Thinkspace Projects’ newest lineup brings together the distinct artistic voices of Kevin Lyons, Sr. Papá Chango, and Angel Lesnikowski, alongside this month’s The Fresh Series (Session Fifteen) in a celebration of curiosity, storytelling, and wonder. These exhibitions ask not only to look, but to imagine. Though each collection speaks its own visual language, together they remind us that art has the remarkable ability to transport us somewhere comforting.
Playful creatures awaken a sense of nostalgia, evoking an instinctive warmth while quiet metaphors invite us to reflect back. Through the artist’s imagination, each body of work holds a story. It is this beautiful range of perspectives that makes each one so compelling and unexpected.
The Fresh Series (Session Fifteen) spotlight on local creatives, curated by Cannibal Flower, features new works from Carlos Canon, Wayne Chang, and Marisa Sayler.
If you need another burst of inspiration, 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!
Kevin Lyons, Sr. Papá Chango, Angel Lesnikowski
The Fresh Series 15
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 11 from 6-10PM
Exhibition Dates: July 11 – August 1, 2026
Thinkspace Projects
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
Search their hashtags: #thinkspaceprojects #thinkspacegallery #thinkspacefamily
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 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.
Kevin Lyons, The Good Life
This is a show consisting of forty 10 x 14 Monster Drawings. It is the second show in a series of shows exploring a very disciplined and somewhat rigorous approach to moving my Monster characters from graphic illustration, products and stores into the world of self-expression, fine art, and galleries. In November of 2025, I did the first iteration of this series at The Fridge Gallery in New York City. The intention was to continue with these drawings and show them in other cities that I have either lived in or intimately spent meaningful time in; New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo.
As many know, I have rarely presented my Monster characters as “art”. Rarely have they adorned gallery walls. They are most often used as graphics on everything from t-shirts to footwear, to snacks and candy, to walls and murals. I have very openly wrestled with the idea that they are or could ever become “art” in the same way that I personally view and consider “art” to be; as expressive and conceptual.
Created for self-expression, not commerce. At my core I am very much an Art Director, and as such I have been my own worst critic. Judgement leads to rationalization. Rationalization leads to overthinking and over conceptualizing. All of my little micro hang-ups surrounding my work basically have prevented me from sharing that which I love to do.
While I have personally struggled to push these characters into a gallery environment, that first show of similar drawings in NYC helped me build a modest bit of confidence to begin to see how this work could transition, even if treated more like a very controlled exercise.
Another self-imposed hang up of mine: I have never felt comfortable presenting just drawings as a complete show. However, several years ago before Covid and amidst years making more and more graphics and doing more and more collaborations, I went to see a Chris Ofili painting show at The New Museum. As part of that show, I learned of Ofili’s series of watercolors which he called “Afromuses”. Within this incredible show, these drawings/watercolors were presented as what he termed “warm-up drawings” done each morning in studio. A way to start the day. A clear daily deliverable.
Each morning. Same figure. Same medium. Same size. I was intrigued by the idea and the discipline of such repetition and control. AND I was equally blown away by the variation and the energy across all of the drawings. Could this be a means to an end for what I do? Is there something here to consider for my own practice?
Inspired by Ofili and using an equally very rigid set of rules and guardrails – same medium, same size of paper and same size Monster – I set out to create a series of drawings that hung in that first show. I limited the drawings to 10 x 14 inches on Arches watercolor paper.
No color at that time. Just black and white to start. I only used KRINK and Montana ink washes with pencil, graphite, and a little touch of aerosol. They would each take several days, but the concept was similar. As I progressed, I felt like the process and practice began to pull my Monsters out of a very graphic, cartoon-like world (“SAME OLD TRICKS”) and into some sort of semi-formal art experiment (“NEW BAG”.
By approaching them as a bridge – as studies towards a more evolved set of pieces to be determined – it allowed me to be less critical and see them simply as expressive drawings. With this simple exercise, I started to like them more and assess them differently. I began to look at them more as artworks and less like graphics. More animated. More expressive. You can almost touch and feel them now.
You can sense the way they sound. The way they might move. My confidence has always lain in the very initial act of drawing these characters. They are so fun to draw and that is why there are so many of them. So many sizes and looks and expressions. The number of different Monsters is endless. Each drawing, though rigidly briefed, allowed me to express line and form and expression.
