William LaChance: CALIFORNIA PSYCHICS

Madison Gallery announces, California Psychics a solo exhibition of large-scale paintings by William LaChance..

“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.