Out of Context

May 17, 2025 - June 20, 2025

Opening: Saturday 17th of May 2025 4PM - 6PM

Artspace Warehouse presents Out of Context, a group exhibition that explores what happens when familiar imagery is untethered from its usual frame of reference. Drawing from pop art, street culture, and mass media, the featured artists engage in a dynamic process of fragmentation and reassembly—transforming icons, symbols, and characters into compositions that are at once playful and provocative. These visual disruptions open space for multiple interpretations, encouraging viewers to consider how meaning is shaped, shifted, or even lost in translation. Blurring the line between homage and critique, Out of Context reflects on the unstable nature of image-making in a culture built on constant reinterpretation.

Based between Querétaro and Puerto Vallarta, Emilio Rama draws from his 1980s upbringing shaped by the influx of American pop culture. His work critiques consumerism by blending bold pop imagery with delicate, origami-inspired forms that reference nature’s fragility. Through this contrast, Rama explores the tension between material desire and environmental responsibility. Though self-taught, his practice has been shaped by mentorships and participation in major exhibitions across Mexico.

Los Angeles-based street artist Gary John brings raw immediacy to the visual language of pop culture. Working primarily on found materials, his expressive compositions draw from comic books, celebrity imagery, and everyday media. A longtime fixture of the Venice Beach art scene, John’s work strips icons of their polish, revealing their emotional and cultural residue. In Out of Context, his energetic mark-making and spontaneous layering offer a gritty, unfiltered take on the saturation of modern life.

Blending street-pop aesthetics with personal history, Randy Morales creates character-driven works rooted in nostalgia, identity, and cultural memory. A U.S. Navy veteran and fashion designer, Morales draws on his 1990s upbringing and experience as an outsider to spotlight figures often overlooked by mainstream narratives. His art—playful yet poignant—channels childhood joy and recycled imagery into bold compositions that celebrate individuality and creative resilience.

French artist Naguy Claude merges pop and street art to reimagine beloved characters like Mickey Mouse, the Simpsons, and Dragon Ball Z through a lens of bold color and layered positivity. Raised in a multicultural neighborhood in the Parisian suburbs, Claude’s self-taught practice draws from graffiti, collage, and stencil work—blending nostalgia with affirmations like “Love” and “Just Exist.” In Out of Context, his vibrant reinterpretations of pop icons celebrate joy and resilience while challenging the boundaries of mainstream visual culture.

Hailing from Beirut, Nayla Saroufim brings a distinctive lens to pop culture through the prism of Middle Eastern experience and a multidisciplinary background. Trained in illustration and art direction at the Académie Lebanese des Beaux-Arts, she blends painting, illustration, and graphic design to create vibrant mixed-media works infused with abstraction, surrealism, and pop art. Through playful forms and radiant color, Saroufim transforms the familiar into something emotionally resonant and unexpectedly meaningful.

Since the opening of Artspace Warehouse in 2010, the gallery continues to be an industry leader in affordable, museum-quality artworks making collecting art accessible and budget-friendly. With one gallery in Zurich and two galleries in Los Angeles, Artspace Warehouse specializes in guilt-free international urban, pop, graffiti, figurative, and abstract art. The expansive 5,000-square-foot space offers a large selection of emerging and established artists from all over the world.