METALWOOD STUDIO OPENS US, A GROUP PORTRAIT SHOW

Friday, Seven PM, Twelve Names on One Wall

This Friday at seven, a vintage golf shop on La Brea Avenue turns its floor over to photographs instead of persimmon drivers. The show is called US. It is a group portrait show, LA photographers shooting LA people, curated by Darin Howard, and it opens at Metalwood Studio, 128 South La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles. Twelve photographers are on the wall: golflinx, kaipo81, cxchoi, delonbone, giovannireda, joshuaspencerphoto, lindseybyrnes, priceyhot, ryanthomasmurray, sammuller, sierra.n.skinner and turelillegraven. Bevs come from Roosevelt Wine Club and Rolus Drinksmarter. Bites come from Loqui. That is the entire scouting report, and it is enough to show up on.

Darin Howard Called the Shots on This One

Howard is not a gallery lifer. He is Metalwood Studio's general manager, a skateboarder who became a golfer, and a cofounder of theforemat, according to his own profile with the shop. That background matters here. A curator who came up filming tricks and sponsoring amateurs picks faces the way a scout picks a roster, on feel and reputation rather than pedigree. This is not a museum survey with wall text explaining photographic movements. It is one guy with taste inviting twelve people whose work he already trusts, the same logic a music photographer once used to build a career out of backstage passes. That logic connects directly to a show like Parallel Practices at Etai Albertz Benda, where curatorial point of view, not institutional weight, is the whole pitch.

A Golf Shop Is an Odd Place to Hang Portraits

Metalwood started as an Instagram account, an ode to nineties and early two thousands golf, run by founder Cole Young while he was still selling for another brand. Inside two years it grew from mood board to a real business with investors and staff, and in early 2022 Young moved into the La Brea storefront that stocks vintage clubs, headcovers and apparel and offers full club repair. A retail shop hosting a photography opening is a stretch for foot traffic that came in for a putter regrip. But it also means the crowd Friday night skews toward people who already buy into a specific La Brea sensibility, which is a better bet for turnout than a cold gallery space nobody has walked into before.

Two Names on This List Already Have Real Portfolios

Giovanni Reda is not a hobbyist. He won Transworld Skateboarding's Photographer of the Year award, has shot as staff photographer for The Berrics, and directed a Netflix documentary on skateboarder Leo Baker. Lindsey Byrnes has photographed for Rolling Stone, Spin, Billboard, Kerrang and Alternative Press, and she is the photographer behind Tegan and Sara's photo book On, In, At. Put those two names on a bill with ten less documented handles and the show earns real credibility fast, the kind Karolina Halatek's Echo installation earns through scale instead of names. Byrnes working a portrait wall next to skate and street photographers is a small but real crossover between music photography and gallery culture, and it is worth watching who else in that world starts showing up at spaces like this.

You Will Not Get a Press Release Explaining Any of This

There is no curatorial statement circulating, no didactic panel, no framing beyond a caption and a flyer. That is a limitation, honestly. A viewer walking in cold has no context for why these twelve and not another twelve, and Metalwood has not published an artist statement or a checklist to fill that gap. Community shows built on trust and friendship sometimes read as insider events to anyone outside the circle, and that is a fair critique of the format, not just this one.

The Bet Being Made on La Brea Avenue

A retail shop staking a claim on curated group shows is a bet that culture sells better than another rack of hats. Reda and Byrnes give this lineup a floor. The other ten give it texture. My take: this becomes a recurring fixture, not a one night stunt, because Metalwood already proved once it can turn an Instagram mood board into a real storefront with actual foot traffic. Show up Friday at seven, buy a drink from Rolus, and watch which of these twelve names you are still talking about in a year.