Lucas Lamenha Brings Joyful Chaos to Dubai’s Art Scene
You don’t just view a Lucas Lamenha painting—you experience it. It’s like stepping into a graphic universe where joy is coded in symbols, color is a language, and every character tells a story. And now, this electric visual world is making its debut in the UAE.
Lucas Lamenha, born in Maceió, Brazil, began his journey in the world of advertising—working as a creative director for over 15 years. But in 2015, everything changed. A solo trip through Europe—what he calls a 21-day reset—sparked a dramatic shift. “I decided to start painting,” Lucas shared in Art Market Magazine. “It was a Monday morning in London. I had spent a few hours on a park bench contemplating a series of artistic interventions on the walls of a skatepark... and I just knew.”
From there, he traded brand campaigns for color-soaked canvases, creating small works daily and sharing them on a newly created Instagram account. “After a few weeks,” he recalls, “the works were quickly selling out, and six months later, I received an invitation from an English curator for a solo show in London.”
“Dub Club” - 60” x 50”
Fast forward to today, and Lamenha has shown in Paris, Milan, Madrid, Taipei, and Burning Man. His style—often called “cheerful, colorful, and purposefully primitive”—has earned him the nickname “The New Mr. Doodle.” But while both artists obsessively fill space with hand-drawn forms, Lucas takes a different route. His “space cubism” (as he calls it) fuses spray paint, acrylic, and markers into dense, multilingual compositions that feel like a mashup of arcade screens, urban walls, and inner thoughts.
And now, the Middle East enters the chat.
In his newest works created for his UAE debut, Lamenha folds local language and cultural cues into his already expansive visual vocabulary. Rockets launch alongside Arabic phrases like سلام (peace) and سعادة (happiness), while lyrics like “you make me happy when skies are grey” float beside pop icons and digital codes. One piece plays like a vibrant city map—where pop culture, memory, and multilingual symbolism flow like traffic through the canvas; another bursts with energy like a street parade frozen in time.
But what makes Lucas’s work resonate isn’t just the layering—it’s the emotional core. “I think the playful part of childhood is the time when we feel safe, optimistic, and calm,” he says. “My trait is relatively primitive and brings some of that innocence and lightness. I believe that feeling is increasingly rare in today’s world.”
‘“The Bedouin” - 36” x 48”
His process is equal parts spontaneous and intentional. “Sometimes I start a line without knowing exactly how it will end,” he says, “but that uncertainty becomes part of the story. I see it as a possibility to disconnect from reality and find beauty in the different.”
Though his pieces are packed with references—from sci-fi and music to graffiti and Brazilian culture—they always feel cohesive. “The universe I build is like a cubist meta-verse of space,” Lucas explains, “where even though all the characters are different, they live together in harmony.”
Now represented exclusively in the Middle East by Chic Evolution in Art, Lucas Lamenha’s debut in Dubai marks not only a new chapter in his career, but also a fresh dialogue with one of the world’s most forward-looking art markets. His visual language—both global and deeply personal—feels right at home in a region known for its cultural diversity, creative ambition, and love of bold ideas.
So whether you're a collector, curator, or just someone drawn to joyful complexity, Lucas Lamenha’s work invites you to look closer, smile often, and maybe even feel like a kid again—if only for a moment.
Lucas Lamenha is represented by Chic Evolution in Art in both the United States and the UAE. For more information about his work, availability, or to inquire about early access, please contact us at info@chic-art.net or call +1 (954) 530‑9240.