Beyond Motion

Since being founded in Miami Beach in 2007, Avant Gallery has remained as committed as ever to being an exciting presence for established as well as early to mid-career contemporary artists. Avant currently operates from multiple venues: its flagship in Downtown Miami at the Epic Hotel, which also incorporates a culinary experience with the integrated LaMuse Café; at the Four Seasons Jumeirah Resort in Dubai, which features a curated salon exhibition encompassing 50,000+ square feet, conceptualized as Artmosphere®; and as of March 2019, a New York City cornerstone flagship gallery space and part of the world’s largest mixed-use development, The Shops at Hudson Yards. Los Angeles based artist Josh Mayhem's lifelong habit of collecting children's playthings has fueled his passion for transforming said toys into objects d'art. Among his best-known pieces are those constituting his “Blown Away” series, in which mass-produced forms are covered in strands of resin and layers of acrylic paint to create gravity-defying drips that give the impression of the work being deconstructed by a strong wind. The popularity of this aesthetic has led to Mayhem winning the Custom of the Year (Fan) award at the 2019 Designer Toys Awards, multiple releases with the many of the worlds top designer toy artists and producers, participating in TRASHed: Art of Recycling at Coachella Festival, and solo exhibitions at Clutter Gallery in Beacon NY, Bruce Lurie Gallery in Los Angeles CA (as well as an artist residency) , PIQ Grand Central Terminal in NYC, and The Crown Collection Gallery in both Denver and Los Angeles. In the process of creating his coveted sculptural works, Josh Mayhem uses gallery-quality canvases as drop cloths. As each becomes decorated with an accumulation of colorful drips, patterns begin to emerge in the artist's mind. Augmenting each one with coatings of synthetic resin and additional paint splashes, these works