L.A. Times, L.A. Weekly, Artforum, and Art21 Magazine. He has written for Artillery, X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal, ARTLIES, Artpulse, and The L.A. Alternative Press. He is also the founder and director of 323Projects, an experimental exhibition venue for participatory, sound-based works.

Pau S. Pescador (she/they) is a contemporary trans-nonbinary artist who works in film, photography, and performance. They live and work in Los Angeles. They graduated with an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and a BA from University of Southern California. Select exhibitions and screenings include UV Estudios (Buenos Aires); Biquini Wax and LADRÓNgalería (both Mexico City); and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Main Museum, The Pit (Glendale), 18th Street Art Center (Santa Monica), 5 Car Garage (Santa Monica), gallery1993, Marathon Screenings, Vacancy, ASHES/ASHES, Park View, Human Resources, and Coastal/Borders, Getty Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA at Angels Gate Cultural Center (all Los Angeles area). Select performances include Machine Project, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA), PAM, the Hammer Museum with KCHUNG TV, REDCAT, Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University, and ForYourArt (all Los Angeles); Performa 2015 and Colony (both New York); and UC Berkeley’s Durham Studio Theater. Their first collection of writing, CRUSHES: A NOVELLA, was published by Econo Textual Objects in Spring 2017.

Maddy Peters (b. 1996, Vancouver, Canada) is a cartoonist living in Los Angeles. She writes and draws comics exploring surreal derailments of the status quo. Alongside her personal sequential work, she has created posters, comics, and illustrations for organizations like the Los Angeles Tenants Union, People's City Council, NOlympics, Solidarity and Snacks, and Albert Corado's 2020 LA city council campaign. Her work has been published by Zine-O-Matic, Midcult, and Junior High LA. She has participated in Comic Arts Los Angeles, LA Zine Fest, San Francisco Zine Fest, Orange County  Zine Fest, and the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival. Her comics can be found at Silver Sprocket (San Francisco), Sour Cherry (San Francisco), Golden Apple (Los Angeles), Chevalier’s Books (Los Angeles), and Lucky’s Books (Vancouver). She graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2018. Her first solo exhibition is scheduled for January 2027.

Carolyn Lockhart Schoerner (b. 1982, Lansing, Michigan) is an artist, dancer, and choreographer living in Brooklyn. She received her ballet training from the Kirov Academy of Ballet and her BA in Art History from Indiana University. Examining dance within domestic settings, she explores ballet intimately, allowing it to serve as a performative, diaristic view of life. Her video pieces have been screened at Lubov (New York) and Ed. Varie (New York). She has also performed collaboratively with various artists at Cleopatra’s (Brooklyn), Simone Subal (New York), Essex Flowers (New York), Signal (Brooklyn), and Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA). Her first solo exhibition is scheduled for January 2026.
 

Joshua Smith (b. 1983, Houston) is an artist based in Los Angeles. He attended the AICAD New York Studio Program in 2004 and received a BFA from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan in 2005. He has had solo exhibitions at Albert Baronian (Brussels), Essex Flowers, SOUTHFIRST, Shoot the Lobster, PACS Gallery, West Street Gallery, Art Production Fund, Artists Space, and John Connelly Presents (all New York). His work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1 (New York) and White Flag Projects (St. Louis) and it has been written about in ARTnews, Artforum, Interview, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. He co-founded the itinerant exhibition series Apartment Show in 2009, and was a co-founder of the artist-run gallery Essex Flowers in New York’s Lower East Side. His solo exhibition with the gallery is scheduled for November 2026.

Yunghun Yoo (b. 1982, Seoul) is a Korean-American painter raised in Long Beach, California, and now based in Los Angeles. His thesis exhibition, Heterotopia Americana, was recently on view at Claremont Graduate University, where he is an MFA candidate. He earned a BA in English Literature from UCLA. His practice engages concepts of balance, displacement, and the unstable boundaries of identity, space, and perception. Yoo draws from a multicultural and migratory perspective to shape his nomadic worldview. He was a 2022 recipient of the Kerry James Marshall Award from the Visual and Media Arts Department at Los Angeles City College.
 

For images and inquiries: info@839gallery.com 

839gallery.com
@839gallery

839 N. Cherokee Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038

Open Saturdays, 12-6 pm and by appointment

Accessibility and Parking: For the opening reception, we recommend public transit or parking in front of Bancroft Middle School on Las Palmas Ave., a short walk from the gallery. Please note that the gallery has a porch with four steps.

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