“I approach this work not as an outsider, but as a resident and active participant in the craft and subculture,” Los Angeles-based Alfonso Gonzalez Jr. said of his newest and biggest exhibition to date, This Was Here, at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in NYC. In Gonzalez Jr.’s blood since  childhood, he has assisted his father, a professional sign painter, then moved on to graffiti in his pre-teen years, always embedded in the neural pathway of LA. The most subtle of scenes becomes a significant exploration, with each painting made in photoreal style, dancing in its own surreal clarity. —Evan Pricco