“Pink Skies and More,” Alex Garant, 2024. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
For many organizations, anniversaries offer crucial moments of reflection. That’s one of the reasons why Andrew Hosner, curator, publicist, and co-owner of Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles, has been meditating on the work that’s already been done and the work that’s still to come.
In 2005, Hosner, alongside his fellow co-owners Shawn Hosner and L. Croskey, identified a striking absence within LA’s art scene: spaces specifically dedicated to the new contemporary art movement. For the past 20 years, their solution, Thinkspace Projects, has fostered an indispensable and international community of artists, whether established or emerging, young or mid-career.
Each artist that exhibits with Thinkspace displays the integrity, irreverence, and experimentation often associated with new contemporary art, challenging the enduring conventions of the art historical canon. Featured artworks typically burst with jubilant colors, surrealist creatures, and humorous pop cultural references, uplifting, as Hosner claims, what’s “usually ignored by most galleries.”
On February 1, the gallery opened PERSEVERANCE in celebration of its 20th anniversary. The exhibition demonstrates an astounding creative range, one that Hosner has strived to cultivate with Thinkspace.
My Modern Met had the chance to speak with Andrew Hosner about Thinkspace’s 20th anniversary, its evolution since 2005, and the gallery’s future. Read on for our exclusive interview.
“Set Sail,” Alex Face, 2024. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“Contact,” Alfred Liu, 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“For the Needy Not the Greedy,” Alvaro Naddeo, 2024. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
What originally inspired you to establish Thinkspace?
We founded Thinkspace in the spirit of forging recognition for young, emerging, and lesser-known talents from around the world that were usually ignored by most galleries here in Los Angeles. We wanted to present and share the work of artists that got our minds racing and our imaginations flowing.
The gallery is now home to artists from all over the world, ranging from the emerging and mid-career to the established. It’s really grown into a space that has become known for having a consistently strong level of talent being presented over a variety of media with a focus on painting. We have worked very hard to earn a reputation that precedes us, and that has led to worldwide recognition of our program and our family of artists.
“Meet Again When Worlds Align,” Andy Kehoe, 2024. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“A Way Back Home,” Audrey Kawasaki, 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“Dancing With the Shadow,” Benzilla, 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
How has the gallery evolved throughout the past 20 years?
We’ve gone through several moves and transformations over the past two decades. We’ve always aimed to keep growing, morphing, and improving. We now focus on more solo presentations than in the past, and making sure we continue to explore new markets and outlets to uplift those we work to support.
In regards to where we host our exhibitions, that too has been something that has continued to expand over the years. It all started out back in 2005 in a modest space that was barely 500 square feet, just off of Melrose Avenue next to SURU and Brooklyn Projects. From there, we moved to Sunset Junction in 2006, where we established ourselves, before moving over to the Culver City arts district in 2009, where we found our groove.
We rocked things over there for just over a decade before re-locating to the West Adams arts district in the winter of 2020 due to greedy landlords. Ultimately, they did us a favor, and it helped lead us to our biggest space yet in a beautiful old warehouse space.
We will always aim to outdo ourselves; to try to one up what we did the year prior; to keep blazing our own trail in this crazy art world while never looking back.
“Thug Life,” Brain ‘Dovie’ Golden, 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“Wishful Thinking,” Casey Weldon, 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“Spray in Space,” Cheese Arnon, 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
What is New Contemporary Art and how does it relate to Thinkspace’s mission?
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 1990s—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.
Our entire mission is wrapped up in the worlds of pop surrealism, low brow, new contemporary, and hyper contemporary. It’s also focused on further exposing all the amazing creatives that make up the movement and how art doesn’t have to be elitist or viewed as something only the ultra-rich can appreciate and support.
“Backfire,” Cody Jimenez, 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“Salt Air,” Craig ‘Skibs’ Barker, 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“Restless Rhythm,” Darel Carey, 2024. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
What is the typical process in curating and mounting an exhibition? How do you decide which artists to feature?
That’s a hard question to give a quick answer to. Each show kind of has its own unique set of circumstances and themes that dictate which artists get an invite.
We usually aim to work within our family of creatives that we have established over the last several years of doing shows around the world. We try to keep a nice flow within our program so there are never too many shows back-to-back from like-minded artists. We never have, for example, too many wildlife-derived artists exhibiting too close to one another, or too many landscape-driven shows booked too close together.
“One Flower Remaining,” Fandi Angga Saputra, 2024. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“You Are Here,” GoopMassta, 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“Dylan,” James Bullough, 2024. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
What are some of your favorite Thinkspace moments from the past 20 years?
There are so many, I should attempt to write a book one day. I’ll try to share condensed versions of a couple of my favorite memories.
The first time we got to really mount a massive show outside of our own gallery space and we brought together several other like-minded independent spaces from around the Silver Lake / Echo Park area. We put on our Beyond Eden event at the LA Municipal Gallery that was housed within the grounds of the beautiful and overlooked Barnsdall Art Park. We went on to host four more Beyond Eden events, with each one drawing well over 2,500 art lovers.
Most recently, our entire scene came together to support us when we shared that Shawn [Hosner] had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. The way everyone came together from all over the world to help us raise funds and be there to support and share their love, kind words, and shared experiences with cancer in their own families has forever changed me and how I will face the future. I’m now here to be a vehicle to keep Shawn’s name and legacy alive. Fifty-seven is far too young and she had so many plans left to fulfill and dreams yet to explore.
F cancer and a big hug to anyone out there reading this that has ever had to stare it down. Shawn forever.
“Long Live BB,” Kisung Koh, 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“Boundless,” Mando Marie, 2024. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“Dusk,” Mister S (aka Mark Jeffrey Santos), 2025. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
What do you hope people will take away from Thinkspace and its work?
If folks can leave our space with a smile on their face, a desire to share the work they just experienced with someone else, and that helps to bring a small moment of joy to another human, I would say we have achieved our goal.
Art should uplift you and motivate you and we just want to be a vehicle that helps shine as bright of a light as we can on the creatives that fuel our inner fire and desire to inspire.
“First Encounter,” Sean Mahan, 2024. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“This Time Around,” Young-Ji Cha, 2024. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
“The Worrier,” Reen Barrera, 2023. Featured in “PERSEVERANCE.”
How do you envision the future of Thinkspace?
We just hope to keep going for as long as we can in order to keep the legacy of my dear wife Shawn Mary Vezinaw Hosner alive for as long as our team is able to do so and still feels the fire inside.
We definitely plan to keep collaborating with other like-minded galleries around the world and aim to expose the best new talent in the ever-expanding New Contemporary art movement while simultaneously furthering the reach of our longtime family members and doing what we can to cement their names in the history books.
Thinkspace Projects: Website | Instagram
Interview has been edited for clarity and length. My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by Andrew Hosner.
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