Chinatown Fire Drill

Photo by Sonia Campagnola

In August, the new Sister space hosted two nights of performances by L.A. artist John Williams.

Photo by Sonia Campagnola

Peres Projects is leaving its Chinatown location for Culver City.

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The well-known corner building that for five years has been home to Daniel Hug’s and David Kordansky’s galleries is going through a conspicuous change. Kordansky has decided to move to a bigger space — a 3,200-square-foot industrial space with 27-foot ceilings — on the fringe of Culver City’s gallery row. The gallery’s current show, its next-to-last before leaving Chinatown, is a fittingly reflective exhibition featuring Peter Saul; Richard Hawkins, who was a student of Saul’s; and Aaron Curry, who was student of Hawkins’s.

The new Kordansky space is set to open on November 22 with a solo show of new, large-scale sculptures by Thomas Houseago; after that, it will mount a solo show by Patrick Hill. “The new gallery is an open space that allows the artists to design their own exhibition plan,” says Kordansky. “It’s good for showing painting and sculpture, especially because of the quality of the light. There’s such fantastic light in L.A., and we wanted to capitalize on that.” The dealer explains that he didn’t want to leave Chinatown, but adds that the area “has reached critical mass — the spaces available are predominantly storefronts, and there was no opportunity to find a space that big there.”

Next door, Daniel Hug, who became director of the Art Cologne fair in May, has had to step out of his gallery’s business, leaving it to Joel Mesler — although, as Mesler says, Hug will still be there “spiritually and curatorial.” Because of the change, the gallery has a new name: Mesler & Hug.

This is not Hug and Mesler’s first collaboration; the two are old friends and associates. “In 2005, Daniel and I started Rental Gallery together here in Chinatown, and after two years, I moved it to New York,” Mesler relates. Mesler maintained a Chinatown presence with his printing press, Pruess Press.

The first exhibition of the new operation is a series of 18 paintings by Chris Lipomi, which runs through October 11, and the next one is work by Helen Verhoeven, who will show simultaneously at Wallspace gallery in New York. Mesler says that he plans to maintain the core of Hug’s program — plus some additions like L.A. painter Henry Taylor — but also to take advantage of his L.A.-N.Y. connection: “I like the idea of coming back to L.A. with what I learned in New York in three years, and I want to connect the gallery’s artists more to New York.” And Rental? “I’m going to try to do two weeks in L.A. and two weeks in New York. I love that Rental does not represent artists but instead is this unique ready-made gallery where I work only with gallerists. So I can work with artists here and gallerists there.”

Down Chinatown’s main gallery alley, Chung King Road, Javier Peres is about to pack up and move to Culver City, too, into the space previously occupied by Anna Helwing’s gallery, which is closing this month.

“We’ve been in Chinatown for just over five years, and it is a good time to try out other things,” says Peres, who pointed out that Culver City is the most visited art neighborhood in L.A. His Chinatown gallery is currently running a Dean Sameshima show. The new space is under renovation, but it kicks off on November 22 with a Mark Flood solo show.

Peres, who opened in Chinatown in 2003 with Terence Koh’s first solo show, recalls that at the time, “China Arts Objects, Black Dragon, and few others got the area on its feet and gave it its initial character, much of which you still see today.” In fact, Black Dragon Society closed this summer, and partners, Roger Herman, Hubert Schmalix, and Parker Jones, decided to split up. Jones is going solo; his new gallery will be located in the building neighboring Mesler & Hug, and it opens in early 2009.

Peres used to have two spaces in Chinatown: his gallery and another space used as a private showroom. The latter was taken this summer by Katie Brennan, who relocated from the other side of the street where her Sister gallery once sat between Jorge Pardo’s Mountain Bar (the ultimate meeting point for the C-town art crowd) and Jack Hanley Gallery (now closed). In August, her new space hosted two nights of performances by L.A. artist John Williams in the easygoing style that distinguishes the neighborhood: “We didn’t have power hooked up yet, so we ran extension cords down Chung King Road into a very generous artist’s studio. John’s performance involved turntables and slide projectors in a dark space, so it worked perfectly,” she says. The new Sister officially opened with a show of work by Michael Lazarus.