L.A. WeeklyThe Hollywood Media District has quietly become a densely packed gallery district, with at least 11 of the city’s most exciting contemporary art venues in a neighborhood bounded roughly by Highland, La Brea, Santa Monica and Melrose. Most of their current shows close this weekend or next, returning with big September season offerings.
Regen Projects
Regen Projects
Regen Projects was established in 1989 by Stuart Regen and Shaun Caley at 619 N. Almont Drive in West Hollywood. In 1993, the gallery relocated to 629 N. Almont and was further expanded to 633 N. Almont. In 2007, Regen Projects opened a second space around the corner at 9016 Santa Monica Blvd. Their permanent home was designed by Michael Maltzan, at 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., where they’ve been since September 2012, staging expansive ambitious exhibitions with a blue chip roster of contemporary artists from Anish Kapoor and Marilyn Minter to Tavares Strachan, Doug Aitken and Elliott Hundley. Theaster Gates will have a solo exhibition opening on September 14.
6750 Santa Monica Blvd.; Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; (310) 276-5424; regenprojects.com. —Ellen Joo
Steve Turner Los Angeles
Steve Turner, Los Angeles
Steve Turner Contemporary launched in 2007 on Wilshire Boulevard across the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In January of 2015, the gallery was renamed Steve Turner, Los Angeles when they relocated to Hollywood.
With its three gallery rooms, the gallery presents up to 27 exhibitions annually, most of which are solo exhibitions. “Gallery programming in Los Angeles is international in scope,” Turner tells the Weekly. “We present and represent emerging and mid-career artists from around the world, most of whom do not live in Los Angeles — for example, the U.K. or Latin America. Artists frequently have their first American solo exhibition or their first Los Angeles solo exhibition with us.” They complement this “out of town” focus with some favorite Los Angeles-based artists, and participate in numerous international art fairs outside the United States, among them, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Brussels, Berlin, Munich, Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, London, Paris, Torino, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona and Vienna.
On September 7, the gallery presents three solo exhibitions from artists Francisco Rodriguez (Santiago-born, London-based), Rebecca Shippee (New Haven), and Jon Key (New York).
6830 Santa Monica Blvd.; Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; (323) 460-6830; steveturner.la. —Ellen Joo
LAXART (Ellen Joo)
LAXART
LAXART was founded in 2005 in Culver City, then relocated in 2014 to the renovated historic recording studio on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. “LAXART has long featured emerging and underrepresented, Los Angeles-based artists,” director Catherine Taft tells the Weekly. “But just as the city has evolved, so too has our mission; more and more, we are presenting established and mid-career artists and other historical figures in museum-scale exhibitions and programs. Our focus has expanded nationally and internationally while we continue to support the local talent that keeps L.A. so exciting.”
LAXART present a two-person show from Phil Peters and Karen Reimer opening on September 22.
7000 Santa Monica Blvd.; Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; (323) 871-4140; laxart.org. —Ellen Joo
Jeffrey Deitch
Jeffrey Deitch
This September marks the one-year return of Jeffrey Deitch to the Los Angeles art world after being away once he left his tumultuous tenure as director of MOCA in 2013. That brief absence doesn’t seem to have dialed down his provocative, disruptive ways, and that’s a good thing. The space on Orange Drive has been poppin’ since the initial Ai Weiwei show last fall and the current group show curated by artist Nina Chanel Abney, Punch, which is open only through August 17, has been no exception.
As the gallery’s cheeky retro video game-ish website will inform you, the feminist and sometimes minimalist work of Judy Chicago will be on display beginning September 7, followed by a yet-to-be-named “group exhibition of contemporary Japanese Pop artists,” per gallery staff.
925 N. Orange Drive; Tue,-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; (323) 925-3000, deitch.com/los-angeles. —Wyatt Closs
Kohn Gallery (Ellen Joo)
Kohn Gallery
In 1985, Michael Kohn opened up the doors to Kohn Gallery in New York City in 1985, moving to Santa Monica and later relocating to West Hollywood near Beverly and Crescent Heights. In 2014, the Kohn Gallery purchased their new location on Highland Avenue, and created a gorgeous lofty space a small museum might envy.
“We focus on anything between artists working in California in the ’60s and ’70s all the way through today, including contemporary artists working throughout the world,” the gallery’s Joshua Friedman tells the Weekly. “Our program strives to look at a broad range of artists using multimedia to establish connections between generations.” Landmark shows have included recent offerings from Tony Berlant, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Jess, and Gonzalo Lebrija.
The gallery will be presenting Los Angeles-based Enrique Martinez Celaya’s new body of work The Tears of Things, opening on September 13.
1227 N. Highland Ave.; Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; (323) 461-3311, kohngallery.com. —Ellen Joo
Tanya Bonakdar (Ellen Joo)
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery first opened at 130 Prince St. in New York City’s storied arts neighborhood of SoHo in 1994, later relocating to 521 W. 21st St. in the expansive newer gallery district of Chelsea in 1998. Finally giving in to the allure of the West Coast in 2018, the gallery opened its second location, in Hollywood, with winning installations of work by L.A.’s Charles Long followed by Iceland’s Olafur Eliasson.
