Thinkspace Projects is pleased to present the collector previews for our upcoming May exhibitions with Sandra Chevrier (b. 1983 Canada), Troy Lovegates (b. 1972 Canada), David Shillinglaw (b. 1982 Saudi Arabia) and Dustin Myers (b. 1984 USA).
A link to the advance previews and full details on each exhibition can be found below.
The Lovegates and Shillinglaw shows will go live in our web shop today at 10am PST, each with immediate click to buy options. Please note, the works will not ship until mid-June, once the shows have come down off view.
We will get back to everyone throughout the day on Tuesday, May 3 and Wednesday, May 4. We will be giving all on our list the time to reply today. We will get back to everyone that we are able to connect with a work on Tuesday and Wednesday. Please note your invoice will need to be paid by this Friday, to assure your work is secured. Please be patient while we get through all of the requests, and know that we will reply to everyone, even if unable to link you with a work.
Please take the time to read over the below (IMPORTANT)... If interested in purchasing a work from one of our new exhibits, please reply to this e-mail or send an e-mail to contact@thinkspaceprojects.com with the following details...
- Your Full Name - The best phone number to reach you at (to help with time-sensitive sales) - Your shipping address (so we can get a shipping quote / confirm you've not moved) - Please include an alternate choice or two, to best help your chances with securing a work. - Please do not list a work on your list, if you're not serious about securing it.
Thank you so much for your support. |
New print from Sandra Chevrier this Saturday |
A new print from Sandra Chevrier, published in an edition of 50, will be available at the opening night reception this Saturday. This special edition print will be available for in-person sales, only. Sorry, but there will be NO pre-orders or online / phone orders for the prints. In-person sales only. Payment by credit / debit card only. No cash, check or PayPal will be accepted.
SANDRA CHEVRIER "La Cage, éclairer le gris" Edition of 50 Fine art print on 290gsm paper 24 x 36 inches / 60.9 x 91.4 cm Signed and numbered by the artist $595 plus tax
Prints will be sold on site in a tube. We will open our doors an hour early this Saturday, May 7, at 5pm, to begin the print sale.
Please do not line up before 1pm. There will be a limit of one print per person / couple / household. No exceptions.
Please note that the COA for your print will not be mailed to you until six months after your purchase, to help deter any secondary market sales / line sitters. Thank you. |
This Saturday, May 7 at Thinkspace |
SANDRA CHEVRIER Cages and the Shadow of the Colors
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 7 from 6-10pm | DJ + refreshments served
On view May 7 - May 28, 2022 in our main gallery |
Thinkspace Projects is presenting Sandra Chevrier’s highly anticipated second solo show with the gallery, ‘Cages and the Shadow of the Colors.’ The Montréal-based Canadian artist creates work that explore identity as a locus of competing imperatives and complex contradictions. Drawing parallels between the assumed invulnerability of the superhero and the impossible demands placed upon the contemporary individual, Chevrier creates literal and metaphoric masks by combining comic book imagery assembled from found and imagined sources. Her dystopian spin on the iconic figure of the superhero looks to reveal the flaws in the staged extroversion of the superficial veneer.
The artist examines gender identities and roles, exhibiting a male-dominated world where Chevrier's subjects denounce the role given to the female counterpart therein, refusing to play the part of seducer or victim. In the greater body of Chevrier's work, the images represented range from scenes of conflict, triumph and defeat. They delve into social limitations, which corrupt what truly is beautiful and lock women into prisons of highly-codified and narrow identities. In this, her subjects become nothing short of superheroines.
Chevrier paints masterfully detailed portraiture, making her women seemingly emerge from a surreal world, onto the canvas, wherein a dance is performed between reality and imagination, truth and deception. She chooses to highlight the fragility of the superhero, their struggles and weaknesses, and exposes the humanity within the superhuman. Despite all the playfulness of the superhero trope, she emphasized that superheroes are also fragile, all merely human men and women, all entitled to our flaws and errors.
“To paint is to play with colors, to let them dance with each other, to intertwine to become one or more, an infinite chromatic circle. To paint is to take everything that nature offers us and make it yours. All those hues that are only available to us because our eyes and brain work together to translate light into color. An apple is not red. Color exists only in the mind of the beholder.”
