STRAAT Gallery presents ‘SHARED EXPERIENCE’ a two-person exhibition showing Kayla Mahaffey and Carlos Ramirez | August 20, 2022 – October 30, 2022

STRAAT is proud to announce SHARED EXPERIENCE, a two-person exhibition at STRAAT Gallery featuring American artists Kayla Mahaffey and Carlos Ramirez, co-hosted by Los Angeles-based Thinkspace Projects.

SHARED EXPERIENCE highlights the ongoing racial pressures and class separation still rampant in the United States and how Kayla Mahaffey (b. 1994 on Chicago’s South Side) and Carlos Ramirez (b.1967 in the Coachella Valley of Indio, California), even though decades separate their formative years, each faced many of the same obstacles growing up and still do to this day, simply for being a person of color in America.

This exhibition celebrates one of the museum’s ongoing and long term aims; to show the diversity and popularity of our worldwide street art and graffiti culture.

The opening reception for SHARED EXPERIENCE is Saturday, August 20th, 2022 from 5-9 PM, and will feature refreshments and live DJ’s. Both artists will be in attendance along with the curator, Thinkspace’s Andrew Hosner.

STRAAT
NDSM-Plein 1
1033 WC, Amsterdam
The Netherlands

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES:

KAYLA MAHAFFEY
Kayla Mahaffey is a contemporary artist and muralist specializing in illustration and fine arts. Her style being a mixture of pop art and Afro-surrealism, makes for a bright and colorful experience that packs a punch and sends an important message with each piece.

Born on the Chicago South Side, she has a strong sense of resilience and community that is displayed in her art time and time again.

She studied at the American Academy of Art in downtown Chicago, taking some classes, before leaving in 2017 to pursue art full-time

CARLOS RAMIREZ
Carlos Ramirez’ painting and sculpture work often speaks of the inequalities within Mexican American communities and champions the common man as underdog.

Snakes, spiders, scorpions, and other bits of nature from his former life as a date farmer in the Coachella Valley in Indio, California, appear mixed in with Catholic symbolism, aliens, gang members, pop-culture references, and commercial imagery, giving brand logos and religious icons the same attention and placement.

Carlos’ work is tremendously resourceful, scavenging for creative materials within various abandoned desert locales.

As a former member of the seminal street art duo ‘The Date Farmers’, Carlos’ paintings continue to evolve, becoming denser and more meaningful while remaining alluring and magical.

Opening Reception & Video Tour of April 2022 Exhibitions at Thinkspace Projects

Thank you to all those who could come out and support the opening of Casey Weldon’s ’Tacit Turnabout’ and Brian ‘Dovie’ Golden’s ‘Parking Lot Carnival’. Along with Toco-Oco’s ‘The World Within’ showing in Gallery II, and Carlos Ramirez’s ‘High-Fructose‘ and new works from Langston Allston in our viewing room.

All exhibitions are on view at Thinkspace Projects now through April 23.

Continue reading Opening Reception & Video Tour of April 2022 Exhibitions at Thinkspace Projects

Photo Tour of April 2022 Exhibitions

Thinkspace presents a photo tour of our April 2022 exhibitions showing Casey Weldon’s ’Tacit Turnabout’ and Brian ‘Dovie’ Golden’s ‘Parking Lot Carnival’. Along with Toco-Oco’s ‘The World Within’ showing in Gallery II, and new works from Langston Allston and Carlos Ramirez’s ‘High Fructose‘ in our viewing room.

All exhibitions are on view at Thinkspace Projects now through April 23.

Continue reading Photo Tour of April 2022 Exhibitions

Virtual Tour of March 2022 Exhibitions

Thinkspace presents a virtual tour of Casey Weldon’s ’Tacit Turnabout’ and Brian ‘Dovie’ Golden’s ‘Parking Lot Carnival’. Along with Toco-Oco’s ‘The World Within’ showing in Gallery II, and Carlos Ramirez’s ‘High Fructose‘ and new works from Langston Allston in our viewing room.

Virtual Tour: https://players.cupix.com/p/FizgWfPU

All exhibitions are on view at Thinkspace Projects now through April 23.

Virtual tour created by Birdman

Carlos Ramirez exhibition ‘High Fructose’ showing at Thinkspace Projects | April 2, 2022 – April 23, 2022

CARLOS RAMIREZ
‘High Fructose’

On view April 2 – April 23, 2022 in our viewing room

Carlos Ramirez was born in 1967 in the Coachella Valley (California) where he is currently based. He was formerly part of the artist collaboration The Date Farmers with Armando Lerma for over a decade. The duo’s work was exhibited in museums such as Oakland Museum of California, Laguna Art Museum and Palm Springs Art Museum. The Date Farmers began working independently in 2017 and ever since Ramirez has been blazing a trail with his detail-drenched, mixed media works that echo his Mexican-American heritage rooted in California pop culture. Ramirez’s paintings, collages and three-dimensional sculptures contain elements influenced by graffiti, Mexican street murals, traditional revolutionary posters, sign painting, prison art and tattoos.

With traces of ancient indigenous art, mushrooms, and mescal, Ramirez combines familiar pop iconography and corporate logos with figures from comics, folklore and Catholicism. Desert creatures such as coyotes, snakes, and scorpions appear frequently in his works as well as found materials like stamps, bottle caps, hand painted or collaged lettering. Through his unique perspective as an American-born Chicano, Ramirez explores topical subjects with a profound simplicity.

Opening Reception:
Saturday, April 2 from 6-10 pm