By: Keith Estiler
studio visits
studio visits
Nikkolos Mohammed, 27, and Mike Reesé, 28, founded Dreamhaus LA in South Central Los Angeles with the goal of using fine art to inspire and support the city’s young creatives. The pair decided to create the non-profit art collective after graduating from LA’s Otis College of Art and Design back in 2014, and since then, they’ve partnered with local elementary schools to host discussions and workshops on visual art. The group has also launched an annual toy drive to provide students with art supplies and handmade clothing, while their latest effort was a December 2018 charity exhibition at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles.
In addition to their community outreach, Mohammed and Reesé also use their new Dreamhaus studio just south of Downtown LA to create their own original artworks. Mohammed’s pieces utilize techniques like collage, portrait painting, and assemblage – a form of three-dimensional visual art boasting compositions made from found objects. Reesé meanwhile borrows elements from taxidermy to create representational works made of acrylic paint and flowers.
As LA natives, Mohammed and Reese are just as dedicated to giving back to the community as they are to creating their own work. HYPEBEAST caught up with the two to learn about their artistic process and their goals for Dreamhaus LA.
Dreamhaus LA: Get to Know the Founders
of the Multifaceted Art Collective
Exploring the otherworldly artworks of the Brooklyn-based painter and sculptor.
Dreamhaus LA
South Central Los Angeles, California
dreamhausla.org
What’s the contemporary art scene currently like in Los Angeles? What are your thoughts on the art industry today as a whole?
Nikkolos Mohammed
NM: We are in this time of Post-Post Modern. I wouldn’t give a Clement Greenburg-style critique of the scene, but it’s hard to ignore the surge of African-American artists and their relation to diaspora and Art Brut (outsider art). With that said, the art world presently has a gravitation to the work of Black artists. While rewarding, as an African-American I have my own questions. My first read is that it has a relationship to the times and today’s political sensitivities. As a survivalist, I am curious why today’s contemporary art world is so invested in so much Black all of a sudden.
MR: I’m from LA, so from my perspective, it’s a tight-knit community that feeds off of itself. We hold equity in many creative industries, which I believe allows all the different “sub” and mainstream scenes to sometimes cross-pollinate. I think it’s a good time to be a creative pluralist on the creative/maker side. To refer to industry, that means we are speaking to the economic aspect, so when you involve sums of money that the “art industry” generates I think it’s the same it’s always been — creatively unscrupulous. However, I do believe we are in a renaissance period where artists are empowering themselves and creating their own financial and creative ecosystems.
How do you select which subjects to paint?
Sometimes I'll be working in a particular face for quite a while, and then get to a point where I just block it out with one solid color. It seems like all the work that went into sort of trying out different details and different layers just sort of leads to a color decision. Then other times, it's really intentional and specific. Like the way I'm starting these new paintings lately, they usually start with couples that are staring into each other’s eyes, they're having a little moment of romance or kissing.
What sparked your interest in art?
How have your upbringings shaped your overall style or aesthetic?
NM: My initial fascination came from my mother. She was an artist before I was born, and sacrificed that part of herself to raise me. Until I discovered her artwork at age three, I never knew my mother to have any interests beyond the rappers and singers she would listen to in the car. Once I was exposed to her paintings in the back of our closet, I was amazed. She had the ability to depict signs of aging in the elderly through portraiture. After this exposure, I would draw portraiture every time we were stuck in traffic, at church, and while waiting for my mother to pick me up from preschool.
MR: Before I was a teenager, I had the privilege of seeing older peers change their own and others’ lives by pursuing a creative practice. I found fascination in seeing my homie Alejandro Rodriguez (owner of Beautifül) have a successful shoe-customization company when he was 16, seeing Retna paint in his backyard hours before a showcase at the Pacific Design Center, and seeing the early stages of Dom Kennedy’s musical endeavors. My homie Gavin Mathieu, who is YG’s creative director, used to swoop me up and I would just watch him design T-shirt graphics on the early versions of Photoshop and Illustrator for hours. That’s important for a kid to see, and from there all I wanted to do was find my own way to contribute to art.
NM: Growing up in LA, I was privileged to be around various creatives. I’ve always been drawn to the technical drawings of Charles White, and the layering of found objects in the works of Noah Purifoy. These inner-city legends not only shaped the art community at large but taught others how to create greatness through resourcefulness.
MR: From a young age, I’ve been really blessed to interact with people from different ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds. My upbringing was instilled with acknowledging self-worth and also seeing the value in all people, regardless of their or my situation. As a result, my process is influenced by the clear social and economic dualities that exist in LA. My aesthetic and style resonate dualities of life/death, refined/raw, gesture/form, art/design, reality/surreal/fantasy. For me, all sides have to be represented to communicate my balance and truth.
When did you start showing your work at exhibitions?
I started exhibiting my work in New York in like 2004 at a gallery in Williamsburg, then went onto a couple different galleries in Chelsea where I've worked over the years. I've been showing in Copenhagen and recently Hong Kong.
How did you each come up with your distinct visual language?
