What’s My Thesis? (2025)

08/07/2025

What happens when a collector sees the art world not as a market—but as a community in need of care?

Episode 264 Strategic Generosity: Collecting, Curating, and Championing Emerging Artists with Leslie Fram

This week on What’s My Thesis?, Javier Proenza sits down with Leslie Frame: curator, collector, strategist, and the rare kind of advocate who brings emerging artists into the spotlight and into collections—with intention.
From founding the annual MFA of LA exhibition to teaching business fluency in art schools, Frame shares her deeply original approach to mentorship, market transparency, and audience-building—while pulling from a background that spans Studio 54, Parsons, Cosmopolitan magazine, and the earliest days of digital media.
🎧 Available now wherever you get your podcasts 📍 Link in bio ⠀ 

24/06/2025

Astrology, Embodiment, and the Myth of Power

On this week’s What’s My Thesis?, artist Alystair Rogers joins Javier Proenza for a revelatory conversation on time, mysticism, and the deconstruction of capitalist mythologies.

Rogers—whose MFA thesis includes a surreal infomercial titled Sea World: Spiral ’Til You’re Free—discusses how astrology became a conceptual anchor for exploring trans embodiment, identity, and ritual.

This is a dialogue shaped by tenderness and critique, magic and materialism. Rogers offers an alternative grammar of belief—one in which revolution begins by reclaiming the center of the self.

🪐 Listen now on all platforms
🔗 Link in bio
🎧 .rogers | 🌀 | 💸 patreon.com/whatsmythesis

stairrogers

17/06/2025

Building Gene’s Dispensary: Community, Curation, and Creating New Art Spaces in LA - Keith J Varadi

In this week’s episode, host Javier Proenza sits down with writer, curator, and former painter to discuss how a once-side project evolved into Gene’s Dispensary—an independent art space on Wilshire Blvd that now functions as a gallery, project room, and cultural salon.

They talk curatorial practice as visual poetry, the creative logic behind Gene’s exhibition texts, and the power of showing up—with no blueprint, just vision and momentum. From collaborating with artists across disciplines to building community over chess and beer, this episode offers a blueprint for doing things differently in the Los Angeles art world.

🎧 Available now wherever you get your podcasts
📍Visit Gene’s Dispensary in L.A.
🖼️ recent show: Eat the Garnish by Leroy Stevens
🔗 Link in bio

11/06/2025

Liminal Spaces, Migration, and the Unseen - Ketty Haolin Zhang

This week, host Javier Proenza is joined by painter and mixed media artist , whose practice unravels the poetics of liminal space, identity, and cultural memory. Born in northeastern China and now based in Vancouver, Zhang brings an acute, deeply personal lens to themes of in-betweenness, dislocation, and the silent negotiations of belonging.

From commuting three hours a day to university, to quietly leaving behind a career in investment data analysis, Ketty journey is one of radical realignment—with painting as both compass and vessel.

🖼 Her work resists easy narratives.
🌀 She avoids overt cultural signifiers.
🌘 She paints from moments that disorient time, place, and self.

🎧 Tune in as the conversation moves fluidly between:
– The weight and freedom of the “1.5 generation”
– Artistic authenticity in the face of commercialism
– Code-switching, multilingual memory, and the vulnerability of self-presentation
– Choosing between Los Angeles and New York as a site for becoming

✍️ “It is joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.” — Donald Winnicott, quoted by Zhang

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Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in.
🔗 Link in bio
📲
💬 Like, comment, and share to support global perspectives in art

10/06/2025

Liminal Spaces, Migration, and the Unseen - Ketty Haolin Zhang

This week, host Javier Proenza is joined by painter and mixed media artist , whose practice unravels the poetics of liminal space, identity, and cultural memory. Born in northeastern China and now based in Vancouver, Zhang brings an acute, deeply personal lens to themes of in-betweenness, dislocation, and the silent negotiations of belonging.

From commuting three hours a day to university, to quietly leaving behind a career in investment data analysis, Ketty’s journey is one of radical realignment—with painting as both compass and vessel.

🖼 Her work resists easy narratives.
🌀 She avoids overt cultural signifiers.
🌘 She paints from moments that disorient time, place, and self.

🎧 Tune in as the conversation moves fluidly between:
– The weight and freedom of the “1.5 generation”
– Artistic authenticity in the face of commercialism
– Code-switching, multilingual memory, and the vulnerability of self-presentation
– Choosing between Los Angeles and New York as a site for becoming

✍️ “It is joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.” — Donald Winnicott, quoted by Zhang

—

Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in.
🔗 Link in bio
📲
💬 Like, comment, and share to support global perspectives in art

01/06/2025

260 What We Keep: Material Memory and Cultural Translation in the Work of Chenhung Chen

“In my view, all human beings are the same—we’re just made of different stories.”
This week on What’s My Thesis?, Taiwanese-born, California-based artist Chenhung Chen joins us to discuss her sculptural language shaped by migration, memory, and the poetics of wire.

From calligraphy and Taoism to recycled cables and stream-of-consciousness crochet, Chen shares how her work channels energy, tension, and inner worlds.
Her solo show “By the Company They Keep” at Don’t Look Projects is both a material meditation and a cultural mirror.

