Two self-taught artists. Two artists incorporating the past to build contemporary art’s future. Yet, two very different aesthetics. It’s what makes the Ken Flanagan and King Redd exhibit at our Las Vegas gallery, available now through November 6, so enticing.

King Redd started drawing comic book heroes as a kid, worked with graffiti artists in South Beach and ended up as a tattoo artist. It was there that he met legendary artist and Park West favorite, LEBO. The mentorship LEBO provided thrusted Redd into the spotlight. Soon, he was featured in Forbes Magazine and collaborating with big brands like HBO and the Florida Panthers. Redd digs into the past to create the future, scouring vintage cartoons and retro photographs and fusing them with a modern graffiti edge to create a colorful explosion of human emotion.

Ken Flanagan, a Top 10 Finalist for Park West’s annual Made in Vegas artist competition two years in a row, takes a different path to incorporating the past into the future. His Iconography series features black and white portraits of famous celebrities, like Lucille Ball, and humanizes them with an infusion of color, wryly highlighting various traits of the subject. In another series, Refresh, Flanagan starts with large-scale paintings that depict famous works of art and through his work, shows how even these iconic works may need some cleaning and touching up over time. All done with a bit of wry humor.

Come explore two up and coming artists bringing a bright new twist to art history while writing their own. This is a chance to see what these fresh new voices have to say, enjoy work that is as entertaining as it is stunning and maybe even add their voices to your own collection. Now through November 6, at the Las Vegas Gallery.