New to the Thinkspace Family, artist Ricky Lee Gordon completed a stunning mural titled “I Am You | You Are Me” in Chicago for Columbia College Chicago’s Wabash Arts Corridor in conjunction with the WAC Big Walls Festival 2016. Look forward to more work from Ricky Lee Gordon in the coming months as we work his voice into upcoming group exhibitions and shows.
“This piece like most of my work deals with nonduality and interconnectedness.” – Ricky Lee Gordon
CYRCLE is a two-man collective made up of, American artists David Leavitt (Davey Detail) and David Torres (Rabi), born out of Los Angeles, California in 2010. Their artwork focuses on life, duality, and the human condition combined with the aesthetic consideration of form, typeface, color, and balance which is what creates their “signature” style.
Thinkspace Gallery in collaboration with Berlin’s Urban Nation, is pleased to present DUO, a group exhibition featuring works by internationally acclaimed contemporary art duos. The following is an exclusive Sour Harvest interview with CYRCLE.
How did you two first meet and decide to collaborate together?
We met in Los Angeles at a 4th of July rooftop party 2007 I think. There were literally fireworks, it was the gayest of times :). We spent years hanging out and developing the friendship. Painting and creating together had many ups and downs. It wasn’t until 2010 that we focused our experiences in life together into CYRCLE.
What inspires you or where do you find inspiration?
Inspiration comes in all shapes, sizes, sounds, and smells. It’s interesting where an idea can come from. By nature from birth we are absorbing information and spewing shit back out, so it makes sense that it’s just a combination of what we have learned and know (or think we know) plus feel, plus want to say. Fuck man there’s no way to answer this question without sounding pretentious, lol, but its true. It’s deep. Sometimes we think we don’t have a choice in the matter at all. We can say most recently our interest is in science and religion. Faith and Fact. What is truth?
How do you two work through conflict when creating a cohesive vision?
Basically, Davey has a very passive way of saying no, it’s kinda like saying yes but not really. Where as when I see something I don’t like I’m like FUCK NO! Fire and ice. We value each other’s opinions so it usually just takes a cigarette or two.
What is your process for collaborating, does one artist do xyz and the other abc? Please elaborate.
Our creative process is always evolving. We have uniquely different skills. Ideas are selected based on who has the superior or best-refined concept. This varies from project to project. Usually, we start with a word or defining statement which catalyzes the creative process. We tend to think thematically and tediously dissect a concept in depth which then informs the art, it’s medium, composition, and aesthetic. We treat our exhibitions as if a fashion collection, each story is like a new season, with a unique inspiration. We like to create cohesive body’s of work, that make sense when viewed in entirety or seen as a collection. With that said, we both inform each other of ideas that help explain the narrative. Davey’s strengths are in design and Rabi’s in painting and execution. We balance each other well, we have a symbiotic relationship. We are yin and yang.
Do you remember your first wall? Or have a good story to share from when you were doing a mural together…
We can Remember our first really big wall in LA. It was on Bedrock studios in Echo Park. It took over a month and basically killed us. We would have nightmares about it getting buffed, or torn down by an earthquake. So funny. Now a days its another day at the office, a wall that size will take a week. We’ve come a long way, in what feels like a very short time.
If you could live in a movie for a day, what would it be? Would you be yourself or a specific character?
RABI- Bill Murray, Groundhogs Day.
Davey- Same.
Anything else you would like to share? Next big project?
@BLACKCYRCLE @DOUGLYFESUCKS
View new work from CYRCLE during our opening reception for “DUO” Saturday, February 27th from 6 -9 pm. For additional information on the exhibit please visit Thinkspace Gallery’s website; if you’d like to receive a preview of the show make sure to sign up for the Thinkspace Gallery mailing list.
Britain’s Snik is couple Nick and Laura. Nick began working as Snik in 2005, later pairing up with Laura at the end of 2011. Working in stencil and spray paint, the duo is constantly pushing the boundaries of their medium. Snik will hand cut up to nine layers of stencils at a time, creating the depth and realism for which their work is known, with several overlays and applications of paint and varnish. The level of detail in their work is impressive, and the painterly approach of their technique is unique in its texture and dimensionality. By combining the precision of the graphic stencil cuts with the more chaotic and free application of paint, their works balance chaos with control. The same aesthetic applies to their work on canvas, where they offset the accidental aspects of studio work with drips, bleeds and smudges, with the precision of graphic stenciling.