Ever inspired by color and its influence, Chevrier has incorporated color shading into her reference photoshoots over the last couple years, playing with blues, ambers, yellows, and reds on the skin. She has found each one tells a different story and embraces that in this new body of work. |
"I've never been able to tell what my favorite color is, or if I did; I would change my mind the next day. How can I? They are all so unique, in all their tones, the light or the dark they contain, the richness or the softness, the vibrance or the comfort... there are the frightening and the heroic ones...
Superman owns the primary colors while Batman's world is bathed in mysterious shades.
What is spring, without green? What is patriotism, without red white and blue? What is a heart, without the color of passion?
To paint is to play with colors, to let them dance with each other, to intertwine to become one or more, an infinite chromatic circle. To paint is to take everything that nature offers us and make it yours. All those hues that are only available to us because our eyes and brain work together to translate light into color. An apple is not red. Color exists only in the mind of the beholder
Over the past few years I've started playing with color shading while doing my photoshoots for references, it's been an eye opener. Like in the theater where the colored bulbs create the atmosphere by distributing their different intensities on the set, on the skin of the star of the play, they tell you exactly what you need to feel, like the music does in a film . I did the same, I played with blues, ambers, yellows and reds on the skin and each time it told a different story."
- Sandra Chevrier |
About the artist: Sandra Chevrier is a Canadian contemporary / pop urban artist, known for her captivating portraits of women from 'The Cages' series. Born in 1983, Chevrier got her Bachelor’s degree in visual and media arts from UQAM – L’Université du Québec à Montréal. As a self-taught artist, Sandra Chevrier first fell in love with art as a kid. Art rapidly became a language on its own. Her interest began with sketching eyes and grew from there, with the initial obsession still highly visible in her present work, leading to her self-appointed epithet, the “gaze collector.” Her work is exhibited internationally and her artworks are now in the collections of art collectors all over the world.
Sandra produces work ranging over vastly fluctuating emotional enigmas and concepts that have set the standard of our modern communication, exposing the limitations of our world; our self-imposed expectations and the cages we have allowed to bar us from the fullness of life’s experience. With work demanding to be dissected beyond its surface value, Chevrier's portraits are quite literally torn between the fantastical heroics and iconography of comic books and the harsher underlying tragedy of oppressed female identity and the exposed superficial illusion it conveys. |
TROY LOVEGATES (formerly known as OTHER) Would
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 7 from 6-10pm | DJ + refreshments served
On view May 7 - May 28, 2022 in Gallery II
Thinkspace Projects is thrilled to present Troy Lovegates’ latest solo show, ‘Would.’ The artist, formerly known as Other, brings his vast knowledge of street art and work with found objects to the gallery, presenting his first collection composed entirely of his intricate, hand-carved wooden sculptures.
While Lovegates has left his mark on communities around the world, adorning walls and bringing color to otherwise monotone cityscapes, this exhibition is a milestone for his career, bringing solely his sculptures to a new audience.
Lovegates has carefully crafted a diverse cast of characters in the hopes that it will encourage interaction and provoke thought from viewers. The grizzled characters are sure to provoke conversation, bringing attendees together to wonder about the history and personality of each and every one.
About the artist: Troy Lovegates (formerly known by the moniker Other) is a world-renowned street artist and painter of found objects from Canada. Lovegates’ bright paintings criss-cross the globe on the sides of rail cars and appear both large and small on walls around the world. He has called many places home, including Montreal, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Toronto, and San Francisco. When not hopping trains or painting on walls, he turns his brush and pen to discarded books, hand-carved wooden characters, aged paper, and scavenged wooden objects, rendering patterned portraits of wizened faces as rough and aged as the surfaces they appear on. |
DAVID SHILLINGLAW Dream Machine
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 7 from 6-10pm | DJ + refreshments served
On view May 7 - May 28, 2022 in our viewing room
David Shillinglaw is a UK based artist, best known for his works exploring human nature, success and failure, and the language people use to describe their experiences. David’s practice shifts between the street and studio using a variety of materials and mediums creating work that ranges from drawings and collages to large scale murals and installations. Shillinglaw lives and works in Margate, UK.
Dream Machine is a series of works on canvas, paper and ceramics by David Shillinglaw, presenting the human head as a vessel full of dreams, a flesh machine in constant flux.
