Thinkspace Projects is thrilled to celebrate the opening reception of new exhibitions by David Kaye, Young-Ji Cha, Stom500, Andrea Guzzetta, and group show ‘Fresh’. Styles and mediums collide with intricate storytelling, folktales, cartoons, animal compositions, and animation. This convergence of artistic expressions gives rise to a compelling creative narrative and we are beckoned forward and invited to let our imaginations wander through each intriguing body of work. These new collections serve as a testament to the boundless creativity and imagination of the human spirit… join us in celebration.
If you’re still looking to be inspired, Thinkspace Projects also offers a full schedule of events, interviews, and much more to keep you and your creative needs fully immersed. Be sure to follow their blog Sour Harvest to stay updated on all the artsy things you love! With just a few clicks, you can browse through an extensive selection of art. Take a moment and visit Thinkspace Projects’ online store to view all available inventory, created by talented artists from around the world!
Thinkspace Projects Presents
‘Fresh’ | David Kaye | Young-Ji Cha | Stom500 | Guzzetta
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 9, 2024 | 6-10pm
with DJ, refreshments, live painting, video projections and more
Exhibition Dates: March 9, 2024 – April 3, 2024
Thinkspace Projects
4217 W. Jefferson Blvd. |
4207 W. Jefferson Blvd. | 4217 W. Jefferson Blvd. | Los Angeles, CA 90016
#310.558.3375 | Tues. – Sat. Noon to 6PM
thinkspaceprojects.com
For all inquiries please contact the gallery via email at contact@thinkspaceprojects.com
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About the 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 Projects 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.
‘FRESH’, Group Show (Gallery I)
‘FRESH’ returns with a new installment this year, showcasing a vast array of styles and mediums from around the world. The majority of the creatives featured all have solo shows or larger showings ahead with us in 2024 or 2025. This special presentation serves as a bit of a looking glass into our future. We fully believe in all of the artists featured and are so excited to share them with you all.
Featured Artists // Kim Borja, GNCH, Lucas Lobo, Yu-Chun Ma | aka Pony Ma, Janiece Maddox, Eli McMullen, Muebon, Janina Myronowa, Bell Nakai, Taylor Schultek, Sr. Papá Chango, Andie Taylor, Melly, Trochez, Wang Yalong, Yokoteen, Cheong Yoon, Jaime Zacarias | aka GERMS
DAVID KAYE, ‘Whispers’ (Gallery II)
Thinkspace Projects is honored to be hosting the debut North American solo exhibition from UK artist David Kaye. In ‘Whispers’, we see Kaye brining a together a collection of his precocious li’l characters for their first big trip together across the pond.
About the artist:
David Kaye was born in Bradford, England in 1986, during the time when cartoons were at their best and going to play out in the morning and not coming home till the streetlamps came on was the norm. From an early age I was drawing the cartoons and putting my own little twist onto the things they were doing. Fast forward 10 years and I’m in the middle of Afghan with the British army, I found time to burn in between patrols so started drawing again. I practiced drawing objects that was in magazines that had been send out to us and mixed it with a cartoon aspect of the things I used to draw when I was a child.
When I left the forces, I found myself slightly lost and was told to turn to my creative side to help me. I started painting and this opened a new feeling of achievement and ambition. I took to the kitchen “that was my studio for a while” and started painting portraits where I taught myself the techniques that are seen in my work today with the realistic aspects of some of the objects in my paintings. I also started adding hidden and visible emotions within them to acknowledge some of the things that I have felt or been through.
The works are also heavily influenced by my daughter who loves everything a young girl should like unicorns, animals and everything magical mixed in with some of the toys that I grew up with. The figure that is in all the pieces is a childlike figure wearing a helmet with big glossy spheres attached and is usually accompanied by an animal or object that has a realistic aspect to it.
YOUNG-JI CHA, ‘Dear My Dead’ (Gallery III)
Thinkspace Projects is thrilled to welcome Young-Ji Cha back for her sophomore solo exhibition with us. With ‘Dear My Dead’, Cha continues to develop her universe and cast of characters that showcase underlying tropes of morality, life, and death.
Artist Statement:
‘Dear My Dead’ is a series I started with wishing for a way to deliver a message to loved ones who have passed. I wanted to create images where I could express to them how their families are doing and send them their favorite foods along with having one last drink with them. Translating death into images of my little world was my way of mourning and it lifted a lot of pure sadness when I thought of them.
