February 14 — March 28, 2026
Opening Reception: February 14, 4 – 6pm

Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to present two new and related paintings by Raffi Kalenderian in a focused spotlight presentation on view from February 14th through March 28th, 2026.

One of the works features a vivid landscape portraying the Huntington Botanical Garden’s collection of cycads, ancient cone-bearing plants that are rendered in stark shades of blue, black and white. Their leaves whirl and flicker like white-hot flames against a cobalt sky, the texture of their knobby trunks made tangible with thick impasto.

Shown alongside the landscape is a portrait of a woman in a brilliant pink dress seated in the painter’s studio, directly in front of the same landscape painting. The perspective is dramatically foreshortened to allow for a clear view of the studio floor and walls, painted in shades of gray and white that accentuate the sitter’s vibrant gown and chair. The pink of her dress is echoed in the shadows where the floor meets the wall and blushes in the whites of the rearticulated landscape painting behind her. The painting complicates the formal relationships between figure and ground, negative and positive space, and teases out rhythms and logic from unlikely places – the chaos of a paint-splattered floor, the overlapping fronds of Sago palms, the shadows cast by a painting on a wall and a body in a chair.

Raffi Kalenderian’s practice is rooted in portraiture – his subjects are often drenched in saturated color and engulfed by densely patterned backgrounds that lend a charged atmosphere and an opportunity for painterly experimentation to his works. More recently, Kalenderian has turned to painting landscapes, which channel his appetite for unexpected color combinations and complex patterns into lush depictions of foliage, water, and sunsets. This presentation emphasizes the connection between these two longstanding areas of interest.

Raffi Kalenderian was born in 1981 in Los Angeles, where he continues to live and work. He graduated with a BFA from University of California, Los Angeles in 2004.

His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Vielmetter Los Angeles, Los Angeles (CA); Miles McEnery Gallery, New York (NY); Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich (Switzerland); Nassima Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv (Israel); Buchmann Galerie, Berlin (Germany); Brand New Gallery, Milan (Italy); among others.

He has had his work featured in group exhibitions at Vielmetter Los Angeles, Los Angeles (CA); Miles McEnery Gallery, New York (NY); Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich (Switzerland); Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara (CA); Setareh Gallery, Düsselford (Germany); Saatchi Gallery, London (UK); among many others.

He has completed residencies at the Idyllwild Arts Academy, Idyllwild, CA and St. Barthélemy, French West Indies. His work is held in the public collections of the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach (CA), Georgia Museum of Art, Athens (GA), Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach (CA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (CA), the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis (MN) and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA.