The Lamp Paintings
Dustin Metz

Dustin Metz, Enter the Grapes, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy the artist.

Experiencing Metz’s work recalls that of discovering paintings in the dark recesses of centuries-old Italian churches, where dropping a Euro coin into a machine turns on a light that temporarily illuminates the image. While The Lamp Paintings are entirely secular, their viewing context encourages a focused, almost reverent moment of attention that elevates the familiar and the ordinary—a single leaf, a bowl of oranges—into quiet spectacle. Each painting unfolds like a private ritual, drawing the viewer into an intimate, contemplative space that encourages close observation.

Metz’s works explore the aesthetics of belief. In his hands, an orange on the kitchen counter is made miraculous—a stand-in for figure, ghost, and witness to painting’s convergence of light, time, and space. Displayed beneath the very light source that guided their creation, the lamp paintings collapse the distance between artist and audience, offering a shared experience in the potential transcendence of painting.

Dustin Metz (b.1984 Philadelphia PA) is a painter whose work bridges the sacred and the everyday, drawing on the traditions of portrait, still-life and landscape painting. Metz holds an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ) and a BFA from Tyler School of Art, (Elkins Park, PA). Metz was a co-founder of the artist-run gallery Ms. Barbers (Los Angeles, CA). His paintings have been exhibited at TORUS (formerly Hunter Shaw Fine Art) (Los Angeles, CA), Jeffery Deitch (New York, NY), and The Bunker Artspace (Miami, FL). He was a student at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Skowhegan, Maine), a MacDowell Fellow (Petersborough, NH), an artist in residence at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY), and will be a resident at the Edward Albee Foundation (Montauk, NY) in April 2026. Metz works in a studio space shared with a native plant nursery in the El Sereno neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. 

Feb 20, 2026 - April 4, 2026

Dustin Metz

North Loop West (Los Angeles, CA) is delighted to present The Lamp Paintings, a series of new works by LA-based artist Dustin Metz, opening February 20 in Los Angeles. A formally trained painter, Metz creates unusual art objects: oil paintings affixed to custom lamps, conceived as true in situ works that are painted in darkness and exhibited in a darkened room. Dustin Metz: The Lamp Paintings will be on view at 508 Chung King Road through April 4.

Dustin Metz paints in the dark. Working on a canvas mounted to a custom lamp, he paints under the light of a single glowing bulb. This raking light becomes both material and subject—as essential as the oil paint itself. Once completed, each painting remains affixed to the lamp, living permanently beneath the very light under which it was made.

Installation Images

  • Installation view, Dustin Metz: The Lamp Paintings, North Loop West, Los Angeles, CA. February 20 - April 4, 2026. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

    Installation view, Dustin Metz: The Lamp Paintings, North Loop West, Los Angeles, CA. February 20 - April 4, 2026. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

  • Installation view, Dustin Metz: The Lamp Paintings, North Loop West, Los Angeles, CA. February 20 - April 4, 2026. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

    Installation view, Dustin Metz: The Lamp Paintings, North Loop West, Los Angeles, CA. February 20 - April 4, 2026. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

  • Installation view, Dustin Metz: The Lamp Paintings, North Loop West, Los Angeles, CA. February 20 - April 4, 2026. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

    Installation view, Dustin Metz: The Lamp Paintings, North Loop West, Los Angeles, CA. February 20 - April 4, 2026. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

  • Installation view, Dustin Metz: The Lamp Paintings, North Loop West, Los Angeles, CA. February 20 - April 4, 2026. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

    Installation view, Dustin Metz: The Lamp Paintings, North Loop West, Los Angeles, CA. February 20 - April 4, 2026. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

Individual Artworks

  • Dustin Metz, Fruit Bowl with Sky Light, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 42 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

    Dustin Metz, Fruit Bowl with Sky Light, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 42 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

  • detail, Dustin Metz, Fruit Bowl with Sky Light, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 42 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

    detail, Dustin Metz, Fruit Bowl with Sky Light, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 42 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

  • Dustin Metz, Gold Leaf, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in.

    Dustin Metz, Gold Leaf, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

  • Dustin Metz, Enter the Grapes, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

    Dustin Metz, Enter the Grapes, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

  • detail, Dustin Metz, Enter the Grapes, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

    detail, Dustin Metz, Enter the Grapes, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

  • detail, Dustin Metz, Gold Leaf, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

    detail, Dustin Metz, Gold Leaf, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

  • Dustin Metz, Burning Bush (Goldenrod), 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 42 x 15 x 15 in.

  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, The Change Fell Out Of Your Eye, 2023, oil and acrylic paint and digital photocollage print on beach towel, chiffon, and double-sided sequins, 68 x 52 in

    detail, Dustin Metz, Burning Bush (Goldenrod), 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 42 x 15 x 15 in.

  • Dustin Metz, Lemon Sky Funeral, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in.

    Dustin Metz, Lemon Sky Funeral, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

  • Dustin Metz, Lemon Sky Funeral, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.

    Dustin Metz, Lemon Sky Funeral, 2025, oil on canvas on custom brass lamp, 32 x 15 x 15 in. Image courtesy Josh Schaedel.