Kristopher Raos

Kristopher Raos adopts the aesthetics of advertising, exploiting the bold color and pop fonts of packaging for their formal possibilities and real-world associations, abstracting via adept cropping and clever manipulations. Executed in deft, precision brushwork at a scale that mirrors that of old-fashioned detergent boxes, the works exist in the sweet spot between surface and object. Raos manifests the formal energy usually associated with much larger works; they seem to extend beyond the borders of the canvas.

The labor of painting and the labor of daily life are here intricately connected. Raos recaptures time spent performing household tasks as a kind of aesthetic research, transforming the stuff of the world into fodder for the studio. It is an act of both recognition and elevation: a recognition of the abstract potential of midcentury commercial art, and an elevation of that material into something more. The results are a kind of Pop-inflected minimalism – hard edge by way of the corner drugstore.  

Kristopher Raos (b. 1987, Bakerfield, CA) is self-taught painter based in Los Angeles, CA. Raos grew up between Bakersfield, CA and Mexico City, Mexico, his early domestic life characterized by instability and privation. He found focus in graffiti art, painting the trains that move through the agricultural landscapes of Bakersfield. His street art practice took him all over the world and ultimately led him to Los Angeles. It also shaped his name, RAOS being his former graffiti moniker which he adopted as his surname. A visit to LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007 was formative, as Raos saw Ellsworth Kelly’s works for the first time and became fascinated w Minimalism and hard-edge abstraction. Raos transitioned from graffiti art to his studio painting practice in 2011. Raos’s work has been featured at galleries including As-is Gallery and MaRS Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, F2T Gallery in Milan, Italy, Baik Art in Seoul, South Korea, Venus Over Manhattan in New York, NY, Chris Sharp Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, and the Torrance Art Museum, RDFA, and Peripheral Space all in Los Angeles. In 2022 Raos had his debut solo show at Charlie James Gallery titled No Escaping the Housework. In 2023 Raos had a solo booth at EXPO CHICAGO and was featured in a two-person booth at Feria Material in CDMX, Mexico. Raos is currently exhibiting in Tracing the Edge at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, curated by Nicolas Orozco-Valdivia and Ananya Goel, which is on view thru January of 2024. Painter/Piloto is Raos’s second solo show with Charlie James. Kristopher Raos lives and works in Los Angeles and is represented by Charlie James Gallery.

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