The gallery is committed to presenting work across all media, in “a rigorous program of ambitious exhibitions by an international stable of artists. With our two spaces in New York and Los Angeles, we offer a diverse platform committed to presenting work across all media and beyond the walls of the gallery,” they note — as well as frequently sharing versions of exhibitions on both coasts.
For the next exhibition in their Los Angeles location, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto will have his solo exhibition of his new works, Children of the Earth, from September 14.
1010 N. Highland Ave.; Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; (323) 380-7172, tanyabonakdargallery.com. —Ellen Joo
Diane Rosenstein
Diane Rosenstein
Diane Rosenstein was founded in 2012 in the Hollywood Media District and has been a beacon and an anchor for the growing scene there ever since. As one of the early pioneers in the neighborhood, Rosenstein has pursued a dynamic and eclectic program that has included feminist icon Eleanor Antin, street art phenom KATSU, underappreciated modernist and Afrofuturist Joe Ray, contemporary Light and Space sculptor Gisela Colon, and beloved influential Los Angeles-based painter and professor Roland Reiss. Julian Stanczak’s “The Eighties” opens on September 7.
831 N. Highland Ave.; Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; (323) 462-2790, dianerosenstein.com. —Shana Nys Dambrot
VSF (Ellen Joo)
Various Small Fires (VSF)
In 2012, Esther Kim Varet opened up Various Small Fires, with its first location in Venice Beach’s Abbot Kinney and a name inspired by a work of art by Ed Ruscha. Johnston Marklee Architects designed their subsequent permanent Hollywood location in 2014, where they have presented exhibitions from interdisciplinary artists like Artadia award-winner Diedrick Brackens, and painter Judith Linhares. In April 2019, the gallery’s second location was opened in the Hannam-dong neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea.
While the majority of represented artists in the program are women, James Herman currently has a solo show entitled Yardwork from August 10 to August 31; and on September 7, Various Small Fires will present Robin F. Williams’s solo exhibition, “With Pleasure,” in which the artist presents her newest series of optically charged, intellectual and cheeky surrealist portrait scenes.
812 N. Highland Ave.; Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; (310) 426-8040, vsf.la. —Ellen Joo
Nonaka-Hill
Nonaka-Hill
Situated in a nondescript strip mall, right next to a 24-hour Yum Yum Donuts, the new Nonaka-Hill gallery’s storefront is still dominated by the big Best Cleaners sign that belonged to the space’s previous tenant. Launched last year, Nonaka-Hill primarily shows contemporary Japanese art. Through the end of August, the gallery’s unusual opening hours of 7 to 11 p.m. allow visitors to view the light-based installations of Takuro Tamayama and Tiger Tateishi while it’s optimally dark outside.
In September and early October, Nonaka-Hill will showcase the work of 20th-century conceptual artist Yutaka Matsuzawa, along with photographs by his close friend and collaborator Hanaga Mitsutoshi. Then, on October 12, the gallery will present works from the archive of Butoh dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, on loan from Keio University in Tokyo.
720 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood; temporary hours: Tue.-Sat., 7-11 p.m.; (323) 450-9409; nonaka-hill.com. —Lyle Zimskind
Shulamit Nazarian
Shulamit Nazarian
Shulamit Nazarian was established in Venice Beach in 2012, in a uniquely reconceived multi-story modern townhouse with an even more unique point of view on their exhibitions program. Growing from a passion for identity-based narrative and eclectic, high-concept storytelling, the gallery represents artists who work in a variety of styles and mediums — Trenton Doyle Hancock, Amir H. Fallah, Fay Ray, Reuven Israel, Alison O’Daniel — but who all share the same desire to share their own experience with the audience.
The gallery later relocated to its current, brightly renovated historic Hollywood location in February 2017, where its program continues to expand. On September 7, will present her solo exhibition of esoteric, ritualized portrait tableaux, For I am With You Until The End of Time.
616 N. La Brea Ave.; Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; (310) 281-0961, shulamitnazarian.com. —Shana Nys Dambrot
KP Projects (Ellen Joo)
KP Projects
KP Projects, originally named Merry Karnowsky Gallery, was established by Merry Karnowsky in 1997, and for more than 20 years was located at the historic gallery building of 170 S. La Brea — where Launch LA, the other half of KP Projects — still has its home. But when the lease came up late last year, Karnowsky left the Miracle Mile and moved into lofty new digs further up La Brea close to Melrose, and fittingly inaugurated her new Hollywood home with a blockbuster show of Vivian Maier photographs.
They subsequently showed gallery favorites like Greg “Craola” Simkins and Todd Carpenter, as well as a group show of OG women street artists, and their current (through August 24) exhibition of historic prints by editorial photography legend Henri Dauman — only his second U.S. exhibition despite his titanic stature in the world of editorial photojournalism.
In September, they will present a group exhibition titled Chroma with artists associated with KP Projects, as well as emerging talent.
633 N. La Brea Ave.; Tue.-Sat., noon-6 p.m.; (323) 933-4408, kpprojects.net. —Shana Nys Dambrot
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