Heighten your spirit and delve deep into the creative minds of Super A (aka Stefan Thelen), “Apostasy“, Manuel Zamudio, “Sunsets In The Apocalypse“, and Kyle Bryant, “Out of Many, One” as Thinkspace Projects proudly present three new collections that enrapture the senses and harness the unique visions of each artist. Follow their imagination (and yours) and let it catapult you through a wonderland of surreal compositions and wildly vibrant aesthetics.
Thinkspace Projects has a full schedule of online events for all exhibitions, including virtual tours, live streaming, interviews and much more… so be sure to follow their blog Sour Harvest to stay updated! If you’re looking to add to your budding collection of art, take a moment and visit their store to view available inventory.
Super A | Manuel Zamudio | Kyle Bryant
Super A 
Manuel Zamudio 
Kyle Bryant
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 12, 2020 | 12pm – 6pm
Exhibition Dates: December 12, 2020 – January 2, 2021
*Schedule your visit via their website / masks & social distancing required at all times*
Thinkspace Projects
NEW LOCATION: 4217 W. Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. 90016
#310.558.3375
About the Gallery // 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. 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.”
Super A (aka Stefan Thelen), “Apostasy”
Dutch artist Stefan Thelen, better known by his moniker Super A, creates hyperreal murals and studio paintings that explore the world of human contradiction. Through the combination of realistic and surreal imagery, Super A is often dealing in visual metaphor and social messaging, questioning the ideologies and cultural myths we’ve become too complacent at accepting without critique. Interested in the interrogation of objectivity and its ultimate exposure as a construct, Super A combines elements of realism with the free reign of fiction to produce unexpected results.
Apostasy is Thinkspace’s third solo presentation of Super A’s work. His well-established alias is a creative alter identity created to explore more contentious and difficult subject matter as a muralist in the public sphere. His most recent body of works strips cartoon, fairytale, or pop cultural archetypes of their fantasy and veneer, revealing the realistic or historical counterparts beneath them. An apt commentary on the dissimulation of popular cultural mythology, Super A deconstructs its theater. Super A is a mystery that leans on the art doing most of the talking for Stefan Thelen, taking the viewer into a wonderland walking down a yellow brick road in which Thelen’s figurative and modern surrealist compositions are providing playful puzzles to decipher.
Manuel Zamudio, “Sunsets In The Apocalypse”
Manuel Zamudio comes to us from the depths of the talent rich city of McAllen, Texas. He was born in Mexico City, DF, and has made his way to Texas since 1992 at the age of 5. While dealing with the challenges that often come with assimilating to a starkly different culture at a very young age, Zamudio found refuge by immersing himself in art. As a self-taught artist, Zamudio started perfecting his technique by replicating comic books, without knowing or understanding the human figure, and the concepts of color schemes. Once Zamudio grew older he started taking an interest in the urban culture of South Texas, learning color scheme, perception, shadow and so on from local graffiti artist.
Zamudio’s new line of work has been immensely inspired by great works of cinematography, street art, and post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels. Using portraits as a snapshot of his own movie, blending reality with the surreal. Zamudio’s new work will be exploring new methods on how to bring cinematography onto the canvas. As Zamudio writes: “What remains of aesthetics in a fading world? When the veil of order crumbles and the weariness of decay sets in, the soul of a society thrives, or dies based solely on the affirmations of its unique individuals upholding what identity there is left. Although despair can weigh heavily even on the lightest of humanity, perseverance in the face of hopelessness, or even madness, can become the strongest fight against inhumane desolation. In the last vestiges of a dying culture, the embers of expression are imbued in even the dimmest of lights.”
Kyle Bryant, “Out of Many, One”
Kyle Bryant graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a BFA in 2008 and has been perfecting his special brand of what he refers to as “Present Surrealism” ever since, an aesthetic bordering on the edge of a believable reality. A fine artist focusing on woodcut printmaking, Bryant recently took his oeuvre into a new direction, by adding layering and dimension to his wood-carved works.
Kyle Bryant
“The work that I create takes a traditional medium and expands upon it by completely dismantling it. After years of creating woodblock prints I decided to take one apart, carve each piece individually, and put it back together in three-dimensional form. The result is a stunning combination of artistic expression, tradition, craftsmanship and an explosion of color.”
