William LaChance: California Psychics
San Diego, California – Madison Gallery is proud to announce St Louis artist William LaChance’s first solo exhibition, California Psychics. Below, the artist shares his thoughts and vision while creating these works.
“CALIFORNIA PSYCHICS is a series of large scale frieze-like paintings as escapist freedom fantasies painted largely during peak COVID lockdown and spanning to the present. The compositions of staggered, vertical bands imply the filmic rhythm of walking past without stopping- a conscious nod to the vacant barstools in Edward Hopper’s isolation anxiety masterpiece, “Nighthawks”. The colors, shapes and scale relationships recall the randomness of skateboard motifs bedecked with miscellaneous stickers or perhaps the brightly colored iron-on transfers of bygone t-shirt shops — or in other cases, the unfamiliar logos and vernacular signage of foreign bodegas- all visual intimations of being somewhere else in time and place. “
William LaChance (b. 1971, St Louis, Missouri) lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated with a BFA from The Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from Indiana University. LaChance's pictures are associations of displaced forms and colors cribbed from graphic design, fashion, art history and nature itself cobbled together using a variety of methods and materials from painting and printmaking to assemblage and sewing. The paintings themselves have shifting hierarchies of similar concerns: of material exploration, abstract identity, formal space and narrative expression. They openly blur the boundary between high art and applied arts not only in principle but in practice- lending themselves to various manner of surface design, from textiles and branding to fully realized earthworks. LaChance's recent mural adorning the Kinloch Park basketball courts was named the best designed basketball court in the world by Architectural Digest. Since 2015, LaChance has exhibited in London, Paris, New York, Athens, Miami, San Diego, Amsterdam and Tokyo. His works have been collected extensively in private and public collections worldwide, including NIKE, Pernod Ricard, Warby Parker, The U.S. Federal Reserve, Hobbes London, Milla Jovovich, Sergio Marchionne / Ferrari and NBC. He has received press both online and in print, including Artsy, Juxtapoz, Forbes, Vogue, L'Officiel, Surface, Dezeen, Architectural Digest and Le Mille.
Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists who work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.
