Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Hosner. They and their team shared their story with us below:
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. Founded by Andrew Hosner, L. Croskey and Shawn Vezinaw – we merged our interests and talents and launched at a small space off of Melrose, moved on Silver Lake, then to Culver City… and now at West Adams District. Each time almost doubling in size and reach.
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.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
If you’re doing it right, it should always be a li’l bumpy at times. Go off-road, explore uncharted territory and push yourself as an entrepreneur and creative.
Every time we have moved on to a new and larger space in a new part of town, we were terrified, but we knew we had to grow and didn’t want to become stagnant. Gaining a new audience in a new area of town can be a scary challenge, but we have been really blessed by one of the most supportive art families a gallery could dream of, and they’ve followed us all over the place and, as we continue to grow and do curated shows in new markets, we find that our overall reach often surprises us.
Many ask us about how we’ve gotten involved in so many museum shows and I always reply with tenacity, haha. I’ve always tracked down directors and curators at museums that have shown past interest in the world of pop surrealism, graffiti and the subculture-derived worlds of comics, tattooing and illustration. Finding like-minded souls helps to open the doors at the institutional level and we’ve been lucky to find some really strong allies over the past decade at some really beautiful spaces across America. To be able to provide those opportunities for our artists is important to us and we would rather aim for institutional exhibitions over feeding the art fair beast with tens of thousands of dollars quarterly to only have works up for a few days alongside over a hundred other spaces all competing for the all mighty Dollar / Euro / Pound / etc. A museum show will always have a stronger look on an artist’s CV we feel.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
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 90s partly as a response to the rabid ‘conceptual-turn’ then championed on the East Coast, 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 18th 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 movements in history, Thinkspace is an established voice for its continued growth and evolution.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
The ever-growing and expanding art movement.
The traffic and distance between all the different art centers around the city.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ThinkspaceProjects.com
- Instagram: @thinkspace_art | www.instagram.com/thinkspace_art
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/thinkspaceprojects
- Twitter: twitter.com/thinkspaceart
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/thinkspacegallery
- Other: www.artsy.net/partner/thinkspace-projects
Image Credits
All photos will be credited to Birdman Photos
