Tag: April Opening

Late April Exhibition featuring Giorgiko at WOAW Gallery in Hong Kong

WOAW presents:

‘The Seed of Peace‘
New works from GIORGIKO

Curated by Thinkspace Projects

On view April 26 through May 25, 2023 at:
WOAW Store
5 Sun Street, Wanchai Wan Chai
Hong Kong

Thinkspace Projects is honored to be partnering with WOAW to present the debut solo exhibition in Hong Kong from the duo Giorgiko. Known worldwide for their enigmatic oil paintings depicting the bold innocence of their childlike protagonists, their universe continues to draw in new fans at an alarming rate.

In this new body of work, Giorgiko presents 25 new oil paintings and ink drawings featuring the artists’ exploration of the search for peace in its different forms and the costs of obtaining it. 

Is peace born of conflict, or found in the absence of inner and outer turmoil? Humanity has sought control over themselves, others, and their environments in its pursuit of peace. But if this search for control has not brought us closer to peace itself, perhaps peace can’t be forcefully taken or manufactured. Perhaps it needs to be planted gently.

‘The Seed of Peace’ follows the journeys of childlike characters through scorched lands, tumultuous storms, and wild dogs in search of shelter. A divine seed that grows into a pure white olive tree stands in gentle contrast to the chaos of the environment, offering the children the peace that they seek. The artist duo draws inspiration from the sacred story of Christ’s self-sacrificing death and resurrection to bring peace to many – a story paralleling the death and rebirth of a seed, which grows into a new plant and offers shade to all who would rest under it. The artists invite viewers to join them and their characters as they contemplate their own sources of peace in its temporal and lasting forms.

About GIORGIKO:
Giorgiko (pronounced jee-OR-jee-koh) is the moniker of husband-and-wife artists Darren and Trisha Inouye.  Giorgiko’s work deals with the affective dimension of the human experience through their childlike characters and mysterious dogs who represent the innocence and carnality of the human spirit and soul.

The moniker ‘Giorgiko’ is a play on the artists’ middle names: George and Songyi. Giorgi means ‘farmer’ or ‘earth-worker’ in Greek, while ‘-ko’ is the Japanese suffix for ‘child’. The resulting meaning of ‘earth-working-child’ represents Giorgiko’s ethos of depicting emotions through the eyes of a child.

Giorgiko’s work combines the simple sweetness of Trisha’s characters with Darren’s street influence, classical painting techniques, and playfully anachronistic elements, allowing their characters to transcend space and time. Through the harmonious blending of classical and contemporary in their paintings and drawings, Giorgiko explores recurring themes of feeling displaced, discovering empathy, holding onto hope, and retaining innocence. Characters in urban clothing seem stranded in the wilderness, while characters with historical attire loiter in apocalyptic urban landscapes. Long-forgotten space dogs dream of home, and so do pink-haired girls. Through moody landscapes and childlike characters, Giorgiko hopes to create a universe paralleling our own that opens a window into seeing ourselves and others sincerely and truthfully in all of our flaws and beauty.

Darren and Trisha first met during orientation at their alma mater ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. Trisha hails from a Korean immigrant family in the San Francisco Bay area and was always drawing instead of doing homework. Meanwhile, Darren is a 4th generation Japanese-American from Los Angeles who fell in love with street art in his youth. They sat next to each other in Design 1, and the rest is history. The creative duo resides in the greater Los Angeles area with their twin children.

Giorgiko has exhibited their work in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia.

About WOAW Gallery:
WOAW Gallery is a contemporary art gallery established in 2019 by Hong Kong-based entrepreneur, fashion designer, and collector, Kevin Poon. Fueled by Poon’s love for art and inspired by the years of building relationships and realizing collaborative projects around the globe, WOAW presents itself as a dynamic, flexible and multifaceted hub for artists, curators, galleries, and entrepreneurs.

From its original location in Wanchai, over their second space in Hong Kong Central, and the latest large venue in Beijing’s iconic Blanc Art Space, the gallery is focused on presenting artworks by established and emerging international artists with a fresh perspective. Regularly collaborating with leading experts and taste makers from around the globe as well as organizing their own exhibitions, WOAW is adding Hong Kong and Beijing into the wider conversation about the cutting edge contemporary art scene.

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. 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.”

Brian Mashburn’s “Axiom” opening April 29th

Brian Mashburn
Axiom
April 29 – May 20, 2017

Concurrently on view in Thinkspace’s project room are new works by Brian Mashburn in Axiom. Based in Asheville North Carolina, Mashburn creates phenomenally detailed oil paintings of foggy landscapes, in which remnants of the natural world exist uneasily alongside evidence of its all but complete industrialization.

