Tag: Christopher Konecki

December Opening Reception of Dulk’s “Legacy” and Christophe Konecki’s “Size Matters” with work by Spenser Little in the Thinkspace Office.

We’re proud to be closing out 2018 with a fantastic show by Dulk, Christopher Konecki, and Spenser Little at the Thinkspace Projects gallery in Culver City. The exhibitions opened December 1st and will be closing this weekend.

Dulk’s Legacy showcases an almost sold out gorgeous body of work, and Konecki’s Size Matters is a collection of imaginative modern sculptures. In the office space, Spenser Little’s wire portraits continue to awe and perplex viewers. There are only two more days to see these exhibitions, tomorrow Friday, December 28th and Saturday, December 29th. Don’t miss out!

Interview with Christopher Konecki for “Size Matters”

We’re thrilled to present new works by San Diego-based painter, muralist, and sculptor Christopher Konecki in our project room. The exhibition Size Matters is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and will showcase Konecki’s self-taught techniques experimenting with new materials to create mixed media sculptures. In anticipation of the exhibition, our interview with Christopher Konecki discusses his creative process, the piece that challenged him, and dream collaboration.

SH: For those that are not familiar with you and your work, can you give us a brief look at your artistic background and zodiac sign?

CK: Well if they are not familiar with my art then they are blowing it! Naw, just kidding. I am a self-taught artist out of San Diego. I began painting at a young age and learned how to scale my work up to murals a few years ago. I became fascinated representing architecture in new ways wanted to express my ideas in the third dimension. With the help of some mentors and endless experimentation, I learned how to build my ideas as miniature mixed-media sculptures. I love the versatility the media provides and the way that model making brings out the child in the audience. Now I get to travel and make art – which is awesome. Um, I think I’m a Libra?

SH: What was the inspiration behind this latest body of work?

CK: With, SIZE MATTERS, I wanted to display the current political and social climate through the lens of degrading Mid-Century Modern structures. I tried to capture the irony of the optimism of the American nuclear generation and the monuments they erected that are now faded crumbling remains.

SH: You’re a muralist and sculpture artists. How did you get into sculpture? What made you want to explore that medium? How do the different mediums inform each other?

CK: l have always tried to envision my paintings as sculptures. I just needed the physical skill and time to create them. I began building with simple forms and then added complexity as my skill level increased. Sometimes I will paint something I deem too difficult to build and while painting the piece will begin to unravel the 3d design. The murals inform the sculptures and vice versa.

SH: How do you capture ideas for pieces; do you have a sketchbook on hand or is it just a note to yourself in your phone?

CK: I use a lot of reference for my work. I never know what might inspire me – maybe a small detail on a corner or some sign somewhere. I get the idea down as fast as I can using whatever I have near. Usually, I have my ipad with me and can bust out a quick sketch.

SH: What excites you about your work / creative process?

CK: It is limitless. The extent of my imagination is the well in which I draw from. I’m not concerned with exact replication as a scale model maker. I try to display the world as I see it.

SH: What frustrates you about your work/ creative process?

CK: No one sees all the mistakes. Sometimes I will destroy or lose a small piece that I have put time into creating and have to start over.

SH: If your body of work inspired an ice cream flavor, what would it be called and what are the ingredients?

CK: Rusty Road- Like Rocky Road but with rusted metal flakes and some lead-based paint chips.

SH: Who is an artist; musician, director, any art form – who would be a dream collaboration for you and what would you create?

My dream collaboration would have been to create models for a Kubrick film. That guy was a genius so far ahead of his generation. That would have been a great honor for me.

SH: Is there a particular piece in this exhibition you feel really challenged you? If so, why and what makes you proud of this piece?

CK: “Smoke a Bowl” was the most interesting build by far. I wanted to make a piece that was about zoning out and smoking weed but not have it be typical ‘weed art.’ I need to find a balance between the Mid-Century signage and the practical fact that its a bong. I feel that the message is the primary focus of the piece and weed culture is secondary.

SH: Favorite way to celebrate the completion of a project/body of work?

