Fanfares

PYO Gallery LA is a fresh take on the newfangled arrangement of the downtown LA art scene.  In a busy yet quiet section in the shadows of Staples and the new Ritz Carlton Residences at LA Live, PYO fronts a small business corridor at 1100 Hope Street, which also sees a lot of traffic during Lakers games and concerts, and the daily rush-hour race to the freeways from the Civic Center, the financial district and Bunker Hill.  Located between Ralphs — the new and only supermarket downtown (do NOT eat from the Asian buffet in the super-hyped deli wing of this urban version of the generic grocer) — and stale but shrewdly prospected storefronts, swanky new apartment buildings, wine bars, and yes, there are still some parking lots downtown, the large gallery seems fairly established.  With a mission and a mandate, PYO LA is the most recent addition to the PYO family of galleries, the first since 1981 in Seoul, then branching out to Beijing and other Asian markets.  So PYO LA is not only steeped in the new brew of metropolitan LA and established, but it’s born with a purpose.

PYO currently houses a thoughtful and most compelling show by photographer Oan Kim.  His first solo show in LA, “Fanfares’” singular theme is the nightclub.  Born in France but of Korean origin, Kim apparently has the pulse of the club scene in his blood.  Strewn throughout the spare but solid photo installation, medium-scale black and white multiple and timed exposures capture the rapture of pure Parisian blues and reds, and a hushed rainbow of only imaginable color, wine, spirits, smokes, and smiles.

There is an intimacy and a familiarity infused into these pictures. One knows that Kim is way too comfortable with the subjects not to come away with powerful images.  He is a musician as well, after all. Furthermore, his manipulation of theme obliterates the moment, stretching the scenes into dream sequences and fairytales stopping just short of the grotesque.  The photos transport you to the club but not to the circus.  With all of their debauchery and splendor saved onto film, so to speak, they remain cool, calm and uniquely collected.

In one panoramic image, hundreds of revelers enjoying the music fill the stretched frame in a human arc, bridging the action, the club, and the physicality of the space with its stairs, lights and architecture interplaying with fashion, attitude, and temperament. Musicians punctuate the piece, with hands holding trumpets and cymbals alive with shimmer.  Other works prominently favor the brass, with tracksuits or sporty caps and long-stretched arms proudly hoisting horns.

There is the dapper trumpeter, breaking from the pack of a blurry brass section on a bandstand off to the right, anchoring the offset image that is opposing in nature and light but still in tune and balance.  What with its harlequin faces peeking out of the darkness in the pitch black left side of the image, under-sung Harlem renaissance photographer Roy de Carava would love this image.

In a newly configured local market and pedestrian environment, the topical energy of this work rings true and with resonance: let young artists be free and have fun and express themselves in a real, built environment that is not contrived but substantial enough to support and surround real talent.  Eli Broad, Frank Gehry, and the California Community Foundation are way behind the curve on what’s really needed in an already diverse, talented, multi-ethnic, and rightfully commandeered version of their misguided Grand Avenue boondoggle.  Privileged isolationism only begets myopia and vice-versa; only the people, not cultural dictators, can rebuild the city.

Beyond the corporate bastions of Tom Gilmore’s new Old Bank District and the monthly Art walk it has birthed (where most of the art galleries routinely show mediocre work at best), promising places and services further flung like Louis, The Gopher, The Hive, Tiara Café, painter Terrell Moore’s new Hope St. studio, PYO, Tarryn Teresa Gallery, Bottlerock, the Cork Bar, the good ol’ Metro Blue Line, and more yet to come are concrete examples that downtown actually is cool again, and it doesn’t take a bunch of renovated banks or warehouses to make it so. Let’s let it grow and support each other in fostering this renewal.

“Fanfares” has been extended through October 10th.