Thinkspace Gallery in collaboration with Berlin’s Urban Nation, is pleased to present DUO, a group exhibition featuring works by internationally acclaimed contemporary art duos. The following is an exclusive Sour Harvest interview with Snik.
How did you two first meet and decide to collaborate together?
Nik originally started teasing out Snik back in 2003 after being immersed in the street art scene from visiting prolific cities across the world. We actually started speaking in 2010, both living in a small town it wasn’t long before we realised we were one of the few people that not only painted but adored finding out about new pieces painted across the globe. Late night studio sessions, ideas and bottles of wine were shared so in a short time 2011 summer came around and we both collaborated with Ben Slow on a wall in Bristol. I guess from there we realised our ideas bounced off each other well. Watching Nik work on the 2011 solo show was a great time for me to step back and really think what I could bring. Officially a duo from the Stencil Bastards show in Zurich in 2012 to our most recent show in LA with Thinkspace we’ve had a great time trying new ideas and concreting Snik being a duo.
What inspires you or where do you find inspiration?
I guess it all starts with a conversation. Whether it’s over music, films or exploring every single art form that really speaks to us. We took a lot of inspiration at the end of 2015 in Paris. The louvre always stands out to us in a big way, the colours and depths of the 16th-century paintings. But then again we can have what seems to be the best idea going but when it comes to putting spray paint and paper to canvas it can fall apart. Sometimes a late night studio session can bring about an idea that is so much fun to roll with.
How do you two work through conflict when creating a cohesive vision?
Haha, I think we are lucky that “constructive criticism” only really comes up when we paint a wall. We are both bursting with enthusiasm about ideas that we wanna do but both realise we need to take a step back to chat. Our ideas always combine well. When painting in masks its impossible to talk, so we’ve learned to trust the process and each other. Allowing each other do what we need to do and know it’s going to work…..hopefully.
What is your process for collaborating, does one artist do XYZ and the other ABC? Please elaborate.
The best way to describe it is we can admit each other’s strong points. I love messing around with colour scales and the contrast it can bring. Being clean and precise. Nik is great at being messy, to be ballsy and drag something pure and clean back to an unstructured piece. We both cut, paint and plan to produce something we can both be proud of.
Do you remember your first wall? Or have a good story to share of when you were doing a mural together…
As mentioned before it was Bristol, Summer 2011. BSU Crew (shout to cosmo, ben slow and DON). An amazing day of beers and sunshine working a wall with Ben Slow. I think if anything, it was Nik seeing I could work his stencils as well as my own and that we could have fun really bringing something to life. That something was Snik. Knowing with 2 people our walls can be bigger and bolder. One of the best feelings ever is standing back from a finished wall together.
If you could live in a movie for a day, what would it be? Would you be yourself or a specific character?
Hands down for me it’s True Romance. Alabama’s style, the crazy love story warped in pimps, murder and a classic soundtrack. I’m sure Nik would pick something completely different, maybe Lord of the Rings? Just for the scenery.
Anything else you would like to share? Next big project?
2016 is all about the walls. There’s been a lot of cutting going on, we’re ready to hit walls all over the place. Keep your eyes peeled!
View new works from the duo Snik during our opening reception for “DUO” Saturday, February 27th from 6 -9 pm. For additional information on the exhibit please visit Thinkspace Gallery’s website; if you’d like to receive a preview of the show make sure to sign up for the Thinkspace Gallery mailing list.
Yok, Australian born, and Sheryo, from Singapore, are a muralist duo and couple based in Brooklyn, New York. They first started painting walls together in Cambodia, where they realized the aesthetic and personal affinity they shared. Known for their twisted, dynamic illustrative style, and their use of stark primary palettes, they often work in red, white and black tricolor. Their hallucinatory murals feature everything from cannibalistic pizza slices to pineapple people and hot dog characters, incorporating the monstrous to the macabre with ample humor and absurdity. Eastern influences and kitschy references to surf and skate culture often appear in the work, and both artists cite 90’s cartoons like Ren & Stimpy as major graphic influences. With a love of gnarly subversive imagery, from grim reapers to deadly pina coladas, their line work is detailed, complex, and a total trip.
