You can’t deny the amount of inspiration that builds inside while looking at these new bodies of work. If you’re searching for something to fill your day with joy and waves of creativity at its best, or perhaps you’re doing a little early holiday shopping… Thinkspace Projects invites you to join the celebration and relish the solo exhibitions of Boris Anje, Oscar Joyo, Stephanie Buer, and Jimbo Lateef. As a unite or individually, each collection and visual narrative will surely captivate you.
If you didn’t already know, there’s always something exciting happening at Thinkspace Projects so if you want more, they have a full schedule of online events for all exhibitions, including virtual tours, live streaming, interviews and much more… be sure to follow their blog Sour Harvest to stay updated on all the artsy things you love! If you’re looking to add to your budding collection of art, take a moment and visit their store to view available inventory.
Boris Anje 
Oscar Joyo 
Jimbo Lateef 
Stephanie Buer
Boris Anje, Oscar Joyo, Stephanie Buer, Jimbo Lateef
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 13, 2021 | 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates: November 13, 2021 – December 4, 2021
Thinkspace Projects
4217 W. Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. 90016
#310.558.3375 | contact@thinkspaceprojects.com
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.
Boris Anje, Black Is the Color of Gold
Thinkspace Projects is thrilled to present Boris Anje’s (aka Anjel) latest body of work and U.S. solo debut, ‘Black Is the Color of Gold.’ Featuring an entirely new collection of his vivid neo pop portraits of contemporary African dandies, this exhibition is wildly engaging.
By placing his subjects against contrasting heavily logoed backgrounds, Anje reveals their sartorial elegance and pride, while drawing attention to the pervasive influence of consumer culture. His work toes the line between societal issues including race, identity, and consumerism. Paying special attention to depicting compelling portraiture from different generations, Anje’s work creates an unspoken dialogue between the subject and viewer.
In these paintings, I portray joys, fears, emotions, and happenings to situate the viewer in the same realm as my subjects, who are painted in logoed atmospheres of brilliant colours. These brands are repurposed as devices of pride, of protection, of projection, and in a way, a level of armor. They serve as a membrane between what the subjects feel and what they’re trying to project out into the world.
Using the garment as a device of storytelling, Anje channels, first and foremost, pride from his subjects. The pop culture influence is undeniable, adding layers to the paintings beyond physical realism that pull viewers in. A recent new addition to Anje’s work is his use of symbols from the Adinkra alphabet, which is a contemporary way of writing some of the languages spoken in Ghana and Ivory Coast, including Akan, Dagbani, Ewe and Ga. The Adinkra symbols are sometimes utilized in the logo designs of entrepreneurial brands, where the symbols are used to represent sayings, proverbs or concepts, such as wisdom, strength, unity, wealth, love and peace.
I want to give value to the black body,” Anjel declared from his studio in the Cameroon coastal city of Douala. “I’m trying to give some kind of attention, some kind of attraction, to the person of color.
About // Born in 1993 in Bamenda, Cameroon, Boris Anje Tabufor (aka Anjel) discovered art in early childhood. Immediately after his BAC in 2012, he took the entrance exam to the Foumban Institute of Fine Arts (IBAF). During his studies he attended the workshops of certain local artists and the contemporary art center Les Ateliers Sahm in Brazzaville where he met the sappers. In 2015, he obtained a professional license in drawing-painting from IBAF and then his Master’s degree in 2018. He is currently pursuing research and artistic production. Some of his works have found their home in major collections such as the permanent collection of the World Bank in Washington, GANDUR Foundation, and also in the personal collections of high profile collectors all over the world. He lives and works in Douala, Cameroon.
Oscar Joyo, HOME_BODY
Thinkspace Projects is excited to present Oscar Joyo’s debut west coast solo show, ‘HOME_BODY.’ In this collection Joyo strikes a balance between honoring his Malawian heritage and the world around him, resulting in pieces that were created both for himself and a broader audience. In this case, HOME_BODY has a double meaning. The first is the one most of us are familiar with, being someone who finds joy being at home, and the second is a more personal approach, referencing the world that is always active in Joyo’s mind.
