About
GOES TO OCEAN is a new artist-run gallery, project space, and studio cluster based in the “crooked heart” of Los Angeles, CA.
Founded in January 2023 by artists and CalArts alum Razan AlSarraf, Ross Doyle, Kristofor Giordano, Laura Ohio, and Malte Sänger, the space is located on the second floor of a mixed-use building on the very edge of LA’s Westlake neighborhood, bordering Koreatown. Drawing on the collision of street grids, subterranean and sky-reaching tenors that have shaped (are shaping) the area, GTO is a working studio environment and collaborative exhibition space intended to form alliances with divergent, multilayered, critical, and reflective practices/processes.
Co-Founders
Razan AlSarraf (she/ her) is a visual artist based between Kuwait and Los Angeles. Through painting, drawing, video and sound, she reflects on the sociocultural and physical landscapes of Kuwait. She received a BFA in Fine Arts with honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts. Razan is the recipient of the SVA Alumni Society Scholarship & Award and Ministry of Higher Education of Kuwait Merit Bachelors and Masters Scholarships. She has exhibited internationally, participating within residencies, solo and group shows in New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait.
Ross Doyle (he/him) is an artist from Oregon, based in LA.
Kristofor Giordano (he/ him) was born in Newton, New Jersey in 1985, and grew up in the post-industrial town of Franklin, New Jersey. His grandfather, a second generation Italian immigrant, built a home in an area known — geologically — as the New Jersey Highlands. The property became a boneyard of raw materials, mechanical relics, and acquisitions from his bricklaying trade. This immersion in the “backstage” of labor was an early creative laboratory that would shape Giordano's practice and thinking.
After graduating with a BFA from School of Visual Arts in 2007, Giordano held a studio at P.S.122 in New York City. He worked as a nightshift porter while developing his studio practice, studying critical theory at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and comparative religions and psychology at Hunter College. Between 2015-2017, he dismantled and reconstructed his Brooklyn apartment to accommodate a studio practice and a developing plan to host and curate shows, performances, events, and inertactions. In 2018, he co-founded the event series Talk Show Screenings in his live/work space.
Giordano’s interdisciplinary art-working approach orbits various fields of thought and action—geology, drawing, religion, sculpture, critical theory, video, psychology, performance, philosophy, writing, politics, photography, pedagogy—and attempts to draw new points of contact between them. He has participated in and organized group shows, film screenings, and interdisciplinary classes nationally, internationally, and virtually. Giordano received his MFA in Art from California Institute of the Arts in 2022.
Laura Ohio (she/her) is a Canadian visual artist working across sculpture, video, and performance. Her work engages the physical body, personal archives, and metaphorical architectures to examine the psychic and material pressures of late stage capitalism. Her work documents precarious and ecstatic exchanges within both shadow economies and institutional regimes of visibility, tracing the affective lines between marriage, immigration, prostitution, and the desire for undetermined self-authorship. She studied art and anthropology and the University of Alberta and received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2023.
Found objects are the crystallization points of Malte Sänger's photography-based works. The human and geological time planes entangled in them are made visible by means of extensive research work, travel and self-built camera systems. The self made artist books resulting from the projects have received several awards. Malte Sänger holds a Diploma degree from the University of Art and Design of the State of Hesse, Germany in Film Directing, Philosophy & Aesthetics and Photography, is a Fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and received his MFA in Photo & Media and Integrated Media from CalArts in 2022.
Open Hours
Saturday & Sunday
12pm to 5pm
Or by appointment
Location
2720 W 7th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90057