calendario eventi  :: 

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31/5/2013

Curioso

Thinkspace, Culver City

Thinkspace is pleased to present Curioso a group exhibition featuring new work by gallery artists Jeremy Hush, Lindsey Carr, and Frank Gonzales. These artists’ respective, and unmistakably distinct, practices explore contemporary representations of the natural and animal worlds. Their imagery is derived uniquely, relying on a combination of observation, historical 19th century natural history and botanical references, and their personal experiences of nature drawn in sharp relief against their immersion in the urban. Each artist taps into the unwavering hold of the natural world on the creative imagination, and distills a contemporary voice from a wealth of observed and appropriated traditions. Nature has long entranced the human as an anthropomorphic vehicle in visual art, an extended metaphor for the intrinsic animality of the human, and a subject of taxonomical conquest. Each artist revitalizes our visual interest in nature with a contemporary valence, while tapping into the unerring enjoyment of their representational traditions.

Lindsey Carr’s beautifully executed animal portraiture of birds and primates takes the 19th century conventions of natural history printmaking and painting, from the likes of Audubon and Redoute, and transforms them into distinctly contemporary revisitations of this meticulous representational tradition. At times dark, and at others whimsical, her work incorporates text and unlikely juxtapositions with wit and humor. Her palette and execution recall antiquated relics, or illuminated manuscripts, invoking the past and confusing the contemporaneity of the work visually. Her appropriation of this natural history tradition engages the historical conventions of taxonomy and categorization with a contemporary appreciation of their uncanniness. Her work examines the proximity of the animal to the human, and intuitively explores the indelible hold of that link.

Frank Gonzales‘ paintings of birds and flora are highly detailed and exceptionally rendered. As an artist having lived in Brooklyn for many years, his fascination with the natural world has inspired dedicated and meticulous representations. As a powerful counterpart to the urban, the natural world returns us all to something elemental and redemptive in the midst of the city’s machinations. Gonzales taps into this fundamental pull that nature exercises over the imaginary, and paints with true love of execution and process. His use of color and line, and his compositional inclusion of abstract elements and pattern, make his work distinctly contemporary and entirely his own.

Jeremy Hush’s work is unmistakably his own in its combination of the lyrical and the chaotic; the organized and the spontaneous. Loosely influenced stylistically by historical 19th century print making, his work combines historical suggestion with a highly stylized contemporary aesthetic. Working primarily with ball point pen and unlikely found materials for pigment, Hush’s imaginary landscapes are haunted and beautiful, eerie and transporting. His works on paper are highly dense and lush, containing layer upon layer of symbolic iteration and elaborately elusive narrative. His use of natural imagery recalls the visual conventions of fable, allegory, and dream.

On view in our project room:

Glenn Arthur ‘Forever Fabled’
Concurrently on view in the Thinkspace project room is new work by Glenn Arthur: Forever Fabled. This new body of work by the Orange County based artist is Arthur’s first solo show with the gallery. His seductive stylized portraits of beautiful women are sensual, dark, and playful. His aesthetic encompasses a combination of steampunk influences, neo-victorian stylization, and contemporary punk culture. Ambient and brooding, the work is above all meticulously executed and hallucinatory in its other worldly beauty and detail.

The paintings are executed on wood panel, and technically have a luster and silken quality to be rivaled. Their seamless smoothness and execution contributes to the work’s efficacy and pull. Seemingly immaterial and dream like, they take representation beyond the “known”, and suspend the figurative and recognizable in a realm all its own. The works are inhabited by hummingbirds, little signature additions and thematic foils that populate all of Arthur’s pieces. Like the hummingbird, his work remains slightly out of one’s grasp, like a liquid beauty that refuses to be entirely arrested or concretized.

In this new body of work Arthur will be revisiting the fairytales of our youth with a risque approach to their telling. Taking the sensual scopic fascinations he has perfected in his work to date, Arthur will play with narrative and imagery appropriated from these shared stories. Fairytale is notoriously rife with libidinal content and beautiful tragedies, source material perfectly suited to Arthur’s intoxicating work

Artist Website:
http://glennarthurart.com/

On view in our office area:
Erik Siador ‘The Inner Conflict’
Artist Website:
www.facebook.com/eriksiador

About Thinkspace Gallery:
Founded in Los Angeles in 2005, and located in the Culver City art district since 2009, Thinkspace was established with a commitment to the promotion and dissemination of young and emerging art. The gallery is a catalytic conduit for the emerging art scene, and is dedicated to the exposure of its tenets and its artists. This movement, straddled between popular culture, graphic art, design, and street art, is subject to steadily increasing global expansion, and is in need of institutional advocates. Thinkspace is positioned to create opportunities and a visible platform for its recognition and proliferation. The movement is young, but significant, and Thinkspace’s aim is to establish both a curatorial forum and a collector base for its output. As an institution, Thinkspace is committed to vision, risk, and the exceptional talents that wield it. From the streets, to the gallery, from the “margins”, to the white cube, Thinkspace is re-envisioning what it means to be “institutional”. As a haven for talent, and a venue founded in passion, conviction, and community, the gallery’s mandate is rooted in projections for its future longevity. We intend to be a vehicle for the talents we vet for year’s to come, and are passionate advocates for their vision and their dreams.

Press and Media Inquiries:
Andrew Hosner
contact@thinkspacegallery(dot)com
T: 310.403.8549

Reception with the artists Saturday, June 1st 6-9PM

thinkspace
6009 Washington Blvd., Culver City
Open Tuesday through Saturday from Noon to 6:00PM
Admission free

stampa

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