Dark and brooding, the stylized moodiness of Mashburn’s work is inspired by the foggy mountains of Appalachia and the heavy, opaque smogs that descend upon Hong Kong and parts of Southeastern China. Like a tangible veil, the gray film is itself a dark harbinger of the destructive forces of industry. Mashburn’s landscapes are indistinct and seemingly sooty vistas, where spires of human architectures and crags of rocky mountains carve out its backgrounds. Darkly and otherworldly, they share similarities with the tradition of 19th-century gothic landscape and its championing of all things eerie, though they feel distinctly contemporary and surreal in their free mixing of historical and cultural references, architectures, and animals.

Mashburn depicts hyper-realistically rendered wildlife in his foregrounds, often posited in stark contrast to the vaporous looseness of the distances. Whether an owl, buffalo, dog, or elephant, the individual isolation of the creature, its contextual disjointedness, and abrupt displacement, when found in the midst of this caliginous world, is jarring and ominous, particularly when set against the traces of human development which are all too apparent in the beyond. These paintings read as narrative fragments, suggesting a larger story beyond the frame – alluded to but never fully disclosed. Vaguely post-apocalyptic, and beautifully thick with foreboding, they show both the vulnerability and resilience of the natural world in spite of human intervention and “progress.”

Seth Armstrong’s “Pretty Deep Shit” opening April 29th

Seth Armstrong
Pretty Deep Shit
April 29 – May 20, 2017

Thinkspace is pleased to present Pretty Deep Shit, featuring new paintings by artist Seth Armstrong. In this new body of work, the Los Angeles-based painter, born and raised, explores LA as a dystopian landscape, inspired by its off-kilter charm and its reputation for being a cultural kaleidoscope of beauty and barrenness, depth and vacancy. Known for paintings that self-consciously capture the act of looking – whether as a voyeur in trespass, a spectator in an audience, or a participant in the landscape – Armstrong captures the simultaneity of the city as a place of endless, contingent narratives, jarring interruptions, and suspenseful pauses.

Pretty Deep Shit is a tongue in cheek nod to the weight of simple things. In a time where our global and national political climate is uncertain and precarious, and the general cultural atmosphere divisive and fraught, Armstrong observes the localized, the personal, and the momentary. He looks to the poignancy of small observations, quiet corners, and unassuming moments – the intimacy of a world that continues to unfold in private spaces in spite of larger or more daunting world events. His past works have often captured a stylized take on Americana brought to life with a cinematic edge, in this new body of work similar impulses remain though they feel scaled back, more meditative and tempered, closer to observation and memory than to the staging of cinema.

The exhibition is about Armstrong’s lived observations of LA, presenting a more cohesive and intimate arrest of the city that tends to polarize or exert a gravitational pull. There’s a code of exemption in LA, a kind of freedom and fluidity from the mores of other cities that Armstrong captures through its stylization. Everything from Craftsman bungalows, parched Echo Park landscapes in the midst of drought and shiny seas of stalled cars, to motley downtown architectures, high rise windows lit by night, and voyeuristic glimpses of women in domestic spaces, reflect the ongoing, and inexhaustible, stories of the urban sprawl. Always in search of the oddly beautiful in unlikely places, Armstrong captures the grittiness and allure of a city that inspires the deepest of love/hate relationships.

Armstrong’s works offer cleverly crafted moments of suspended or anticipated action. Often the absence of human subjects alludes to their unseen presence in absentia – the traces of their proximity and activities linger in subtle seeking, much in the way the city itself is always alive with invisible stories. Though we may not have access to the narrative, its threads are implied as we move through the depicted spaces, objects, and structures. This open-ended interrelatedness is revisited throughout Armstrong’s works. A shared current connects each piece, intended in this case to be read sequentially as moments in a larger narrative arc, though each stands alone. Some offer vast views, and others contracted intimacy, moving freely in and out of public and private spaces, but they convene when seen together as a whole, and marry voyeur and subject in a single ambiguous vantage point.

Technically, the paintings are highly detailed and tend to move between looser and more painterly executions to tighter hyperrealistic ones. Each oil painting is executed slightly differently by the artist, rather than formulaically, resulting in varied physical textures and surface qualities in each. Armstrong is finessing the paintings in this current body of work, glazing details and working into the minutiae now more than ever; they feel even richer and more vibrant as a result. Though Armstrong has a preference for bright and highly saturated palettes, the tone of the work is anything but. A discomfort and strangeness loom throughout in even the brightest and most colorful scenes. His use of stark contrasts and exaggerated light contribute to a feeling of hypersensitization – a world of strange edges, soft swells, and unfamiliar intensities. Something slightly off-kilter haunts, pushing even the most seemingly familiar scenes into the realm of the subtly surreal.

Interview with Kari-Lise Alexander for ‘WAKE’

Thinkspace is proud to present Kari-Lise Alexander’s latest body of work ‘WAKE’ in our project room. Seattle-based artist Kari-Lise Alexander draws inspiration from her Scandinavian heritage painting ethereal portraits that capture transformation and vulnerability.  In anticipation of Alexander’s upcoming exhibition with us, we have an exclusive interview with Kari-Lise Alexander to discuss her creative process, progression in her style, and what a cocktail inspired by her work would be made of.