CK: I love to travel and paint. Maybe a few days off where I don’t have to produce and can simply create for myself. However, I’m super busy and don’t see time off in my immediate future

CHRISTOPHER KONECKI “SIZE MATTERS” COMING IN DECEMBER

CHRISTOPHER KONECKI
SIZE MATTERS
December 1, 2018 – December 29, 2018

Concurrently on view in the Thinkspace project room are new works by San Diego-based painter, muralist, and sculptor Christopher Konecki in Size Matters, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. A self-taught artist, Konecki continually experiments with new materials and techniques, creating mixed media sculpture, site-specific murals, and installation works, inspired by his observations of the built environment and the human interactions that animate it.

Interested in the relationship between people, technology, and communication, Konecki considers how we inhabit our environments, for better or for worse, with varying degrees of play and irreverence. Often working with reclaimed or found objects and materials, Konecki enjoys the process of resurrecting the castaway and recalibrating an object’s perceived worth or value by giving it a second lifespan. Opposing elements from the natural and urban worlds coexist in crisp conglomerates and hybrid structures in Konecki’s works. These artificial harmonies struck from the raw material of urban chaos, draw our attention to the universal experience of constantly arbitrating the city’s tensions.

Opening Reception of SWANK at Thinkspace Gallery

The opening reception of Swank on September 2nd debuted nine artists from the gallery’s roster, whose work and recognition are on the rise. Each brings their own unique stylistic and technical approach to their practice, and though they share loose affinities, the grouping demonstrates the diversity and latitude of the New Contemporary Movement. Michael Reeder, David Rice, Tran Nguyen, Wiley Wallace, Molly Gruninger, Alex Garant, Sean Norvet, Christopher Konecki, and Lauren Brevner were curated by the gallery for this exhibition as promising new voices to watch on their ascent.

 Please visit the Thinkspace Gallery website to view available work from SWANK,

Next Up at Thinkspace Gallery – “Swank” September 2 – 23, 2017

SWANK
GROUP SHOW
September 2 – September 23, 2017

Thinkspace is pleased to present Swank, a group show dedicated to showcasing nine artists from the gallery’s roster, whose work and recognition are on the rise. Each brings their own unique stylistic and technical approach to their practice, and though they share loose affinities, the grouping demonstrates the diversity and latitude of the New Contemporary Movement. Michael Reeder, David Rice, Tran Nguyen, Wiley Wallace, Molly Gruninger, Alex Garant, Sean Norvet, Christopher Konecki, and Lauren Brevner were curated by the gallery for this exhibition as promising new voices to watch on their ascent. Michael Reeder

Michael Reeder
Dallas-based painter Michael Reeder graduated with a BFA in painting from the School of Visual Arts in New York and works as both a fine artist and freelance graphic artist. Reeder combines figurative references with abstract motifs, graphic patterns, negative space, and an illustrative style to create concise and impactful compositions. Exploring the shifting of identities and the instability of the self as central themes, Reeder uses the portraiture element in his work as an armature around which visual signifiers are hung. The paintings begin with the same reference image of a stranger, rather than a particular individual, to emphasize the general universality of the themes, and to stress the alterable and transfiguring aspects of the human in flux. Reeder taps into a feeling of dislocation and absence as a trope for the volatility of the individual caught in the incoherence and discontinuity of the modern day. Psychologically provocative, Reeder’s paintings are thoughtful deconstructions of the fragmented self.

David Rice
David Rice is a Portland-based artist, illustrator, and designer. Having grown up in rural Colorado, Rice is deeply inspired by nature and its wildlife. The natural world figures prominently as a recurring theme in his detailed works, as he combines the human with the animal in playful and unexpected encounters. By individuating his animals as personified subjects rather than undifferentiated specimens, they take on new symbolic and narrative value as extended metaphors. Geometric patterns and graphic motifs are drawn from textiles and other decorative elements to tie his compositions together. These elements punctuate his works with moments of abstraction while also referencing contained, domestic human spaces in stark contrast to the limitlessness of the wild.

Tran Nguyen
Born in Vietnam, Tran Nguyen emigrated to the US with her family at the age of three. She completed a BFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Interested in exploring the psychologically evocative potential of the surreal, she channels visual dreamscapes as a therapeutic means of investigating the mind’s potential to heal through imagery. Her practice is drawing-based with graphite and pencil figuring prominently in her works on panel as well as on paper. Delicate and softly diffused, highly detailed figurative elements in the works are set against expanses of vaguely defined space. Playing with shifts in scale and context, Nguyen allows her powers of free association to shape and turn her shadowy worlds.