Thinkspace Gallery in collaboration with Berlin’s Urban Nation, is pleased to present DUO, a group exhibition featuring works by internationally acclaimed contemporary art duos. The following is an exclusive Sour Harvest interview with Yok and Sheryo.
How did you two first meet and decide to collaborate together?
Y: We met by accident, after I missed a flight and had a day to spend in Singapore. Sheryo gave me a zombie sticker and I was hooked.
We hung out for a day in Singapore and went our separate ways. We met up soon after in Cambodia and painted our first wall together and discovered we had a similar style and vision for future artworks. We also discovered a shared passion for traveling and experiencing new cultures.
S: That zombie sticker I gave Yok when I first met him must have ignited that deep passionate fire in him. It was love at first sticker for him. For me, it was all about the beard, just the beard.
What inspires you or where do you find inspiration?
Y: Inspiration comes directly from our surroundings. We draw what we are interacting with, what we are eating, what we are seeing, we are like sponges absorbing everything that comes at us and putting our twist on it. We keep a black book and all the idea’s sketches and scribbles go in there. It’s kind of like a visual diary. We spend a lot of time in NY and Indonesia so you will see a lot of influence from these two areas. For example we did a series of bad pineapples that were breaking into train yards, doing tags and getting up to no good. There is always a lot of jungle foliage and some pizza slices in our paintings. NY with a tropical angle.
The pattern work is based from batik patterns that are native to a certain part of Indonesia, they also infiltrate the artwork in various places.
S: I find inspiration in the littlest, most mundane things like dry leaves, and interesting people in interesting places. Some come to me in dreams, others on our adventure scooter rides around the world.
How do you two work through conflict when creating a cohesive vision?
Y: Normally if we are butting heads on an idea, we will just talk it out and see what works best. Sometimes we find it’s best if one person leads on a project, so there is a clear direction, and keeps things cohesive. The other person usually chimes in along the way and makes a change that makes the whole project come together in a way that would have been reached alone.
S: When things get awkward, we turn to the almighty rock paper scissors.
What is your process for collaborating, does one artist do XYZ and the other ABC? Please elaborate.
Y: We normally start with a sketch that we have both developed. Sometimes we pass the artwork back and forth, erasing parts here and there as we go till we have something we like. Some time one person will draw the whole thing but it will be based off the other persons sketch or idea, then there will be some erasing and tweaking from both sides. It’s all very organic and there is no real method, but there is definately a rhythm to it that we kind of just fell into from the first few walls.
S:
1. Arrange a beverage of choice (tea and coffee before 5pm, beer after 5pm)
2. Sit down and talk ideas and make sketch together
3. Look at sketch and erase off parts we don’t like
4. Make new sketch if needed, else skip to 5.
5. Hi-fives, more choice of bevys – rinse & repeat till too tired – sleep
Do you remember your first wall? Or have a good story to share from when you were doing a mural together…
Y: We were painting a lot in South East Asia and we were stopped for painting a spot without permission. We were taken back to the station and Sheryo was proposed to by a detective. This was all happening via a translator. It’s funny to look back on. But I was terrified I was going into a manky prison, I thought the detective was going to lock me up to take me out of the equation, Hahaha.
S: We have plenty!! Second wall in Cambodia, we painted on a public holiday, no one was around and there were a lot of monkeys on the wall, so we painted a monkey god, some local guy rode past on his motorbike and tells us to stop what we were doing because the popos were on their way to bust our asses so we ran to the nearest hostel, and some dudes from the hostel hid us and covered for us while the popos showed up.
Had a few funny comments along the way painting too, like an American guy who lived in Mexico told me I was an ornamental oriental. Thanks dude.
And also that detective who made me sit on his lap and took a ton of selfies with me, proposed to me said he wanted to marry me. So they had been looking for us for a week or so and finally turned up while we were having beers and satays (skewered chicken cubes with peanut sauce) at the front of a convenience store….He proposed through a translator and held on to my hands and looked me in the eye. Good times.
