Currently on view until June 27th, 2026 at Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles, California is artist Chris Austin's solo exhibition, "Risks and Rewards."

Known for his dreamlike paintings of wildlife anachronistically navigating suburban and urban settings, Austin’s latest body of work builds on his unique surreal visual language.

Chris says of the exhibition: Risks & Rewards is a body of work that lives in the space between instinct and consequence. It explores what happens when the natural world collides with the constructed one—when creatures built for oceans and open skies drift into the streets, subways, and alleyways of human life. These scenes aren’t meant to be realistic, but they are meant to feel familiar: like memories, dreams, or warnings that linger long after waking.

The animals in these works appear as both visitors and symbols. Sharks and orcas move through city environments like ghosts—powerful, calm, and misplaced. Their presence turns everyday spaces into something uncertain and cinematic, where danger feels close but also strangely beautiful. In this way, the work becomes a metaphor for survival: the tension of navigating environments not built for you, and the courage it takes to keep moving forward anyway.

The title Risks & Rewards reflects this constant exchange. Every step into the unknown carries fear, but also the possibility of transformation. The work speaks to the gamble of growing, healing, and evolving—whether as individuals or as a society. The reward is not safety, but clarity: moments of stillness inside chaos, and the realization that even in the most unnatural settings, life adapts.

At its core, this exhibition is about contrast—nature and infrastructure, silence and motion, predator and prey, vulnerability and strength. These images create a world where the impossible becomes ordinary, inviting the viewer to question what is truly out of place: the animals in the city, or the world we’ve built around them.

Risks & Rewards asks us to consider what we risk in pursuit of progress, and what we might still recover if we pay attention before it’s too late.