The Lorin Gallery is excited to announce our first group show curated by @leagueoto. ⚔️

“All is not what it seems”.

Lorin Gallery Group Exhibition

“All is not what it seems.” This show will run from April 16th to May 14th, 2022, with an opening reception on April 9th from 6 to 8 p.m. Six gallery artists will be featured in the show: Yam Shalev, Christina Allan, Ellie Kayu Ng, Jonathon Downing, Arkiv Vilmansa, Jingyi Wang, and finally, Socko. The exhibition will explore the relationship between the forms, themes, and techniques of this diverse range of contemporary artists.
Yam Shalev is a painter based in Berlin, Germany, originally from Tel Aviv, Israel. This new painting style came as a complete surprise. At first, he was exploring some post-digital direction combined with his hyper-realistic main training in exploration in a digital dimension. He is trying to get as personal and authentic as he can when painting. " Nowadays, I’m trying to expand the narrative and the space of my paintings as much as I can. Obviously, I am still giving color and voice to what’s playing a role in my life and inspiring/influencing me. But I would love to slowly provide a stage for more scenes from my everyday life. The food is the most personal thing I can always imagine ppl and scenarios through, but not only. And hopefully, I’ll be able to show it in our upcoming show together at Lorin’s."

Christina Allan, known for her expressive and fantastic paintings, Christina Allan is fueled by the individual and collective anxieties surrounding the human condition. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Allan moved to New York City in 2013 to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. From dramatic mythical scenes to deeply introspective psychological portraits, Allan’s canvases populate a world of creatures and references to fantasy, from angels and deities to Pegasi, spirits, and psychopomps. A blend of abstraction and figuration, her fictional narratives take place in a natural realm that is dreamy yet real, mirroring how existence can often feel like a rigged game or fleeting dream." In these paintings, I reimagine the personification of death - The Grim Reaper - through a humanistic lens. A prominent figure in human culture, Reapers have often been depicted as evil spirits that prey on mortals instead of guiders of souls into the next realm. "

Ellie Kayu Ng is a painter based in Brooklyn, NY. She studied Illustration at the School of Visual Arts and recently received an MFA in Painting at the New York Academy of Art. Her current work employs clothing as a language, and she's utilizing this language on canvas to communicate identity. Her work has been published in juried exhibitions, such as New American Paintings and Friend of the Artist. "Clothing is a language that speaks for people before they even say a word. But as an immigrant seeking a sense of belonging in America, I often dress to blend in, which results in my wardrobe having a limited vocabulary. As a result, I silence my truthful self. So I came up with a solution: I paint borrowed outfits and accessories to communicate through them on canvases, where rules and norms don’t apply."

Jonathon Downing, his paintings aim to depict subjects that are simultaneously monstrous amalgamations of portraiture and honest, complex renderings of real people. He utilizes these subjects to explore themes of grandeur, perseverance, and the relationship between idol and idolizer. With roots in digital photomontage, the figures he paints proudly display and drape themselves in the jerseys of their favorite players, a way of paying homage to those they admire. " I chose to include “Debate Club” in this exhibition: Los Angeles is home to one of the winningest franchises in professional basketball. Inside the newly named Crypto.com Arena, the Lakers hang 17 banners, with the jerseys of numerous NBA legends right next to them. Because of this, the City of Champions has become one of the central locations for the Debate Club to meet." 

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Arkiv Vilmansa was born in Bandung Indonesia. He is known for his cartoon characters inspired painting which emphasized two-dimensional forms and bold outlines with vivid and vibrant colors. Arkiv’s work is visually influenced by street art, toys, fashion, nature, and subculture, with childhood memories as his anchor. Trained as an architect, Arkiv found his work ethic and method to be more structured and critical while being able to keep his artistic expression raw and liberating. Driven by curiosity and love for visual arts, Arkiv explores the boundaries of paints and paintings. This resulted in various mediums and unique graphic l works ranging from painting, toys, prints, and sculpture." I embody my newly found discovery in cartoon character painting. The colors, shapes, lines gleaned and were influenced by creative geniuses in the industry that I respect the most, Takashi Murakami and Nigo.

Jingyi Wang is a New York-based visual artist who specializes in oil painting. Her artworks focus on the relationship between nature and culture. Observation and perception is the inspiration source of her artistic creation. She associates the fragile with the acute, the serious with the humorous tones, the poignant with the longing. Cacti-human beings reflect the biological and psychological aspects, approaching humanity's subtle and intimate intersubjectivity. With these elements and colors, Jingyi Wang would like to extend human bodies to the ground and mother nature, creating space for dialogue and collaboration among humans and nature. "My artworks focus on the relationship between nature and culture. Nature is always the overarching context of my paintings. It has been almost five years since I started using cacti as my subject. Cacti symbolize my own feelings and attitude towards life, for me, they signify a helpless state and nervous emotions. "

Socko was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1992. Socko studied at The School of Visual Arts in New York. As of today, Socko is an independent artist based in New York. Socko’s new work explores imagination through the character Dough. "The Hair Series describes how against an intricately textured background that reflects our hectic and flawed modern society, this artwork exudes innocence and purity through the character “Dough.” "

“All is not what it seems” will run through May 14th, 2022. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday 11 am –6 p.