The Company

Came here for Jen Denike’s Star Card opening reception. The space is fairly small and sits in the back alleys of Chinatown. I’ve seen a bunch of new emerging galleries popping up here recently, great to visit during «Chinatown summer nights» or if you need something to check out after drinking at Hop louies or Mountain bar.
The star card reception was filled with chinese kung fu masters doing demonstrations, a slew of yoga girls meditating in white and black magicians drawing pentagrams in the air while staying in military formation. I think I ran into Moby while I was here, then again this is LA so I could’ve been mistaken.
Overall interesting albeit small place, I look forward to their exhibits in the future.

Off the beaten path, this tiny gallery is located near Chung King Road, in The Moytel, a former motel that has been converted into residences for Chinese émigrés. The space itself is unfortunately divided and when peopled: claustrophobic.
It wouldn’t be hard to fill this venue with the friends and supporters of one moderately-​known local artist. In fact, that might be a nice way to spend a Saturday night. However, as the past weekend demonstrated, when the gallery hosts a group show, huge numbers can be guaranteed to swarm every nook and cranny of the space, spill out on the street, and out into the back alley, making the overall experience utterly unenjoyable, particularly when the majority of the art easily seen from the doorway seems pedestrian and unsophisticated, and the obstacles to movement outweigh any desire to see more.
I liked the back courtyard area a lot (and not just because the gallery itself made me immediately claustrophobic) where there was a run-​of-​the-​mill mandala light box mounted on one wall. But why not use more of the outdoor space as an adjunct gallery for permanent or temporary installation, sculpture, or performance art?
Galleries just like this one exist in every small town in California. A recent transplant from Sacramento, I can count eight or nine nearly-​identical replicas without much effort. What can set a gallery of this size apart from all of the others doing exactly the same thing includes ensuing a high quality of art selected and shown, a careful arrangement of works to allow comfortable ingress and egress, a selection process that seeks to balance harmony (like pieces) and surprise… I’ll be interested to see how The Company evolves in each of these areas.