Henry Vincent: There Are Places I Remember

Long before there were streaming services, QR-coded tickets on iPhones or scalping apps that bled all the money out of bands and fun out of concert-going, there were indie clubs you accessed via independently pressed tickets. And in L.A.—that sweaty crossfade between punk squats, strip mall clubs, and scrappy artist-run galleries—they were more than proof of entry. They were relics: receipts of lived chaos. In Henry Vincent: There Are Places I Remember, the Los Angeles-based artist's debut solo exhibition at Timothy Hawkinson Gallery, the past isn’t merely referenced—it’s reanimated, layered, and scraped into a minimalist language that pays homage to the time when art and music weren’t separated by medium or market, but ran side by side, often in the same room, occasionally under the same roof.

Vincent knows this history firsthand. He doesn’t just paint the memory—he lived it. “I remember going to a Black Flag show and seeing Raymond Pettibon selling drawings out of a cardboard box while Jeff Poe shredded in his band,” Vincent recalls. “Then suddenly I’m playing John Lennon in a Pettibon film alongside Kim Gordon after a Sonic Youth gig.” This was a time when bandmates were also painters, gallerists played in bands, and gallery openings bled into all-nighters at the Vex or Cathay de Grande. Art was loud. Music was visual. It all moved together, at the speed of, well, speed. 

The paintings in There Are Places I Remember serve as both formal experiment and emotional timestamp. They draw from the sharp geometries and color restraint of California minimalism—most directly the serene precision of John McLaughlin, an artist whom Vincent has long admired—but are also layered with a raw, tactile energy in the form of club logos that speaks to punk ephemera, Xeroxed flyers, and the gritty realism of live music. The attention to fonts and letterforms in the logos is a nod to Ed Ruscha's similar focus on apartment building signage; Vincent even staged a solo exhibition of Ruscha's work in his own apartment in 1987. Each piece is inspired by a specific show, club, or battered ticket stub rescued from a pocket, dryer top, long-forgotten shoebox. They are color-field paintings made with heavy oil pastel marks wrapped in luscious lacquered pop emblems deftly applied in enamel. Like the rock bands they invoke, the paintings are rough hewn and elegant all in a single refrain. 

Like all concerts—and concert-goers—there's something of the devotional at play here. You see it in the worn ink palette, the faint embossed outlines that recall early Ticketmaster printings, the subtle variances in texture that echo the way time eats paper. There’s Suicidal Tendencies at Perkins Palace, Blondie at the Whisky, Guns N' Roses at Raji’s, and The Minute Men at Cathay de Grande. Some of these venues are long gone, paved over or turned into fast fashion houses, smoothie joints or even art galleries. Others cling on, haunted by ghosts spun out in tattered leathers and designer drugs. Each of these paintings is a feedback loop that reverbs into the next one.

This isn’t nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It’s Vincent trying to etch a sweat-stained, four-on-the-floor moment of rock bliss into the more permanent space of art history. These moments happened when musicians (or artists)  didn’t have massive PR teams or precisely choreographed TikTok accounts behind their every move. Back then, you lived in the moment, waited in line at Tower Records to score your tickets, fought off some scalpers, and maybe caught Nirvana perform in the Burning Love wake of a Mexican Elvis impersonator at Jabberjaw (which, yes, actually happened). These stubs were your proof you were there, your social currency, and they outlasted any hangovers or hangers-on.

In an age of digital disposability, Vincent’s new work reads almost like an act of rebellion: quiet, formal, minimal, yet every surface contains a scream. This soulful body of work reminds us that history isn’t something you archive; it’s something you wear proudly like a badge in the next act of rebellion. For a moment, they offer a new kind of memory, a new way of seeing

Henry Vincent (b. East Detroit, Michigan) is a multidisciplinary artist whose expansive career spans over three decades of painting, film, installation, and conceptual work. After earning his BFA from UC San Diego in 1988 and an MFA in Printmaking from Columbia University in 1990, Vincent relocated to Los Angeles, where he quickly became a fixture of the city’s vibrant art scene.

Vincent’s work has been featured in major international institutions and biennials including Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), the Ludwig Museum (Cologne), the MAK Center (Los Angeles and Vienna), and the Bienal de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla (1993, curated by Harald Szeemann). In recent years, he participated in the 2019 Bombay Beach Biennale and continued to exhibit in experimental contexts such as Drive-By-Art LA and the Dallas Art Fair.

Early in his career, Vincent collaborated with seminal artist Raymond Pettibon, notably starring as John Lennon in Pettibon’s 1990 film The Weatherman. His first solo exhibition, Know When to Take the Bus (1989), combined painting and short film and was shown at the Glenn-Dash Gallery in Los Angeles. From 1989–1991, he exhibited extensively with Jack Glenn, later moving into shows at Burnett Miller Gallery alongside artists such as Charles Ray and Imi Knoebel. His 1992 film Riot Act was shown at Louis Stern Gallery and later in his first European museum show at the Ludwig Museum.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Vincent presented work with Robert Berman Gallery, Kim Light Gallery, Patrick Painter, Inc. and Kantor Gallery, where he exhibited for nearly a decade. His installations often combined political commentary with participatory elements—such as thermal printers, remote-controlled car races, and collaborative public works. He worked with artists including Jason Rhoades, Hans Weigand, and Raymond Pettibon on interactive projects such as Life/Boat at the Schindler House (MAK Center) and the Mini Grand Prix at the Mackey Apartments in Los Angeles.

In 2005, Vincent co-exhibited with Pettibon in Paris at Galerie Marion Meyer in L.A. Underground 1990, and continued to push the boundaries of installation and performance, contributing to nomadic, mobile institutions like Galeria Nomadenoase at Art Basel Miami Beach.

A distinctive facet of Vincent’s practice is his ongoing project, O.K. Creek Mining and Exploration, an industrialized “total work of art” based in Dawson City, Yukon. This living artwork centers on an active placer gold mining operation and has been the subject of exhibitions at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture and the Odd Gallery.