“Yes, the drawing is sketchy, but this is how it is. I make references to the next thing I am going to make. Therefore, everything is both a sketch and a completed work.” – Artist, Josh Smith at The Drawing Center, 2024
I have often said that I do not draw these characters. I design them. I always saw this as derogatory. Lines are made straight and level. Obsessed over. Exact. Even curves are labored over. But the truth is my drawings are only finished as design. The origin itself is always loosely and rapidly drawn. There is always a burst of the pencil or the pen. A scribble turns into a series of loops and curves to form hair and eyes and teeth. The mark making itself, by its very nature, is very expressive.
The design and control parts of the process always originate from a gestural improvisation and an exploration of line. The slope is almost always slippery. I wind up bending to its path. As we slip, the more we try to stay upright, and the harder we inevitably might fall. Lessons are learned. Most of the time we simply stumble over them. All this time that I have been trying so hard to discover a bridge to expressive art making, it has always been hiding in plain sight.
For this collection at Thinkspace, I wanted to make an entirely new set of Drawings. Same rules, except now in full color. In collaborating with Thinkspace co-founder, Andrew Hosner, he made very few requests, except color. And I felt like in his city and in his space, color it is. Color it shall be. These 40 drawings, framed the same exact way, will now make a total of sixty-one in the series.
SR. PAPÁ CHANGO, Mi Mundo Azul
After painting large-scale murals in more than 15 countries, Sr. Papá Chango has gathered the experiences and knowledge acquired to bring them into the studio, and in turn, a gallery setting. We are honored to be hosting his sophomore solo exhibition here in the States and can’t wait for you all to experience his new works.
In this exhibition, Sr. Papá Chango, with his neo-baroque monsters, invites us to look at the world we live in with different eyes, to reflect on it, and to imagine a future that is more conscious, more humane, and perhaps, a blue world.
Artist Bio //
Sr. Papá Chango is a Mexican muralist that is currently based in Berlin, Germany, whose art fuses the richness of Baroque painting with the freshness of contemporary illustration.
His world and characters are rich with vibrant color, bordering between fantasy and reality. While his murals and works for galleries may seem innocent at first glance, he aims to always touch upon global issues that are important to him in his work. His intent is to touch the heart and also the mind, in hopes of inspiring people to embrace their imagination.
ANGEL LESNIKOWSKI, Mourning Vessels
Artist Statement //
Mourning Vessels is an ongoing series in which each painting centers on a different broken vessel, each one being a symbolic container for a specific story of grief. Every pot responds to a different social issue or contemporary event with war, displacement, attacks on human rights, environmental destruction, or moments of moral and psychological collapse. Some of these vessels mourn the loss of life, while others mourn the disappearance of feeling empathy, the truth, justice systems, and even hope. No two vessels are the same because no two tragedies leave the same wounds on an individual.
Each carries its own visual language, symbols, and narrative, contributing to a larger collection on what it means to witness suffering in an age of constant information. As these negative narratives happen, the pot, which represents the human condition, starts to crack under the pressure. From the cracks emerge dark, root-like forms that evoke the creeping presence of the Grim Reaper, illustrating how repeated exposure to tragedy slowly takes hold, reshaping our emotional and moral landscape.
The series was inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo, in which he described himself as feeling like a broken vessel. Rather than seeing brokenness as a weakness, Van Gogh understood it as part of the human condition and inseparable from his ability to create. Mourning Vesselsextends that metaphor, asking how much loss, whether human, moral, or psychological, we can carry before it begins to change who we are.
Artist Bio //
Angel Lesnikowski is a contemporary artist whose work explores mortality, war, women’s rights, and the emotional impact of political conflict. Her practice is grounded in a feminist perspective and often focuses on the experiences of women whose stories are overlooked or erased from history. Through painting and symbolic imagery, she reflects on fear, grief, resilience, and the complicated relationship between her personal memories and larger political forces.
Lesnikowski comes from two very different cultural backgrounds, Assyrian Iraqi and a white cowboy heritage rooted in the American West. Growing up around stories of war, survival, and life in harsh environments shaped the way she understands displacement and endurance.
These influences continue to appear throughout her work in the form of desert landscapes, symbolic figures, and recurring images such as the Grim Reaper, which she uses as a reminder of mortality and the many lives affected by violence and oppression.
Her work also reflects a deep commitment to examining political realities, both past and present. She often researches the experiences of Assyrian women and others whose histories are fragmented or missing from official narratives. By piecing together these stories, her work attempts to restore visibility to lives that have been historically ignored.
Lesnikowski is deeply devoted to her studio practice and approaches her work with a strong sense of urgency and responsibility. For her, making art is a form of personal expression and also a way to confront difficult subjects and open conversations about survival.