Joyo is becoming well known for his expressive portraiture that features his unique combination of photo realism and tribal patterning rendered in bright neons, coated in layers of thick, clear resin. His process-driven practice fuses together traditional and digital mediums to explore imagery and themes connected to afrofuturism and afrosurrealism, all imbued with a spiritual psychedlia. For Joyo, the creative process is profoundly influenced by music, and his interest in visually representing the sounds he perceives. As Joyo overlays his portraiture with vibrant, dynamic lines, shapes and patterns, they are in response to musical tempo, timbre and mood. As he further explores and understands his personal relationship with sound and it’s conversion into visual imagery, Joyo hopes that this synesthesia will be a point of connectivity for the viewer.
These works are inspired by anxieties and personal revelations during times of turbulence. HOME_BODY expresses a feeling of solace while exploring new and evolving themes within my practice. This body of work is a result of finding comfort and growth within oneself.
Each element of the pieces works together to create this complex exhibition. Instead of a traditional orientation with each painting, Joyo opted to maximize the depth and dimension. The resulting collection explores balance, growth, and evolution.
About // Oscar Joyo (b.1992) is a Malawian born, Chicago based artist. His genre of work blends elements of Afrofuturism and Afrosurrealism. Oscar’s love for the arts began as a young boy drawing cartoons in Malawi. He and his passion for art traveled all the way to Chicago, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Life Drawing at The American Academy of Art in 2015. Shortly after graduating, he explored and developed his technique of tribal patterns and vivid portraiture. His primary medium is acrylic paint and resin on wood. The recent inclusion of resin as a top layer is a means to create dimension and depth within his paintings. Oscar attributes his chromesthesia (the ability to see colors when hearing sounds) to his use of various gradients and psychedelic colour schemes. He pays homage to his Malawian heritage by his use of percussive shapes and patterns that breathe life into the paintings while simultaneously celebrating Blackness and hope for a better future.
Stephanie Buer, Hiraeth
Hiraeth is a Gaelic word, meaning to miss/long for a place that you can never visit again. It perfectly captures the emotions felt by Buer for her beloved Packard Plant in Detroit, Michigan. Once a sprawling, lawless urban metropolis that was the epicenter of a decaying Detroit, as the city pulls itself up by the boot straps, the Packard Plant has slowly begun to be torn down and is no longer the playground for urban explorers it once was. Hiraeth is Buer’s love letter to the Packard, painted on small wood panels that are meant to recall the look and feeling of flipping through printed photographs and reliving memories of one’s past, a past that can no longer be revisited, as you look through the images…of what once was.
About // Stephanie Buer (b. 1982 USA) began pursing a career in art at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan where she fell in love with the city and urban exploration. She spent the next ten years living in Detroit and developing as an artist. Her urban landscapes explore the many layers of history found in the marginal areas of cities. From the imprints of industry and production to its eventual decay. Each subject has a historical context, an original purpose that is now lost. She is fascinated by how these places change as they succumb to the manipulation of vandals, artists and the resilience of nature ever slowly growing alongside. Through her art Stephanie seeks to find beauty and peace in these forgotten and unloved areas of cities. She currently works in Portland, Oregon at her studio in the Falcon Art Community.
Jimbo Lateef, Shades of Feelings
Shades, as used in this context, means a variety of emotions, even when those feelings are similar to each other, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, and behavioral response.
Emotion effects the way autobiographical memories are encoded and retrieved. Emotional memories are reactivated more, they are remembered better and have more attention devoted to them. Through remembering our past achievements and failures, autobiographical memories affect how we perceive and feel about ourselves.
About // Jimbo Lateef is a Nigerian artist from Lagos, Nigeria (b.1999). He studied Art at Yaba College of Technology. Lateef explore using modern calligraphy also known as contemporary calligraphy to represent his subject as an identity and style in art ranges from functional inscriptions and designs to fine-art pieces where the letters may or may not be readable, in my own aspect is not readable, it just a design that’s represents the forms of the subject.
