Downtown Los Angeles’ Corey Helford Gallery (CHG) is proud to announce its next solo show The Ham-Fisted Coping Mechanism, featuring new works from Chicago-based artist, illustrator, and toymaker Travis Lampe. Premiering Saturday, January 10th in the Main Gallery, the show will be on view through February 14th.

Lampe grew up in small-town rural America, soaking in the rubber-hose animation style of early Mickey Mouse cartoons. His work builds a bizarre, elbow-less universe full of sinister trees, floppy skeletons, and mystical beavers. The artist mainly paints in acrylic but occasionally branches into small sculptures using epoxy resin, sewn canvas, or papier-mâché. Lampe shrugs off what he does as “pretty dumb,” though plenty is going on beneath the surface if you bother to look.

The topsy-turvy world portrayed in Lampe's paintings is a trip out of pandemia. Inspired by an old-timey aesthetic, from Steamboat Willie to Bette Boop and Dr. Seuss, Lampe describes his work as "a mish-mosh of those old-timey influences with some Duccio-inspired mountains and the inevitable light-switch nose.”

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