“DOUBLE ENTENDRE” JESUS LOPEZ

Thinkspace Projects presents Double Entendre, a new solo exhibition by California-based artist Jesus Lopez, opening Saturday, April 4, 2026, with a reception from 6 to 10 PM. The exhibition remains on view through April 25, 2026, and features eight new oil and acrylic paintings on canvas.

In Double Entendre, Lopez continues to develop a deeply personal visual language rooted in autobiography, memory, and emotional tension. The works center on inflatable objects placed in both intimate and public settings, including the artist’s childhood home, apartment, school, and studio. By using pool floats and blow-up figures as stand-ins for the human body, Lopez transforms familiar objects into symbolic characters that carry emotional weight, discomfort, humor, and reflection.

The exhibition’s title hints at the layered nature of the work. Lopez blends absurdity with vulnerability, creating scenes that initially feel playful or strange, yet reveal more complex psychological and cultural themes. His paintings explore the intersection of childhood experience, shame, technology, and the way personal history can shape identity over time.

Born and raised in Riverside, California, Lopez brings his Chicano perspective and lived experience into his practice. His work examines how rapidly changing technology influenced a generation that grew up between two worlds: one before constant digital access and one fully shaped by it. Through these new paintings, Lopez reflects on how media, memory, and private struggle can become intertwined, especially during formative years.

Rather than approaching these ideas in a direct or literal way, Lopez uses surreal visual metaphors to create distance while still preserving emotional truth. Inflatable forms become stand-ins for human presence, allowing the artist to revisit difficult themes through a lens that is both psychologically charged and visually unexpected. That contrast gives the work much of its power. There is tension between softness and discomfort, humor and heaviness, artificiality and intimacy.

Lopez holds a BA in Fine Art from UC Riverside and an MFA from CSU Long Beach. His latest body of work shows a continued commitment to storytelling through painting, using symbolism and personal history to examine larger questions about cultural influence, vulnerability, and recovery.

With Double Entendre, Jesus Lopez offers a compelling exhibition that is at once strange, intimate, and emotionally resonant. The show invites viewers to look past the surface of the absurd and consider the ways memory and environment shape the self. At Thinkspace Projects, these eight new works come together as a sharp and affecting meditation on survival, identity, and the complexity of growing up in an increasingly mediated world.

Exhibition Details

Exhibition: Double Entendre
Artist: Jesus Lopez
Venue: Thinkspace Projects
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 4, 2026, from 6–10 PM
On View: April 4 – April 25, 2026