NM: My parents’ relationship was built through a passion for thrifting and making hybrid identities through clothing and accessories. To them, clothing was not just material, but artifact and identity. As an art student, I spent more time in exhibits that displayed artifacts of various geographical origins than in the contemporary sections. These exhibits informed my art by their archival methods of artifacts. They showed the story of how civilization survived, thrived, and declined.
MR: I utilize the unique components of my life to cultivate universal connectivity throughout my works. I’ve found specific motifs that express this purpose: floral, taxidermy, and my alphabet. For me, language is supposed to bridge and create new forms of communicating and understanding, so that’s the purpose of the floral works and the “Zeus” alphabet, as I refer to it. Even if you can’t read it or put any concrete meaning to it, it’s more about the indication and imprint of life — communication by raw and refined feeling, that is the magic.
Where do you source the materials for your works?
NM: Usually, I begin my process by thrifting from sales racks sponsored by bank foreclosures and deceased estates. As I rummage through these valuables from those who have passed away, I construct a narrative of them based on what I’ve discovered. These narratives have an innate relationship with the characters in my own life. For these assemblages, I use a CNC machine to create the “windows,” and design the Plexiglas vitrines. Together, they build a display suitable for archival.
MR: I source my taxidermy online. I’m able to source different species from around the world. Other materials I get locally from flower marts, floral supply shops, art stores, my framer, general department stores and in some rare cases, from thrifting. I love the thought that I’m re-purposing something dead like taxidermy and dried floral into a new form of life through the context of the environments I create. In no scenario would a beetle from Malaysia inhabit the same habitat as a butterfly from Congo, except through a man-made environment — in this case, my paintings.
My connection with floral is by way of my grandmother, who was a professional florist. I believe I utilize florals as a symbol of freezing the moment of life and its beauty. I’ve always wanted more time with her since her passing when I was eight.
Your color palette is so vivid. How do select the tones for each artwork?
First, I like using colors that bleed and give you a real bright luminosity, so it's these bright yellows, oranges, and magenta. Then, I start working those vivid colors into flesh tones. Finally, I incorporate some darks, like the really deep blues or a Payne's gray. There's a lot of balance between dark and light. A balance between the luminosity of color paired with traditional flesh tones.
Define Dreamhaus LA.
Nikkolos Mohammed: Dreamhaus LA is resurrecting the definition of discovery. As a person of color growing up in the inner city, I’ve recognized our shared pain of abandonment, from our fathers and from the government. The collective uses visual art as a tool for people to discover their own identity.
Mike Reesé: A community and belief system that embraces a person’s unique ability to access their untapped and fullest potential.
How has your work evolved over the years?
I was doing reverse painted acrylic polymer peel paintings for a long time, and those were hyper-detailed and all super hard-edged and super meticulous. It got to a point with that where I guess around like 2012, I wanted to start doing something more visceral and more painterly and less sort of slick.
Any advice for aspiring artists?
Good advice is work a lot, experiment a lot, and see a lot of art. Find out who the artist is who you really admire and what do you like about their work, what can you bring into the work, but also how can you experiment with materials and make paint do something that's your own language. At least for me, that's always been really important to my practice.
“The first goal is to expose youth to success stories, and showing them the role of visual arts in many professions as a problem-solving tool.”
Nikkolos Mohammed
“The space is an institution based on creative adaptation and resilience.”
Tell us about your new Dreamhaus LA space.
NM: The space is an institution based on creative adaptation and resilience. It was built with one intention: to be a place of limitless creative possibilities, a place you’d never want to leave. On interior design, visual identity came from assets gathered from working with youth, as well as experiences we’ve created for the community.
MR: We are located in South Central, just outside the mix of the downtown hustle and bustle. From the point of entry, we curated the space so that anyone who visits it interacts with a visual language specific to our identity and creative process. We designed it to have a multicultural presence, with different patterns and movement. In the warehouse area, visual assets on the wall depict the history of the organization.
Every room of the space is meant to be its own environment, even the bathrooms. One restroom has a luxury Spanish style, while the other is for utility and contains a warped mural of my full alphabet. From top to bottom, front to back, we curated the space for high creative output.
What do you hope to accomplish with this collective?
NM: Being the example. Raising the ceiling of our dreams every passing year, envisioning, and fulfilling. More recently, I have discovered a stronger sense of this purpose. We are in a position of taking back the quality of our community, without reliance on elected officials.
MR: Establish an ecosystem such that each component feeds the next, where none of this works without the synthesis of all the moving parts. This empowers other people to pursue their passions and discover their purpose within our system.
Why is it important to get the community involved in the art scene, especially the inner-city youth?
NM: In the community of South Central, there’s not much exposure to examples of success in the visual arts. Visual arts are not perceived as financially lucrative. The first goal is to expose youth to success stories and showing them the role of visual arts in many professions as a problem-solving tool.
MR: Speaking specifically to the demographic that we work within, it’s very common that kids and even adults in the inner city have never fully explored creative expression. The taboo of arts as just craft or, more specifically, arts as something that you could never financially or spiritually support yourself and family with, is a general perception. A lot of the kids and adults in these communities have special voices and perspectives. All they need is some guidance, access, consistency, and most of all, someone they can identify with actively pursuing it. People are able to see it in Nikk and me. That’s major.