If you could live in a movie for a day, what would it be? Would you be yourself or a specific character?
Y: Mad Max would be pretty fun, adventuring around in one of those turboed out frankenstein-mobiles.
S: This is a toughie, for over a day this question has bugged me, what will i choose? But I’ve finally decide that I want to be in a Wes Anderson film as myself, but tweaked out or in Ghostbusters
Anything else you would like to share? Next big project?
Making surf shacks in various parts of the world (might or might not come with rice wine) and 10ft Sheryo & Yok characters and a short 15-minute cartoon thing more animated stuff and 3d sculptural stuff in general.
View a special installation from the duo Yok & Sheryo during our opening reception for “DUO” Saturday, February 27th from 6 -9 pm. For additional information on the exhibit please visit Thinkspace Gallery’s website; if you’d like to receive a preview of the show make sure to sign up for the Thinkspace Gallery mailing list.
A duo working out of Austria, Jana is from Salzburg, and JS is from France, near Paris. A couple, their work is stencil based, incredibly precise, and inspired primarily by their personal photographic work. Interested in combining the figurative with architecture, their outdoor pieces are primarily found in major European urban centers and tend to vary in scale. They work with a variety of media to create detailed stencils, using acrylic, ink, pencil, and spray paint on architecture, wood, glass, metal, canvas or paper. Creating these interventions in a variety of contexts, they have been known to use everything from trees in forests and railway tracks – to all manner of found materials. Often portraying people in pairs, their work is about intimacy and human connection, capturing a sense of vulnerability in the passing of time.
Thinkspace Gallery in collaboration with Berlin’s Urban Nation, is pleased to present DUO, a group exhibition featuring works by internationally acclaimed contemporary art duos. The following is an exclusive Sour Harvest interview with Jana and JS.
How did you two first meet and decide to collaborate together?
We met in Madrid in 2004. We were both spending a year in Spain and at some point we happened to live in the same apartment. Around this time, Js discovered the stencil technics by seeing many in the street of Madrid. When Js later came back to Paris he discovered more about the street art and stencil scene in Paris. He met Artiste-ouvrier who shared with him his unique technic and founded the WCA collective. Back in Austria, Jana also started to cut some stencils on her own.
We started to work together when Jana came to live in Paris. That is when we started to develop our actual work, inspired by our photographs, interest in urban architecture and portrait.
What inspires you or where do you find inspiration?
We find our inspiration in our everyday life, our personal story, our travels, places we are exploring,…
How do you two work through conflict when creating a cohesive vision?
Sometimes we don’t have the same idea or the same vision, but we are trying to slowly build something together. Conflict is often a part of our creative process. We think of it as something positive and the best way for us to work through it is to trust each other.
What is your process for collaborating, does one artist do XYZ and the other ABC? Please elaborate.
At the beginning, we did not have any exact division in our collaboration; from deciding what image to use till the realisation of the painting – we were always working together. Things changed after having two children together and we started to divide our working process a little bit more. Nevertheless, there are some parts of the process we want to do together, for instance looking for new ideas, taking photos and cutting the stencils. The execution of the artwork happens in more separate ways, Jana is more into painting with brushes and acrylics, js with spray cans.
Do you remember your first wall? Or have a good story to share of when you were doing a mural together…
Yes, we remember. Our first wall was in Paris. It showed the portrait of a photographer with an old industrial building from Paris we were fascinated by. It was in the street where we were living at that time. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but we were really excited about painting something together!
If you could live in a movie for a day, what would it be? Would you be yourself or a specific character?
We’ve recently watched “Only Lovers Left Alive” by Jim Jarmusch and we really loved it. We loved the ambiance, the decor, the symbolism.
Anything else you would like to share? Next big project?
We are very excited to show more of our work in the US, in Los Angeles, with Thinkspace Gallery and in April in Chicago at Vertical Gallery. We are also so happy to have our first solo show in London coming up this year!!
View new works from the duo Jana and JS during our opening reception for “DUO” Saturday, February 27th from 6 -9 pm. For additional information on the exhibit please visit Thinkspace Gallery’s website; if you’d like to receive a preview of the show make sure to sign up for the Thinkspace Gallery mailing list.
