We’re so thrilled to be announcing the launch of a new 1,000 piece puzzle featuring the work of Los Angeles based artist Ken Gun Min. The painting we’ve puzzled is called, perhaps cheekily, Stranger by the Lake (Bare Ass Creek) and it is his tribute to a once-popular LA nude sunbathing and trysting spot in Angeles National Forest, lost to fire in 2009. 

Ken’s paintings explore intimacy, masculinity, and representation across cultures. Often featuring queer-coded figures in dreamlike landscapes, his work blends longing, melancholy, and euphoria into a fantastical yet grounded vision of togetherness. That togetherness, or community, is evident in Stranger by the Lake (Bare Ass Creek) as is Min’s clear love for the lushness and secrets hidden in the forests, parks, and haunts of Los Angeles. That the place Min paints here is now gone adds a layer of poignancy to the piece and unintentionally leads us to think of the fires that raged in and around Los Angeles this past January, tearing through verdant green spaces and homes alike. So there is certainly a sense of loss here, loss that echoes perhaps even louder now than it did when the painting was first exhibited in his solo show Sweet Discipline from Koreatown at Nazarian/Curcio gallery back in 2023. 

But at the same time what strikes us about this painting in particular- aside from the fact that, like most of Min’s paintings, it is just flat out gorgeous- is its intimacy, vulnerability, and most of all, joy. This is a depiction of a community that has found a place to just be- to cavort freely, quite unencumbered by clothes and away from everywhere where these things would not be possible. For a few hours at least. Or forever.

So yeah, we’re very happy to be able to work with Ken on this puzzle and are grateful for the folks at Nazarian/Curcio for being so helpful in bringing it to fruition.  Pick one up here and spend your own few hours reconstituting Min’s hedonic eden. 

Oh and lastly, while we aren’t encouraging anyone to do the puzzle with their bare asses all out and about, we certainly wouldn’t be so prudish as to say that you couldn’t. Or shouldn’t. But if the mood does happen to strike then well, you do you. Just um… close the blinds or something.