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Gallery 16 is thrilled to announce an upcoming show with Reniel Del Rosario: Guns, Beauty, Donuts.
Del Rosario’s exhibition transforms the gallery into three specialty stores made entirely of ceramic works: a gun store, a beauty supply store, and a donut shop. The three stores playfully encapsulate the obsessions of US capitalism in 2025. Del Rosario brings his own inventive energy to clay. His deliberately imperfect, hand-built ceramic objects joyfully challenge societal value systems by recreating and reimagining familiar objects.
The Guns, Beauty, Donuts installation is inspired by the South Y Center shopping plaza in South Lake Tahoe. Del Rosario first visited the plaza in 2018, when it included a gun store, a nail salon, and a donut shop. “When I first encountered the plaza, I already knew I was interested in consumerist culture, but I did not know at the time how heavy a role it would play within my practice… The combination of the three stores were a perfect portrait of America — the representation of a gluttonous, superficial, and necro-capitalistic society. That plaza is permanently etched into my brain as a plaza symbolizing Americana in its truest forms.”
Del Rosario’s fictional establishments become tangible manifestations of the current landscape of American capitalism. In these goods, we find performances of power through violence, the quest for superficial beauty, and gratuitous indulgence.
“Through my store projects, I never set out to create spot-on replicas of anything; rather, I want to emphasize specific traits within establishments that exaggerate the parts that I feel make them a parodic version of itself that is almost more true than the real business.”
Artist:
Reniel Del Rosario (b. 1997, Iba, Philippines) is an artist that uses ceramics, quantity, and satire to discuss themes of commodification and value. Del Rosario is currently an artist in residence at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in Los Angeles, where he created the work exhibited in Guns, Beauty, Donuts.
Del Rosario holds a BA in Art Practice from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a 2019 recipient of the Center for Craft’s Windgate-Lamar fellowship, a 2022 SFMOMA Artists Soapbox Derby racer, and a 2025 NCECA Emerging Artist. His work has been featured in publications such as Artforum and Bon Appétit. His work has been exhibited internationally through traditional and alternative venues such as the other places Art Fair, MarinMOCA, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Bedford Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery, Load Na Dito, Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, slash art, and simply on the public sidewalk.
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