Megan Mulrooney is pleased to present Space Race, our second solo exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist Nicolas Shake. The exhibition features a new series of works on canvas exploring the the mid-century aerospace industry in Southern California. Throughout the exhibition, Shake considers how the Space Race of the 1950s reverberated across visual and popular culture, transforming a national project into more localized and aesthetics and forms.

The Space Race was more than a technological endeavor aimed at moon exploration. In Southern California, it was a primary economic driver; and nationally, it reframed government spending as a source of national pride and cultural optimism. Workers across sectors participated in the engineering, manufacturing, and distributing of new technologies related to space exploration, generating the enthusiasm that shaped Googie architecture and the broader visual language of Space Age design.