WAKE’s opening reception is from 6 – 9 pm this coming Saturday, April Ist in our main room

SH: What themes or ideas were you exploring in this latest body of work?
KLR: I wanted to explore a few different themes through the use of water and the abundance of flora in this series. First, water is never the same it’s always changing, shifting and taking different shapes. I wanted to use water to explore the changing perceptions we have of individuals and also use it at the same time to create a dreamy, mercurial, and surreal feeling to the pieces. Second, the prolific and very lush flora creates a similar feeling of dreaminess and richness throughout the work. Both the water and the flora distort and block the viewer from seeing the subject clearly, leaving us wondering what we might be missing.

SH: In this latest body of work you’ve really played with the movement of water, surrealist elements, and an inner illumination of color – what inspired this new direction/ evolution of style?
KLR: It felt like it was a natural evolution in my work to expand my use of water in my painting. In this series there’s flowing water, still water, water when it’s raining and surreal cloudy water. It created an overall feeling that is moody, dream-like, and introspective all at the same time. The other elements in the series reflect that as well such as the highly saturated color palette and the plethora of flowers that dominates the pieces.

SH: Walk us through a day in the studio?
KLR: I typically get up get my coffee, snuggle with an animal or two (I have two dogs and two rabbits, not to mention several insects) and then head down to my studio and get to work. Depending on my schedule I usually paint 6-9 hours each day during the week. I do spend a lot of time brainstorming, sketching out ideas, planning upcoming photo shoots and working with models as well.

SH: What excites you about another artist’s work?
KLR: My favorite thing about another artist’s work is if it surprises me. These pieces usually involve a smart narrative in the work, great color usage, and composition. All of those things might sound obvious for a painting or work of art, but as any artist will tell you are very challenging to get right. When a piece “surprises” me like that it’s really a delightful thing.

SH: How does is it feel to be an active artist a part of the new contemporary art movement? How do you think it will be documented in art history? Give us your one liner.
KLR: I’ve never thought about myself as an active artist within the new contemporary art movement. But, I suppose that is very true. All I really think about is what I want my voice to be in the art world and what I want to say with that voice.

I’m not really sure how new contemporary art will be documented in art history. The world moves so quickly now, and artists are trying to keep up with trends and get “likes” that I’m not sure if the movement will be here for a moment or if it will be here for some time and be notable to history.

I’m all about hard work so I would have to say my one liner would be “It’s hard work, not talent.”

SH: What are the most challenging aspects of being an artist? What are the most rewarding?
KRL: This is a hard question to answer, but a good one. I think the most challenging thing is not to let yourself get in the way of creating the art you want to. I think we tend to be our own biggest obstacle when it comes to doing anything creative. We make up reasons why we shouldn’t, we tell ourselves we aren’t good enough, and we are constantly the worst critics of what we do. We look at other artists success and judge our own work by it. All of these things get in the way of actually creating art without fear and creating the art we want to.

I learned a few years ago that if I spend time tearing myself down about my work, I’m actually wasting time instead of working on the thing/s I don’t like in my own work. It’s ok to be critical of your own work in a healthy way. However, it is not ok to be mean to yourself about it. One is productive, and the other is destructive.

The most rewarding thing about being an artist is creating a piece that you’re truly proud of or in this case a series of paintings. “WAKE” is a series I’m really proud of, and it feels like the compilation of years of what I’ve been painting and trying to figure out in my own work.

SH: If you work was translated into a cocktail what would it taste like? What would it be made of?
KRL: Well I think with this series I’d have to say it would be something fantastical with lots of different floral notes. I think it would also have to be a really colorful drink. Definitely served on the rocks with a few flower petals as a garnish. My only fear is that with all the water that is featured in this body of work the cocktail would end up being watered down!

SH: What were you listening to while creating this latest body of work, music, podcasts, Netflix?
KRL: I listen to audiobooks when I paint. I found it works best for me since I don’t have to keep looking up at a screen. Audiobooks tend to go on for hours without having to play the next episode, or stopping everything to find something new to watch or listen too. I listen to a lot of fantasy books on audio. The King Killer Chronicles, The Night Circus, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, have been some of my favorites I’ve listened to in the last year.

SH: Do you experience creative blocks? If so how do you push through it and find new inspiration?
KRL: Of course I experience creative blocks! I don’t know any artist who doesn’t from time to time. Mine usually pop up when I’ve been working really hard and haven’t given myself a break. I usually have to force myself to stop working and step back from my art. Otherwise, I’m forcing it, and I get frustrated when it’s not working out. What usually helps me is getting out into nature or going a museum. Something to get me out of my head and look at the wider world.

SH: What artist (it can be in painting or a different art form) would be a dream collaboration?
KRL: Well I would want to go back in time and collaborate with my favorite artist from the Pre-Raphaelite movement, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale. I love everything about her work from her use of color, to subject matter and composition. I think it would be amazing to collaborate with an artist that is at the top of their game and has a breadth of understanding about their craft that she did.