The process of creating this series helped me to remember them with joyful memories and believe that they are comfortably waiting for me on the other side until it’s time. I hope these paintings can be relatable to others who are missing their loved ones and bring some comfort to them as they did for me.
About the artist:
Young-Ji Cha was born in Seoul, Korea, and currently works in Los Angeles, California. She started her training in classical fine arts and later in illustration. Her recent works are inspired by traditional Korean elements, folktales, and various forms of animation. Within her paintings lies various characters which often are juxtaposed against a thin line between reality and fantasy. Although the themes are seemingly whimsical in nature, they showcase underlying tropes of morality, life, and death.
Besides freelance illustration and gallery art, Young-Ji Cha also works with various studios within the animation industry as a visual development artist
STOM500, ‘Alliance Ethnique’ (Gallery IV)
Excited to welcome Stom500 back for his sophomore solo exhibition with us here at Thinkspace Projects. ‘Alliance Ethnique’ is a reference to the name of a French rap group from the ’90s, whose songs are always very positive and defend respect and cultural diversity. It’s a play on words to define Stom’s new exhibition as a whole:
Artist Statement:
Alliance for the “living together” aspect, the team aspect through my animal compositions, which all seem to be moving in the same direction to become one. It’s a reference to tribes from a general point of view. Both from an ancestral point of view, through masks, jewelry and fabrics and from a modern point of view, with the reflection of what is a tribe today? Sports fans? Music fans?
Wearing a Chicago Bulls tracksuit today shows that you’re a fan of the team and belong to a specific group. Every country has its own culture, idols and modern crews.
In my new works focusing on masks, the hamster refers to an endangered species in my region, which for me is a strong symbol of animals to be saved. On the other hand, the sculpture of the owl represents a very strong animal from Native American culture and makes the link with the gallery in LA. In both works, I drew inspiration from various techniques and systems to create motifs inspired by tribes from all over the planet. The idea was not to steal a tribe’s culture, but to pay homage to them. Both masks are an opening to the world around us.
About the artist:
Cultivating a delirious and humorous universe nourished by the euphoric energy of cartoons, this self-taught virtuoso from a neighboring village in the Swiss municipality of Basel is multiplying his talents. Trained as a graphic designer, professional illustrator and renowned graffiti artist for In the Over the past five years, Stom500 has been, as he defines himself with humor, a veritable “Swiss army knife”. Spray, brushes, acrylic … Large murals or small canvases: he uses a variety of mediums and styles with a predilection for animal themes which, under the varnish of pleasure, carry a relevant message, often humanistic or ecological. Like his swirling bees or his seemingly incompatible bestiaries, such as the raven and the fox inspired by La Fontaine’s fables.
ANDREA GUZZETTA, ‘Glass Houses’ (The Doghouse Gallery)
In Andrea Guzzetta’s new collection, ‘Glass Houses’, the work focus entirely on endangered species. In the centerpiece, “Mutually Assured”, several endangered species of the Amazon are encapsulated within the crystalline palace of a human skull. This piece is a reminder that the fate of humanity is intertwined with the fates of all animal life.
The other skulls, housing endangered animals of the same species, reflect how delicate the continuation of their species is. The single outlier, a group of native Everglades animals resting on the backs of manatees, represent a more hopeful scene – how human efforts can help declining animal populations as we’ve seen manatee populations increase in the last few years.
Despite all the skulls, Guzzetta’s message is a hopeful one – that the fragile beauty of the world can be preserved with the right effort.
About the artist:
Andrea Guzzetta is an LA-based artist obsessed with the harmonious relationship between love and death. She grew up barefoot in a remote part of the midwest picking berries for breakfast and spending summers laying in the grass listening to grasshoppers and watching for deer. Long enchanted by the beauty of nature, she has extensive bone, feather, and pressed flower collections from her youth and subsequent travels.
Heavily influenced by Zoobooks, Lisa Frank, Polly Pocket and Littlest Pet Shop with a sprinkling of early childhood trauma, her work focuses on cultivating perfect little worlds for her animal families full of tranquil abundance even while the promise of eventual mortality encompasses each scene. Although each piece is, at its core, a reminder of mortality, the cheery palette reflects the artist’s opinions that all is as it should be, that the promise of death is integral to the nature of life.
