Random Parts is an artist–run project space and gallery located in a small storefront in the Eastlake neighborhood of Oakland, California. 

Our vision is to give international, national and local multidisciplinary artists a platform without distinctions among well-known, self-taught and underexposed. We believe that these value judgments are a product of the commercial and educational art systems which emphasize career strategies rather than the complexities of a sustained art practice.  By leveling the playing field, we see Random Parts as an equalizer – aiming to showcase provocative and challenging art in an approachable environment in hopes of engaging the public and promoting critical thinking, dialogue, and risk taking.

Random Parts is also a multi-faceted arts initiative. Along with our diverse exhibition programming, we are publishing art books in collaboration with Matteo Bittanti of Concrete Press, operating a print shop and online store, Pinche Print Shop, and creating a visual blog of cartoons and drawings ruminating on the absurdities of art world related issues, Random Art Thoughts (RAT).

In spite of irony and humor being an intricate part of who we are, we at Random Parts believe, “art is no joke”.

Random Parts  is currently run by Juan Carlos Quintana and Colleen Flaherty. 

The gallery was founded in February of 2014 by artists Carlo Ricafort, Colleen Flaherty and Juan Carlos Quintana.

Juan Carlos Quintana  (Founder and Co-Director)

Quintana's works references a pre-post-anti-pro revolutionary gumbo/ajiaco potpourri of image making that  navigates between narratives and abstractions.  Whimsical in style, Quintana embraces ambiguity and contradictions.  His oeuvre is infused with irony and satire that often speaks of current events, ideological conundrums, and lost idealism.  

Juan Carlos Quintana (b.1964, Lutcher, Louisiana) is primarily a self-taught artist  raised in New Orleans, Louisiana of Cuban lineage.  Currently living and working in Oakland, California,  he has shown in many San Francisco Bay Area venues such as John Berggruen Gallery, Jack Fischer Gallery, Galeria de la Raza, San Jose Museum of Art, MACLA and  Skyline College among others. Recently , he was included in Paradox Maintenance Technicians,a comprehensive manual to contemporary painting from Los Angeles and beyond at the Torrance Museum of Art in Torrance, California.  Internationally, he's had solo exhibitions at the Freies Museum in Berlin  and at the Centro de Desarollo de las Artes Visuales in Havana, Cuba. He has been awarded artist residencies at the Djerassi Resident Program in Woodside, California , and most recently at the Oberpfalzer Kunstlerhaus  in Schwandorf, Germany and a collaborative residency with Artist Formerly Known As Friends (AFKAF) at EDELO in Chiapas, Mexico

Colleen Flaherty  (Founder and Co-Director)

Colleen Flaherty (b. Cleveland, OH) is a visual artist trained as a painter and a sculptor. Her abstract paintings act as a juncture between the machinic and the natural, and the archaic and the modern. Flaherty uses her craft and woodworking skills to create works that invite the viewer to engage with art in a tactile, tangible way.

She received her M.F.A. in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002 and her B.F.A. Cum Laude, with emphasis in Painting and Drawing, Minor in Music from San Jose State University in 1999. Her work has been presented in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland (USA), Montevideo (UR), and Pienza (IT). In 2012 she started COLL.EO with Matteo Bittanti. COLL.EO has exhibited in Paris (FR) , Buenos Aires (AR), Toronto (CA), Mexico City (MX), San Francisco (USA), and at collateral exhibitions of the XII Havana Biennial, Havana (CU). She is a co-founder of Random Parts, an artist run gallery in Oakland. Flaherty works between Northern California and Northern Italy.

Past Co-Director

Carlo Ricafort, Founder and Co-Director, 2014-2015

Carlo Ricafort’s (b. Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines) work attempts to explore and parallel the conundrums and travails of human existence by blurring representation with abstraction.  He excavates history, music, philosophy and current events as an impetus to make free-associative commentaries through painting, drawing and printmaking.  Thus, his artistic process can gain the appearance of being chaotic, eclectic, open-ended, and even “hacked” from multiple sources. It is in the arbitrariness where Ricafort looks to decipher cryptic codes stating, “picture-making is one way to interweave all these contexts allowing me to explore and play with both content and form."

Ricafort immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1985 where his family invested in a printing business.  Self-taught in the graphic arts and offset printing, he pursued his B.F.A. in Pictorial Arts from San José State University in 2000.  He has since exhibited at museums, numerous galleries and cultural spaces in San Francisco (US), Los Angeles (US), New York (US), San Cristóbal de las Casas (MX), Bangkok (TH), Sète (FR), Hamburg (DE), Manila (PH) and recently participated in the collateral exhibitions of the XII Havana Biennial (CU).  He currently works out of San Francisco and is co-founder of the artist-run project space, Random Parts in Oakland, California.