“The Sky Is Falling”
Artist Alexis Mata was walking between the trees and mountains in Tepoztlán, Mexico, as dandelions drifted across his vision. Their existence fascinated him; the way they moved so freely, the seeds taking hold and pollinating new places. “In that instant,” he explains, “I experienced a strange sensation, as if I were standing on another planet, in another time, confronted with an entirely new landscape.”
The dandelion epiphany is what led to Mata’s exhibition titled Lost Landing, now on view at Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles. The show is imagined as a journey into places unknown. Vegetation, at once both familiar and foreign to us, is dotted across landscapes replete with cliffs and valleys, as well as long streaks of pixelated color that read like digital image glitches.
“Landing functions as a metaphor for discovery,” Mata says, “but also for reconnecting with the creative impulse and with the capacity for wonder.” The dandelion, seen in many of the works throughout the show, symbolizes expansion and transformation. Like the way that the seeds floated for Mata, ideas float through the air until someone catches them and builds on them. “There is something deeply poetic in the act of holding a dandelion suspended in the wind, making a wish, and allowing that wish to become reality.”
Dandelions are humbly powerful; they have the ability to pollinate, helping support an ecosystem. But they are also fragile. They can be crushed or float into places untenable for their growth. With Lost Landing, Mata chooses to see them as taking root and, despite their fragility, to create something entirely new. His long, gestural paint strokes are in constant motion, moving both the forms in the composition and our eyes across the canvas.
“The exhibition ultimately proposes a space where forms seem to mutate, drift, and slowly colonize their surroundings,” Mata shares. “Each piece functions as the trace of an unknown landscape, a fragment of an expanding world where ideas disperse, float, and find new ways to grow.”
Lost Landing is on view at Thinkspace Projects through July 3, 2026.
Artist Alexis Mata was walking between the trees and mountains in Tepoztlán, Mexico, as dandelions drifted across his vision.
“Lost Landing”
Their existence fascinated him; the way they moved so freely, the seeds taking hold and pollinating new places.
“Garden Of Crystals And Dandelions”
“In that instant,” he explains, “I experienced a strange sensation, as if I were standing on another planet, in another time, confronted with an entirely new landscape.”
“The Cactus And Dandelion Mirror”
The dandelion epiphany is what led to Mata’s exhibition titled Lost Landing, now on view at Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles.
“The Red And Blue Sunset”
The show is imagined as a journey into places unknown.
“La Noche De Los Cactus Voladores”
Vegetation, at once both familiar and foreign to us, is dotted across landscapes replete with cliffs and valleys, as well as long streaks of pixelated color that read like digital image glitches.
“Purple Night”
Matas also adds the “glitchy” effect to surreal still lifes.
“Crows In The Cave”
“Cactus From The World Of Delight”
