Six Artists Las Vegas

In an industrial area of Las Vegas, very close to the original casino hub of downtown Fremont St, is a large warehouse space surrounded by creative studios. Recognizing its potential as an exhibition and event space, in early December 2015 we produced an exhibition of six Las Vegas-based artists.

Matthew Couper (b. 1976, New Zealand) is based in Las Vegas, Nevada after immigrating to the USA in 2010. His practice over the past decade has appropriated aspects of western Art History including Trecento, Quattrocento and the Baroque. His work adapts established narrative traditions of Spanish Colonial retablos and ex–votos to discuss the space between myth, religion and art politics. He recently stated that ‘like any good Johnny Cash, Nick Cave or Pixies song, you’ve got to have sex, death and religion fueling the fire’.
Couper is represented by Room, Brooklyn, NY; Zoya Tommy, Houston, TX; La Luz De Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles, Gimpel+Muller, Paris and PAULNACHE, New Zealand.

Angel Delgado (b. 1965, Havana, Cuba) is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Las Vegas, Nevada. Delgado centers his work on the issue of individual liberty, or the lack thereof. This focus is the result of having been sent to prison for six months in the early 1990s, for a scandal due to a public performance that he presented in Havana, Cuba. It was in a Cuban prison that Delgado found his main technical and instrumental resources, developing a kind of artwork closely linked to the living conditions in jail, including soap sculptures and paintings of religious images on fabric. His work consequently is based on the limitations, restrictions, prohibitions, controls and other losses of freedom that are constantly imposed on the human being within society. At the moment his interest is to take personal experiences towards a collective experience, speaking about the imprisoned condition that the collective psyche suffers as it confines the individual.
Delgado’s work has been represented in several gallery and museum exhibitions, including the Queens Museum of Art, Couturier Gallery, the Harwood Museum of Art, the Museum of Latin American Art in LA and most recently at the Venice International Performance Art Week.

Sush Machida Gaikotsu (b. 1973, Maebashi, Japan) is a contemporary Japanese artist. He currently lives and works in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. His artwork has been exhibited internationally. Machida received his M.F.A. (2002) from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. L.A. Times art critic David Pagel stated, "It’s a rare instance of less-is-more magic, when a strictly limited number of judicious decisions intensifies the effect of the whole. Pop art never looked more scorchingly gorgeous or wickedly Zen."


Originally from New Zealand, JK Russ relocated to Las Vegas in 2010. Since graduating with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from MIT Faculty of Creative Arts where she majored in photography, Russ has maintained an interest in representations of performance. Her recent mixed media and video works feature performance and fashion elements, along with desert creatures and rock formations. VEGAS magazine’s 2015 Art of the City edition featured her work, and UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum is currently showing the 3-person exhibit Kveck, Russ & Stellmon: Break Ups & Tear Downs.
Russ is also known for creating interactive collage projects for the Life is Beautiful festival, the London Biennale Pollination performance event and during her P3Studio artist residency at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, in partnership with New York’s Art Production Fund. Russ is represented by Sin City Gallery in Las Vegas, NV, Zoya Tommy in Houston, TX and PAULNACHE in Gisborne, New Zealand.

David Ryan (b. 1971, Texas) gleans inspiration from the slick colors and lines of cars, electronic gadgets and household appliances to transform mundane, undesirable MDF into luxurious, enticing wall-sculptures. By creating multiple (literal) layers, Ryan explores the way line, shape and shadow interact to produce perceptual conundrums that intrigue his viewer. Thus his conceptually multi-layered pieces speak not only of glossy consumer products but also refer to phenomenology and complex art theories. His work explores the dynamic between craft and production, art and design, man and machine.
Ryan received his BFA from the University of Texas in Austin, TX then his MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (NV) where he studied under Dave Hickey and Libby Lumpkin. His work has been exhibitedat the Laguna Art Museum (CA), Las Vegas Art Museum (NV), Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard (Paris), Seomi & Tuus (Seoul), Davidson Contemporary (NY), and James Kelly Contemporary (NM). 

Sean Slattery earned his BFA from University of North Texas, Denton, TX, and his MFA from University of Nevada, Las Vegas. While in Texas he was a member of the Good/Bad Art Collective, Assistant Curator at the Arlington Museum of Art, and Assistant Director at Angstrom Gallery, Dallas. He is currently an adjunct professor at UNLV.