Von Lintel Gallery | Los Angeles

Von Lintel Gallery presents Dopamine: Embodied Presence, a new series of oil paintings by Nicolette Spear that positions the body as a luminous site of resistance within the circuitry of the attention economy. Expanding her ongoing Dopamine project, this second exhibition with the gallery examines what it means to remain sensate and self‑possessed amid the persistent tug of digital distraction.

Spear’s work orbits the “dopamine loop,” the addictive feedback cycle engineered by apps and algorithms, and counters it with the slowness and tactility of painting. Classical oil portraiture collides with the flattened language of branding and AI‑generated imagery; logos and synthetic motifs cling to the figures like a second skin, forming a patchwork that blurs the line between person and platform. The result is a hybrid iconography in which the interface seems etched into the psyche.

Against the rapid swipe-and-scroll of contemporary image culture, these meticulously rendered surfaces function as a formal intervention. Minute attention to light, skin, and layered symbol systems quietly forces the viewer to decelerate, turning each painting into a small laboratory for “slow down & look”, a space where extended seeing becomes a form of recalibration. Duration is not incidental here; it is the medium through which the work exerts its charge.

Anchoring the exhibition is Spear’s insistence on “embodied presence.” Her figures range from airy and ethereal to emphatically muscular yet always affirm the body as an uncreated constant, the animal self that still sleeps, eats, and answers to nature. As Spear notes, “Our bodies remain yet uncreated and forever connecting us to the natural world. Eventually, we must sleep, eat, and return to nature, our creator. The mind-body connection is a permanent reminder of this truth.”

In the studio, her process extends this philosophy. The laborious layering of oil paint stands in pointed contrast to the instantaneity of screen life, requiring hours of focused, physical engagement with the canvas. In Dopamine: Embodied Presence, that commitment to slowness becomes both critique and proposal: a clear-eyed look at an overstimulated culture and a quiet roadmap back to the grounding reality of our own bodies.

Spear lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a BFA in painting in 2009.

For additional information or visual material please contact the gallery at 310.559.5700 or by email at gallery@vonlintel.com.