These paintings and sculptures play with the human form. Shillinglaw invites you to find yourself or someone you know in these twisted and colourful characters. Part hieroglyphic beast, part comic book hero, the works pop with humour and naive charm. A mix of modern and ancient, the sensitive and brutal, the personal and universal.
“As an artist, David wrestles with this equilibrium of order and disorder. He has returned numerous times to the Carl Jung quote: “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” His works speak of our all-consuming journey to figure out some form of neat structure. But they also suggest that we will never fully understand the world around us, and that is where the real meaning lies.
These works confront the restrictive framework that is often applied to human life, leading to rigid definitions of gender, personality type and identity. David’s portraits pull away the calm and singular facades that many people walk around with and return the human to its innately complicated, beautiful self. These portraits do away with the binaries typically used to understand humanity and offer a more open-minded, compassionate view. These figures are allowed to be exactly as they are, jumbled but whole.”
-Emily Steer (extract from the introduction to Relax, The Universe Is Expanding) |
DUSTIN MYERS The Misfit Menagerie
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 7 from 6-10pm | DJ + refreshments served
On view May 7 - May 28, 2022 in our viewing room
Dustin Myers was born and raised in Southern California, and has been following his passion for painting for his entire life. He has been drawing and painting since he was a boy and spent a lot of time at his family’s auto body shop where he developed an appreciation for color and paint. Myers spends most of his time painting, and the rest of the time he enjoys teaching and cooking. His paintings blend his many interests which include mythology, philosophy, and religion.
'The Misfit Menagerie' brings together a collection of hyper realistic miniature portraits created with oil paint on panel focusing on a unique cast of eccentric characters and their beloved animal companions. |
About Thinkspace Projects |
Thinkspace Projects was founded in 2005; now in LA's burgeoning West Adams District, the gallery has garnered an international reputation as one of the most active and productive exponents of the New Contemporary Art Movement. Maintaining its founding commitment to the promotion and support of its artists, Thinkspace has steadily expanded its roster and diversified its projects, creating collaborative and institutional opportunities all over the world. Founded in the spirit of forging recognition for young, emerging, and lesser-known talents, the gallery is now home to artists from all over the world, ranging from the emerging, mid-career, and established. The New Contemporary Art Movement, not unlike its earlier 20th Century counterparts like Surrealism, Dada, or Fauvism, ultimately materialized in search of new forms, content, and expressions that cited rather than disavowed the individual and the social. The earliest incarnations of the Movement, refusing the paradigmatic disinterest of "Art" as an inaccessible garrison of 'high culture', championed figuration, surrealism, representation, pop culture, and the subcultural. By incorporating the 'lowbrow,' accessible, and even profane, an exciting and irreverent art movement grew in defiance of the mandated renunciations of "high" art. Emerging on the West Coast in the 90's partly as a response to the rabid 'conceptual-turn' then championed on the East Coasts, the Movement steadily created its own platforms, publications, and spaces for the dissemination of its imagery and ideas. Though the New Contemporary Art Movement has remained largely unacknowledged by the vetted institutions of the fine art world and its arbiters of 'high culture,' the future promises a shift. The Movement's formative aversion to the establishment is also waning in the wake of its increased visibility, institutional presence, and widespread popularity. Thinkspace has sought to champion and promote the unique breadth of the Movement, creating new opportunities for the presentation of its artists and work. Though still very much invested in the elevation and exposure of its emerging talents, the gallery, now in its 13th year, has come into its own with a roster that reflects this maturity. An active advocate for what is now one of the longest extant organized art movement's in history, Thinkspace is an established voice for its continued growth and evolution. The gallery has in recent years expanded its projects beyond Los Angeles, exhibiting with partner galleries and organizations in Berlin, Hong Kong, London, New York City, Detroit, Chicago, and Honolulu among many others, participating in International Art Fairs, and curating New Contemporary content for Museums and Universities. Committed to the vision, risk, and exceptional gifts of its artists, the gallery is first and foremost a family. From the streets to the museums, and from the "margins" to the white cube, Thinkspace is re-envisioning what it means to be "institutional."
#thinkspaceprojects #thinkspacegallery #thinkspacefamily |
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Thinkspace Projects | 310.558.3375 | 4217 W. Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90016 |
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