Press Archive

Gallery Revisited, Artists blurb "A tour guide to Chinatown’s modern art galleries"
by Alex Wen, UCLA Bruin, February 12, 2004

Los Angeles’ Chinatown is perhaps best known for its quaint, if somewhat scruffy, streets, lined with shop-houses and buildings that alternate between historically interesting and downright downtrodden. The area also lent its moniker to the 1974 Roman Polanski and Robert Towne film “Chinatown” – the picture that definitively proved noir could be made to work in color.

Thirty years and many remakes later, another sort of picture show is stamping its mark on Chinatown and bringing back some much-needed color and class to the district. Here’s a taster featuring just five among the many hip art galleries that have transformed Chinatown into a veritable mecca for art lovers:

1. Revisited, 808 N. Spring St. #320: The perfect place to start, not least because it’s a bit out of the way – a satellite of sorts, apart from the rest. Revisited is just a stone’s throw from the Metro Gold station (itself worth visiting) and boasts the largest lineup of artists in a single venue on this list (eight** at last count, including the likes of Paige Wery and Frank Rozasy). One of the newer kids on the block, the gallery itself is nondescript. It is typical utilitarian chic, but within, a sensual selection suitably titled “Dualities: Guilty Pleasures, Alter Egos & Unfulfilled Crushes” (running until Feb. 29) features a cross-section of works that serve as an excellent sampler of what’s to come. [**It was actually 22 artists - endnote by Leora Lutz]
   
   
2. Acuna-Hansen Gallery, 427 Bernard St.: A spartan gallery that’s easy to miss, save for the stylized initials “AH” signed on the window-front. The exhibition here is titled “Free but not easy,” a collection of ink-lined watercolors by Tracy Nakamura. Her work includes brown-toned pictures of hippie-chic heterosexual couples caught in moments of sexual discovery. A rising star in the New York art scene, her work is reminiscent of pages taken out of the ’70s cult classic “The Joys of Sex” (a guide book written by the appropriately named Dr. Alex Comfort), but with an 18th century French boudoir intricacy of form and finish.
   
   
3. New Chinatown Barber Shop, 930 Hill St.: The New Chinatown Barber Shop not only keeps the name of its former tenant, but also its façade, a complete and authentic barber shop front – a retro-art installation that could easily fool the casual passerby. Behind and adjacent to the front display is another utilitarian gallery space that hosts, through April 25, “Leefahsalung,” a photo exhibit presenting custom-made backdrops and environments built by a variety of artists.
   
   
4. Peres Projects, 969 Chung King Rd.: Across from the barber shop is Chung King Road, which is more of a lane running behind the prominent Foo Chow Restaurant, where scenes from Jackie Chan’s “Rush Hour” were shot. This is the hub of the Chinatown art scene. A few shops south of telic on Chung King Road is Peres Projects. Nothing alarmingly exciting here, just your average hip and sparse gallery space with requisite expansive wall-to-wall whites, upon which hangs the photo art of Dean Sameshima, on display through Saturday. Most of Sameshima’s photos were similar, each basically featuring the same male model in a half-torso close-up enacting a series of hand signs, which in turn apparently represent a series of sexual acts. Strictly for sex-by-proxy types. And at $1,750 a pop (framed), maybe not even.
   
   
5. LMAN Gallery, 949 Chung King Rd.: Trudge past the two interestingly named Happy Lion and Black Dragon Society galleries (both retain the names of former tenants), and head south down Chung King Road to LMAN Gallery at no. 949. The snappy interior design scheme of this intimate split-level gallery is a welcomed change from the emptiness of most other galleries in the area. This is a smaller space, but the room design here also reflects the aesthetic sensibilities of its architect-owner, Lawrence Man, who hails from Hong Kong and features mainly artists of Asian heritage in his warmly lit space. His next exhibit, “Landscapes of Two Musical Minds,” opens Feb. 21 and will feature two UCLA graduates, Mark Golamco and Anne Wang, and guest-curator Rosanna Albertini, a visiting faculty member in UCLA’s art department.
   

– Compiled by Alex Wen.