Wiley Wallace
Wiley Wallace completed a BFA in intermedia arts at Arizona State University and an MFA from University of California, Santa Barbara. A painter with a metaphysical interest in surreal worlds and pseudo-science fiction themes, Wallace often depicts his own children as protagonists on the edge of unknown universes. At times eerie and even grotesque and others understated and subtle, his works combine a dizzying array of visual devices to denote suspension, transition, or immersion in alternate realities. At times realistic depictions deliquesce into abstract blurs of bright colors, while at others subtle apparitions make their way into otherwise unassuming everyday scenes. His ambiguous depictions feel like personal meditations on mortality, the existence, and dissolution of boundaries, and the presence, whether literal or philosophical, of worlds beyond.

Molly Gruninger
A graduate of Ball State University, Los Angeles-based Molly Gruninger is interested in exploring themes like camouflage, the contemporary role of technology in our society, identity, and the shifting nature of perception. At first glance, excessively smooth and dimensionally ambiguous, her figurative works appear to be digitally generated. Upon closer inspection, however, they are in fact highly detailed oil paintings on canvas. Exploring the idea of self-ornamentation, and by proxy the excessive nature of materialism and consumption in contemporary society, Gruninger pushes the artificiality of self-adornment to a literal point of complete synthetic conversion. In a compelling inversion of process, Gruninger creates photorealistic depictions of a seemingly digitally generated form, creating a subject that exists in some strange hyper-real limbo.

Alex Garant
Toronto-based artist Alex Garant creates portrait paintings with a combination of hyper-realistic painting techniques and a graphic aesthetic. Garant intends to overwhelm and saturate the viewer’s senses with an optical distortion, creating subjects that seem captured through multiple exposures. Using an alla prima technique in which layers of wet oil paint are applied over top wet under layers and executed in a single sitting, Garant creates hauntingly beautiful figures that seem to actually reverberate with frenetic energy and life, somehow caught off register between temporal dimensions or physical layers of reality.

Sean Norvet
Los Angeles-based artist Sean Norvet attended Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, graduating with a BFA in 2013. His unique take on portraiture relays a chaotic and satirical mash-up of cultural references. Distorting the human anatomy of his subjects to the point of total obliteration, his portraits become grotesque, clever and playful amalgams of skin, random objects, food, detritus, type, and cartoons, all parodying the more abhorrent and absurd aspects of American life. Norvet’s subjects become literal and observational reflections of their context and periphery. It’s as though the person’s face, identity, and corporeality are engulfed and consumed by the culture in which they’re immersed. Combining a photo-realistic painting technique with an excessively cartoonish and hyperbolic artificiality, Norvet seizes the viewer in a hallucinogenic distortion of portraiture.

Christopher Konecki
Sand Diego-based Christopher Konecki is a self-taught painter, muralist, sculptor, and installation artist. Drawing inspiration from his surrounding environment and an experimental penchant for the creation of new forms, Konecki creates works that harness a feeling of stylistic chaos and strategic balance. Interested in the reuse of found materials, he revitalizes public spaces and castaway objects to elevate them aesthetically and change the perception of their value. Natural imagery figures prominently in Konecki’s work as he explores the intersection of urban manmade spaces and architectures and the ubiquitous prevalence of technology alongside disproportionately scaled wildlife elements. This juxtaposition of worlds highlights their conflicted coexistence in the modern city and the absurdity of their tangential relationships. His palettes are often cool and subdued, an understated stylistic choice that refocuses attention on the dynamic interaction of the compositions’ disparate facets, and synergy of its parts.

Lauren Brevner
Vancouver-based artist Lauren Brevner explores the feminine in her mixed media portraiture. Using oil, acrylic, and resin, she incorporates Japanese chiyogami, yuzen, and washi papers through collage as well as gold and silver leafing, both traditional Japanese techniques, as an homage to her roots. In 2009, she moved to Osaka, Japan, to reconnect with her cultural heritage and ancestry, and this immersion has had a significant impact on her artwork. Inspired by 19th-century Japanese art, as well as Western European Art Nouveau and Symbolist painting of the same period, and modern abstraction of the early 20th century, Brevner’s work feels both contemporary and historically referential. Her use of flattened graphic space is offset by the detail of her delicately rendered portraits. Striving to re-appropriate the vantage point of the “gaze,” her work seeks to counter the objectification of the feminine, empowering her subjects as sensual and self-possessed entities.