Preview: Invisible College Group Exhibit @ FWMOA [Fort Wayne, IN]

The folks over at Thinkspace gallery have made a habit of branching out from their spot in Culver City, Ca to curate and co-curate exhibits in spaces located in outside cities, states, and even countries, effectively broadening the visibility of both the artists and the new contemporary art movement that they represent to a wider audience.  The most recent example of this approach arrived with last month’s LAX/DTW exhibit, which saw them teaming up with the Inner State Gallery in Detroit, Michigan for a group exhibit, and featured Detroit area landscape artists, and personal favorites, Stephanie Buer and Liz Brizzi.  Now, merely a week after that exhibit ends its run, comes Invisible College, another group showcase which takes Thinkspace co-owners, Andrew and Shawn Hosner, all the way out to Indiana and, more specifically, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, home of their co-curator on the project, Josef Zimmerman.  It’s a truly inspired approach that Thinkspace is adopting, by making such efforts to move outside of their comfort zone of Los Angeles, where such art has already proven quite successful.  By reaching across the country to areas that aren’t as widely acknowledged, as they are doing — in the past, they have even gone as far as Hong Kong — they are not strictly benefiting from the cross promotion, networking, and getting their own artists names out there, or even just shining additional spotlight on the artists native to those areas that they are visitors in, but they are also effectively operating as ambassadors for the entire movement itself.

Beyond these basic motivations, the more specific concept behind Invisible College is explained on the FWMOA site as follows:

Invisible College explores the aesthetics of a movement that has devised its own course; one that has been largely defined outside of institutional contexts. Moving away from the standard art education model that demands graduate school, an excess of critical rhetoric and an art world careerism, these artists, many of whom are self-taught, have sought their own inspiration and voice instead, drawing on everything from popular culture and social media platforms, to street art, murals and graffiti. This group exhibition is co-curated by Andrew and Shawn Hosner of Los Angeles’ Thinkspace Gallery, and Josef Zimmerman of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. The exhibition will feature new and representative works by 46 artists belonging to the New Contemporary movement.

In other words, this is an event designed specifically to bring awareness to the New Contemporary Art movement by infiltrating another territory where they hope to plant some seeds that may help to further grow a thriving and complimentary scene in the area.

Of course, this seems to be a continued mission for Thinkspace, and one that I support, but what really stands out for me with this show, in particular, and what I’m the most enthusiastic about, is the large variety of slightly less orthodox visual works that will be on display for it.  There are a number of incredibly solid painters being featured in this exhibit, along with a number of incredibly solid paintings, but I really love seeing so many left field mixed media works being contributed for this one, especially by artists that are really stepping outside of their respective boxes.  Back in February, during the 20 Years Under The Influence Of Juxtapoz exhibit (also co-curated by Andrew Hosner), Invisible College artist, Brett Armory, debuted a piece titled, “Johnny At Hollywood Center Motel,” which built on his typical medium in oil painting to construct a more expansive scene/work in the form of an installation piece, complete with flickering neon motel sign.  For this show, it’s exciting to see him continuing to experiment and explore similar territory.  Back in March/April, New York painter, Erik Jones, exhibited his solo show Color/Full at Thinkspace, which featured the artist taking his trademark aesthetic of beautifully merging the figurative and abstract in his paintings a step further, by infusing them with 3-dimensional elements and layers — one of the pieces from that show will appear in this Fort Wayne exhibit, as well.  As evidenced by the sample of preview images that we’ve provided in this post, there are a number of similarly creative works on display for Invisible College, guaranteeing that you’ll see at least one thing that you haven’t quite witnessed before.  If you’re in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area and have the opportunity to witness them in person, that’s even better.  This is going to be a good one and it runs until the end of September.

Included in ‘Invisible College‘ are site-specific murals and installations by:
Andrew Schoultz, Brett Amory, Cyrcle, Mark Dean Veca , Troy Lovegates

And here’s a….

Lull list of Contributing Artists:

Adam Caldwell, Adrian Falkner, Alex Yanes, Allison Sommers, Amanda Joseph, Andrew Hem, Brian M. Viveros, Christine Wu, Cryptik, Curiot, Daniel Dienelt, David Cooley, Drew Leshko, Ekundayo, Erik Jones, Ernest Zacharevic, Gaia, Jacub Gagnon, James Marshall (Dalek), Jeff Ramirez, Jeremy Fish, Joel Daniel Phillips, Jolene Lai, Kay Gregg, Keita Morimoto, Kevin Peterson, Know Hope, Kwon Kyungyup, Luke Chueh, Matt Small, Meggs, Natalia Fabia, Nosego, Ravi Zupa, Sandra Chevrier, Sarah Joncas, Scott Radke, Seth Armstrong, Stephanie Buer, Tony Philippou, Troy Lovegates, Yoskay Yamamoto, Yosuke Ueno

Check out a selection of preview images for the exhibit below the following event details…

WHAT:

“INVISIBLE COLLEGE”
Co-curated by Thinkspace & Josef Zimmerman

WHEN:

Opening:
Satruday, July 11th, 2015
7pm-10pm

WHERE:

Fort Wayne Museum of Art
311 E Main Street
Fort Wayne, IN 46802 

ADDITIONAL INFO:

Opening: – Musical performances at 9PM from Lost Lakes and Heaven’s Gateway Drugs
Entry fee: $7 admission / $5 for members
A portion of the proceeds from the show will be donated to the Indiana Youth Group
Exhibit will be on view until September 27th 2015.

Gallery Hours:
Sunday, 12 – 5 pm
Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 8 pm