LA Contemporary Gallery

Los Angeles, California, LA Contemporary is thrilled to present “LA Style III”, a group exhibition featuring 5 street artists’ works with dynamic transformation of wall writing vocabulary. Alex Kizu (Defer) and Hashim Thomas return for their 3rd round for “LA Style” with a new body of work and Chase and Joe X2 were added in LA Style II last year. It is the first debut show for Jorge Oswaldo at LA Contemporary.

“LA Style III” not only expands on the traditional tagging materials and wall writing styles, but also reflects a new wave of visual expressions in LA street artists’ point of view.  Exploring experimental practices with various mediums on the subject of, “Wall Writing”.

Chase and Hashim Thomas both use spray paint and stencils. Hashim also uses acrylic and paint markers as his tools to express the variation of his personal feelings into the subtle realm. Furthermore, Chase and Hashim often use icons in their work such as pop icons and role models in the society as the symbols of awareness; Ghandi, Jimi Hendrix, geezers’ eyes, etc. Recently, Chase gave a lecture at University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. In addition, he painted the mural in front of a live audience at the Time Warner Center located at Columbus Circle at NYC that was moved to Grand Central Station. Currently, he is working on a new mural project in Amsterdam, Holland.

Alex Kizu (a.k.a. Defer) is one of pioneers of the LA Graffiti movement who also started K2S, one of LA’s most respected crews. Defer is known for his precise and unique styles of lettering with visual ideas. His inspiration is drawn from his deep connection with LA history, thus his subject matters capture the pulse of the city. His style is both natural and supernatural. In addition, Defer’s work conveys strongly positive massage to the community and for the future generation of youth.

Jorge Oswaldo was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the US in 1981. His artistic talent has been incorporated with graphic design. In early 2008, he partnered with Skinit, Sprint, T-Mobile, Alltel, HP, and BestBuySkins to distribute his designs on self- adhesive 3M Skinit skins for technology products. His cluster formations reflect an LA lifestyle, one that is lacking in depth, sugary, shiny, congested, vain and consistently demanding more visual attention.