RETNA | Locked Lines: London

15 October - 10 November 2025
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  • JD Malat Gallery is proud to present Locked Lines, a solo exhibition by the internationally acclaimed Los Angeles based artist, Marquis Duriel Lewis, RETNA, opening during Frieze Week 2025 in Mayfair. This powerful exhibition invites international collectors, curators, and art lovers to experience the full force of RETNA’s unmistakable visual language in the epicenter of London’s art hub during the heart of the cultural season. 

     
  • Retna, Soldiers of the Woods, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Retna, Ancient Script, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Retna, Mist and Light, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Retna, Kaleidoscope, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Retna, Simplicity in Red, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Retna, Gold Standard Classics, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Retna, Night Owl, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Retna, Soldiers of the Woods, 2025

  • Statement from the Artist

    In Locked Lines, I continue my exploration of the written word as image, and image as a universal language. My practice has always sought to move beyond borders of geography, culture, or even legibility. The line — whether painted on a wall in Los Angeles, inscribed across canvas, or traced in the rhythm of daily speech — becomes both barrier and bridge.
     
    The title is also a nod to Frieze London. At one of the fastest-moving fairs in the world, nothing really “freezes.” Art circulates, trades, and shifts at high speed. My response is to lock the lines in place: frozen in form, but alive in energy. They hold their ground against the constant motion of the fair.
     
    Each line is a record of rhythm, history, and gesture — captured mid-flow, then suspended. What would normally pass quickly across a page becomes permanent, unshakable, demanding its own time. Locked Lines is both a joke and a declaration: a play on Frieze, and a reminder that in stillness, meaning is often revealed.
     

  • Rhythmic and Mystic Codes
    Retna, Soldiers of the Woods, 2025, Enamel and diamond dust on canvas, 96 x 72 in, 244 x 183 cm

    Rhythmic and Mystic Codes

    RETNA has forged a unique artistic language founded on hieroglyphics, calligraphy, and traditional manuscript forms from ancient languages such as Arabic, Egyptian, Hebrew, Old English, and various Native American languages.  Indeed, his canvases channel the pulse of Los-Angeles Street culture and his own diverse ancestry of Pipil, Cherokee, Salvadoran, and African-American heritage. RETNA transforms letters and symbols into enigmatic lines of verse and visually arresting motifs: rhythmic codes. The result is a linguistically illegible script that whilst refusing literal and direct translation, invites the viewer to feel the meaning of his “writing” rather than read it. Through disrupting language, one of the most significant modes of cultural communication sustaining society, RETNA masterfully creates a new, mystic and poetic visual language that brings diverse communities closer together:
     
    “we're…all one people. We just all grew up in different places…”
     
  • Meditation and Healing; Community out of Difference
    Retna, Crosses and Arrows, 2025, Acrylic, enamel and oil pencil on canvas, 60 x 50 in, 152.4 x 127 cm

    Meditation and Healing; Community out of Difference

    This exhibition illuminates the artist's resilience and optimism. RETNA has long spoken of his mental health battles and the ways in which his practice has become a meditative vehicle for healing and regeneration. The monumental works on view bear witness to his steadfast belief that out of difference comes community. They are not merely paintings, but acts of defiance and redemption, visual scripts that reconcile chaos with order and meaning.
  • Over RETNA’s impressive career, he has collaborated with global brands including Louis Vuitton, Nike, Chanel, and VistaJet, and created landmark murals at the Bowery Wall in New York, the façade of MOCA Los Angeles, and across Miami, Hong Kong, and London. His works have been exhibited internationally, from Aspen to Mexico City. He has been at the forefront of a generation breaking down boundaries between street culture and fine art institutions.
     
    By situating RETNA’s solo presentation at JD Malat Gallery during Frieze Week, the gallery offers collectors a rare chance to encounter new works in an intimate setting, at a time when the art world congregates in London. This exhibition is at once a celebration of one of the most recognisable figures in contemporary art and a display of RETNA’s cultural solidarity.