“I’m sick on the trees, take me to the city” — Lou Reed.

The city has always been a haven for intellectual life, from the 19th century coffeehouses in London to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris. Yet city life has never been easy, it is an overwhelming place — we’re crammed into concrete jungles, surrounded by millions of strangers, and strafed by temptations. Cities reveal how fragile we are. But through the distress, the metropolis has a powerful impact on how we think and can enhance our level of creativity. The city creates moments of transcendence that is necessary for art and culture to flourish. Cities are places where people go to realize dreams, where the confusion, the aspirations, the choices and the abundance result in an intricate manifestation of hope — addictive and feeble — which makes us human. With this in mind, Mischmasch Gallery is presenting an eclectic mix of city-inspired works that ranges from street-art inspired to the surreal, and together they reflect the impact that urban experience has on our identity, the senses and the psyche.

The colorful paintings of Ann-Kathrin Nikolov, from Cologne, reveal a sleek cartoon-like cityscape with a street-art edge. She contemplates the connection of the mind to the city environment, representing the individual as an unexpressive architectural entity.

Zalez Z is an artist from Paris, whose street art inspired paintings present the juxtaposition of the classical body in contrast with the modern human form. His appropriation of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci are presented with a contemporary idealized female model, suggesting an unnatural view of modern humanity that is lacking in depth and warmth.

New paintings by Hong Kong’s painting ingénue Emily Lau will also be introduced, continuing her ironically cheerful work expressing the mental disorientation and quiet anxiety experienced within urban environments. In her paintings, Lau depicts a dream world with her unique pictorial language to illustrate the influence of urban surroundings upon the human psyche.

Fiona Ho, also from Hong Kong, figuratively expresses the tension inherent to urban experience through dark abstraction of a congested cityscape.

Opening Reception: Thursday April 7, 6pm to 9pm