🎧 Full episode out now
🔗 Link in bio
Follow and
Support the show: patreon.com/whatsmythesis

30/05/2025

260 Light, Legacy, and the Detroit Mindset with Gerald Collins

This week, Gerald Collins joins host Javier Proenza for a rare in-person conversation that traverses architecture, chromotherapy, and the Detroit mindset. From building immersive light installations to childhood drawings of Godzilla, Collins reveals a practice that’s as much about technical precision as it is about emotional resonance.

Known for his chroma-based light environments and site-responsive installations, Collins reflects on growing up on Detroit’s east side, building LED environments for fashion shows, and his evolving relationship with color, space, and service. This isn’t just a conversation about art—it’s about what it means to live with purpose, build community, and transform trauma into clarity.

✨ “Nothing we have is really ours. We’re here to help each other out.” – Gerald Collins

🔗 Full episode streaming now.
🎧 Link in bio.
📸

28/05/2025

259 The Radical Intimacy of the House Gallery: Rethinking the Contemporary Gallery Model with Liz Hirsch

Step inside the living room of a 1920s bungalow and into the heart of 839, a Los Angeles house gallery reimagining what a commercial art space can be.

This week on What’s My Thesis?, host Javier Proenza speaks with , co-director of 839, about building a gallery that centers intimacy, sustainability, and long-term advocacy for artists. From solo exhibitions by Olivia Gibian, Andrés Janacua, and Nichelle Dailey to an upcoming presentation at NADA New York, the conversation explores how one of L.A.’s most thoughtfully curated new spaces is creating a different kind of art world—one rooted in care, community, and curiosity.

🎧 Listen now on all platforms
📍 839, Los Angeles
📸

27/05/2025

🎙️ NEW EPISODE — What’s My Thesis? with Javier Proenza

In this week’s episode, artist and educator Christopher Anthony Velasco turns the mic into a mirrorball—reflecting camp, queerness, chaos, and critique with dazzling precision.

From his alter ego The Doctor, a Polaroid-obsessed antihero lost in the multiverse, to his drag persona Krystal Carrington (yes, named after Dynasty), Velasco’s practice blurs the line between performance and pathology, wrestling and ritual.

We talk:
🌀 Q***r mythology and analog photography
🩸 Horror films, body politics, and performative dismemberment
💊 Sobriety, survival, and staying weird in academia
💥 Backyard wrestling and the art world as kayfabe

It’s a maximalist trip through character-building, cultural criticism, and the sublime absurdity of being alive, sober, and still in love with art.

🔗 Link in bio to listen
🎧 Available on all platforms
🎥 Early access on Patreon: www.patreon.com/whatsmythesis
📸

***rArtNow ***rArtistsToWatch

21/05/2025

🎙️ New Episode: Rhett Baruch on Building a Gallery from the Ground Up

In this week’s episode, host Javier Proenza sits down with Rhett Baruch, founder of .baruch.gallery, for an expansive conversation that traces his journey from car culture to curatorial vision.

What begins with talk of VTECs and vintage Mustangs shifts into a compelling look at how a passion for aesthetics, precision, and material quality led Baruch to open one of LA’s most distinctive young galleries—without institutional backing or an MFA.

We discuss:
— The origin of Rhett Baruch Gallery, from apartment vignettes to fine art
— Turning interior designers into art advisors
— Craft, materiality, and the influence of auto design
— Faith, intention, and navigating the art world on your own terms
— Why branding, voice, and relationships still matter

Baruch shares what it means to build slowly, intentionally—and why making space for artists means trusting your eye, not chasing trends.

📍 Listen now on Spotify, Apple, or Patreon
🔗 Full episode + links in bio

06/05/2025

256 Worldbuilding Through Memory and Myth: Elias Hernandez on Storytelling, Surrealism, and the Legacy of Conflict

This week, artist and educator joins the show to discuss his richly layered practice—where Latin American surrealism, cosmic allegory, and video game aesthetics converge. A recent MFA grad from USC, Hernandez constructs an expansive visual universe: sentient castles, star-bearing knights, and moon-worshipping cults emerge from the interstices of inherited trauma and cultural storytelling.

Raised between Mountain View and the East Bay, with roots in El Salvador, Hernandez reflects on the legacy of civil war, spiritual symbolism, and the aesthetics of oral tradition. His paintings channel biblical archetypes and fantastical lore into deeply personal, slow-burning narratives that challenge Western frameworks of “contemporary” art.

An episode about drawing as ritual, ceramics as time travel, and painting as a speculative archive of collective memory.

🔗 Link in Bio
🎨 Follow Elias at

25/04/2025

🎧 New Episode Out Now: Sanctuary in Practice with Dalia Palacios 🌿✨

In this heart-opening conversation, artist and community advocate Dalia Palacios shares how art became her sanctuary—through displacement, new motherhood, and mental health struggles. From graffiti as protest to collaborative murals with high schoolers, Dalia’s work is rooted in care, resistance, and joy. 🧵🎨

We talk about: ➤ Growing up in Echo Park pre-gentrification
➤ Turning childhood punishment into creative power
➤ Healing postpartum depression through art
➤ Making space for motherhood and artistic practice
➤ How to apply to residencies as a parent 👶🏽✍🏽

💬 “Art helped me stay alive.” — Dalia Palacios

Listen now on all platforms & follow for more from Dalia
🎙️ Link in bio

What’s My Thesis?