Corey Helford Gallery in DTLA is featuring
Los Angeles art scene painter and illustrator Luke Chueh, Intensive Purposes in Gallery 2 through April 3.
Employing minimal color schemes, simple animal characters, and a seemingly endless list of ill-fated situations, Chueh stylistically balances cute with brute, walking the fine line between comedy and tragedy. In their 2017 artist profile, Juxtapoz says, “With a carnal instinct…Luke Chueh creates work that stimulates our most primal constructs. His paintings favor compositions that are simple and direct, and usually feature a solitary anthropomorphic figure stuck in a self-reflective stupor within a frozen monochromatic void. A first look at one of his images evokes the warm and fuzzy, the stuffed teddy bear you cuddled as a child. But then a glimmer of despair emanates from the inertia, revealing something troubling within the tableau. Chueh’s work over the past decade has become widely popular and extensively imitated. His distinct style sets his work apart from the output by others of similar ilk. The prolific artist boasts a singular brand…”
Regarding his new show Intensive Purposes, Chueh shares: “The show’s title was inspired by the often misquoting of the phrase, ‘Intents and purposes.’ But the misconstrued idiom suits my work perfectly. This collection was inspired by ideas conceived throughout 2020. Paintings like ‘Let Fly,’ a masochistic take on escapism, to ‘Agoraphobia’ were inspired by the pandemic.”
He adds, “While ‘One Trick Pony,’ ‘Picking Up the Pieces,’ and ‘Over Extended’ are undeniably introspective paintings, ‘(Xiao Xiong Bao)’ is a twisted take on one of my favorite foods ─ Chinese soup dumplings (Xiǎo lóng bāo) ─ and ‘The End of Luke Chueh’ pays homage to the poster art for the film, The End of Evangelion
The gallery is also hosting a new series of works by seven incredible artists in their main gallery.
Seven is called the number of completeness and CHG’s show promises a complete view of the latest in New Contemporary art: Andy Adamson's ceramics bring his unique sense of humor to pop culture's favorite characters, Helice Wen's beautiful figurative paintings capture moments of fragility and intimacy rarely seen, kozyndan's delightful paintings on Japanese scrolls offer a fresh new take on ‘nihonga,' Rodolfo Loaiza's works take the taboos of reality and inject them into the idealized world of Disney, the topsy turvy world portrayed in Travis Lampe's paintings is a trip out of pandemia, Yang Cao takes us high above with new additions to his dreamy "Clouds" portraits, and Zoé Byland revisits the past in her haunting monochromatic portrayals that merge vintage with contemporary.
For more information regarding opening hours and COVID-19 policy or to take a virtual tour of the exhibitions visit: