With the series Feelings Are Like Water, John Millei deepens one of the key questions at the heart of his painterly oeuvre: how can inner states be made visible without fixing them—without narrating or illustrating them? In these works, the sea no longer appears as a landscape motif or an external realm of experience, but as a metaphorical structure—a visual analogue for emotional fluidity, psychological transitions, and temporal continuity.

Here, water does not function as a subject in the classical sense, but as a mode of thinking. Feelings, as the title suggests, are like water: flowing, changeable, never fully controllable. They arise, intensify, dissolve, and return in altered form. Millei translates these qualities into a painting practice that consciously resists dramatic emphasis, opting instead for rhythm, repetition, and subtle variation.

Since the launch of Season 2 of the Paramount+ series Landman, Justin Bower’s painting Blue Boy has once again been prominently featured on screen—creating an impact that goes far beyond set dressing. The work does not function as decorative backdrop, but as a visual counterpart that seems to “inhabit” the space: a portrait that meets the viewer’s gaze, generates tension, and subtly intensifies a scene—cool and precise, yet surprisingly emotionally charged. It is precisely this ambivalence that makes Blue Boy so compelling: a balance between intimacy and distance, between human presence and an identity that feels almost digital—like a mirror of our present.

If you would like to acquire works by Justin Bower or learn more about Blue Boy, please feel free to contact us. Upon request, we are happy to share further information, background details, and additional images.

With the new G-ALLERY app, we offer collectors a distinctive way to access the world of contemporary art. The app allows you to experience works by our artists in the highest resolution and—through augmented reality—place them realistically on your own walls: a digital collection that brings innovation and elegance together.

Most exclusive of all, collectors receive early access within the app to new artworks before they officially enter the market, complemented by internal information and curated insights available only through the platform.

Designed for discreet use, personal collection management, and an innovative view of the art market’s future, the app will launch shortly. A sneak peek with first impressions will follow in the coming weeks.

We are delighted to announce an exceptional collaboration between two defining voices in contemporary art: Justin Bower × RETNA. In this new series, Bower’s large-scale “posthuman” portraits—digitally fragmented faces shaped by technology, algorithms, and consciousness—meet RETNA’s iconic, self-developed typographic language. Where Bower conceives identity as fluid and programmable, continuously reassembled in an age of permanent connectivity, RETNA expands this field with a visual code that evokes hieroglyphs, calligraphy, and graffiti—now globally recognizable in its own right.

Across the series, RETNA’s vertical bands of script move through Bower’s destabilized, digitally charged faces like a second skin: at times a protective layer, at times an interruption, at times an additional register of identity. Body, inscription, and digital surface interlock to form pictorial worlds that read like a contemporary visage of our present—positioned between museum painting, screen culture, and pop iconography. The works carry both the painterly depth of Bower’s museum-exhibited practice and the immediate energy of RETNA’s urban-derived sign matrix.

In the works of Luxembourgish conceptual artist Sali Muller, we encounter a continuation of an aesthetic attitude that, on the US West Coast in the 1960s, developed a new artistic language under the term “Light and Space”.

This movement emerged against the backdrop of a singular cultural and technological climate. In Southern California—shaped by sunlight, expansive landscapes, new materials, and the spirit of the aerospace industry—a group of artists began to turn away from the narrative and gestural modes of expression that had defined previous decades. Instead, they placed light itself, space, and perception at the center of their practice. Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Doug Wheeler, and Mary Corse experimented with transparent plastics, acrylic glass, reflective surfaces, and precisely deployed light—materials that until then belonged largely to industrial production—and, from them, developed a new form of spatial art understood not as an object, but as an experience.

As a large part of our collector community is based in France, we are very pleased to host another Collector’s Weekend in Paris this year. While we do not (yet) have a permanent gallery presence in the city, we use this occasion to present our work on site and connect with our community in person.

From 13 to 15 June 2025, we will curate a focused exhibition in the heart of the Marais and warmly invite you to visit. Many of our guests combine the preview with a weekend in Paris—a combination that is always worthwhile.

If you will be in the city during these dates and would like to stop by, we would be delighted to hear from you by email.

John Millei (*1958, Los Angeles) is a professor at the art faculty in Pasadena, as well as at Claremont Graduate University and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). He is considered one of the notable representatives of California abstraction that emerged in the 1980s, and has participated in numerous museum exhibitions alongside major figures such as Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, and Ernst Wilhelm Nay. His works are held in international collections, including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), LACMA (Los Angeles), and the Museo Jumex (Mexico City).

Millei began painting in the late 1970s as a former assistant to Richard Diebenkorn. He was influenced by Jasper Johns’ iconic 0–9 series (1960) as well as the Abstract Expressionist paintings of John Altoon—one of the prominent figures in the Los Angeles art scene of the 1950s and 1960s.

John Millei belongs to a generation of artists such as Lari Pittman and Roger Herman—and later Mary Weatherford, Mark Bradford, and Laura Owens—who helped shift painting in Los Angeles away from the minimalism of the Light and Space movement toward a more painterly, more expansive approach. Their work moved within a field of tension between figuration and representation, pop culture, and Abstract Expressionism.

We take a look inside the homes of our collectors and visit the artworks by our artists in their new surroundings.

Living with art does more than enrich a space aesthetically; it can also be emotionally stimulating and support our sense of well-being. Research increasingly supports what art enthusiasts have long felt intuitively. From a neurological perspective, studies in the field of neuroaesthetics suggest that art can have a positive effect on the brain. Paintings may stimulate critical thinking, pattern recognition, decision-making, idea generation, and emotional connection as we search for meaning.

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” — Pablo Picasso

It is therefore no surprise that more and more people—especially younger collectors—are discovering a passion for collecting and giving art a special place in their lives.