To Live and
Work in L.A.:
The Recent Rise of Alternative Art Spaces

Jessica Palermo, Libby (installation view) (2022). Graphite and oil on paper, 15 × 11 inches. Quarters Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Quarters Gallery. Photo: Paloma Dooley.

I moved to Los Angeles from New York City almost exactly eleven years ago and was instantly taken by the city—the way the sun would naturally wake me up every morning; the daytime backyard barbeques; the evenings spent sipping on martinis in storied haunts like Dan Tana’s, Musso & Frank Grill, and Taix French Restaurant. There were art galleries located in strip malls, peculiar domestic spaces, and funky garages (Freedman Fitzpatrick, metro pcs, Park View, Chin’s Push, Paradise Garage, Reserve Ames, and Five Car Garage). There were lax and unpredictable spaces (356 Mission, Public Fiction, and the Poetic Research Bureau). And then, of course, there were the unique institutions that felt so specific to this place (the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, LAXART, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions [LACE], and Fahrenheit by FLAX).¹ This sprawling metropolis seemed full of life and new possibilities. During my first few years in L.A., the city’s art world was buzzing with energy and brimming with excitement. Openings, parties, and events felt genuinely fun.

Eventually, my eyes were opened to the gnarlier side of the art world: There was a subset of collectors known for buying up the work of young artists at low costs and then flipping it on the secondary market for absurd prices.² Other powerful individuals whose collections were once desirable landing spots for young artists’ work began to be boycotted for their political stances and actions.³ And rumors were circulating about advisors who were involved in shady-to-illegal business practices, some of whom were later exposed.⁴

Until recently, I took a bit of a hiatus from the art world—I had become exhausted by the general precarity of (and lack of support for) our L.A. artist populace. The loose, lighthearted nature of an art fair like Paramount Ranch had been replaced by more buttoned-up business at Frieze, which seemed to signal a shift in priorities. The election of Donald Trump brought an extra level of precarity to L.A.’s creative circles. The Covid-19 pandemic slowed down much of the previous momentum built by artists and galleries of every social class.5 It became difficult for me to focus on what was happening at galleries and museums when the news cycle was filled with stories of sexual assault, the murder of people of color, the bombing of foreign countries, the worsening treatment of our unhoused community, and so on. Cultures have been clashing and systems have been crashing at all-new rates; it should be no secret that the United States has long set people up to fail, but the years immediately preceding and following 2020 really opened some people’s eyes to this fact.

By 2023, though, I truly began to miss my extensive community and my exuberant consumption of art, and I slowly began reintegrating myself into the world. When someone offered me an affordable MacArthur Park space to start a gallery, it felt like a sign. I’ve been operating my artist-run space, Gene’s Dispensary, for about half a year now, but for another year or two leading up to it, I had become increasingly aware of new alternative spaces that had been sprouting up around town. This city in particular has a long history of these sorts of projects spanning many decades, and I wanted to reach out to some of the folks involved with this current grouping to get perspective on this moment that is starting to feel so much like the one I fondly remember upon arriving to L.A. more than a decade ago.

Somehow, L.A.’s art world feels more vibrant, more alive than it has in quite some time—despite the exponentially skyrocketing cost of living and aggressively oppressive actions of local police, politicians, and real-estate developers. For a few years there, it felt like the cultural nitty-gritty of the city was going to be exterminated by outof- town blue-chip galleries and $10 beers, but there are plenty of crafty and resourceful minds developing new blueprints for engaging in the art world, defining success on their own terms. Lately, there has been a serious surge of gallery spaces —a group of newly inspired creatives determined to do things their way—operating outside of and beyond more conventional means.

There are once again strip mall spaces: The Fulcrum and Leroy’s. Domestic spaces have been popping up all over the city: Gaylord Fine Arts, Quarters Gallery, Bozomag, Ceradon Gallery, The Hermitage, and 839, for example. There are numerous spaces, such as 2220 Arts + Archives and DMV (Departure from Music Venues), that offer up a full scope of programming, from music shows to poetry readings to film screenings. Central Server Works, like The Fulcrum, publishes books in addition to organizing exhibitions. Timeshare has functioned like a well-oiled co-op machine, while Soldes has added a bit of a fun, elusive mystery to the city’s scene.

In 2022, artist and designer Nina Muccia started displaying artworks in the laundry room of her two-bedroom Los Feliz duplex under the moniker Quarters Gallery, creating a cozy and cockeyed place to experience art. When I reached out to ask her about her decision to start the galley, she described her position within the lineage of similar spaces as somewhat nebulous. “Most of what I know about the tradition of DIY [culture] in L.A. is through oral history and gossip, since these projects often go under-documented, and are transitory by nature,” she explained, adding that alternative spaces can only be alternative for so long before they eventually either grow or fade.

Often, the (inevitable) evaporation is due to one of a few reasons: the burnout that comes from pursuing a less commercially driven endeavor, the preferred pursuit of one’s individual goals or aspirations, or simply the rising rent in a continuously gentrifying city. Creative options to physical gallery spaces are key to the survival of small spaces such as Leroy’s. Ian James, who founded Leroy’s in 2018, told me that when he was offered a unique readymade space in the form of a former Cambodian Vietnamese restaurant in the Chinatown building that once housed metro pcs (co-founded by James and fellow artist Matt Siegle), he landed on the name Leroy’s as a nod to the joint’s longtime owner, who he had befriended over the years from living and working upstairs. Initially, he speculated that he would eventually get the boot so that some well-funded niche restaurant could take over, as the gentrification in Chinatown has been led, in part, by its dining scene. To his amazement, no developers, law enforcement, or local city officials have bothered him, and he’s been able to program at his own pace and to his own preferences for years now.

Flexibility of space is also paramount for Gaylord Fine Arts, a gallery that the couple John Tuite and Joseph Geagan run out of an apartment in the historic Gaylord Apartments in Koreatown. Tuite shared that he feels very fortunate to have support from the people who own and manage the building, which allows him and Geagan to provide a platform and a place to hang out with friends—artists, writers, musicians, and performers (all those who are vital to the lifeblood of a city’s ecosystem, but who often seem to be considered expendable by developers who push a luxury high-rise lifestyle). This anxiety about displacement and/or disappearance was echoed by most of the galleries I talked to and is shared among almost all of my artist friends.

Parch Es and Eric Fanghanel, (el radicante) (installation view) (2019). VR headset and hardware, speakers, mixer, and dance floor. Leroy’s x El Clasificado at Other Places Art Fair (OPaf), San Pedro, California, 2019. Image courtesy of the artists and Leroy’s. Photo: Ian James.

Steve Kado, Me! (installation view) (2022). Leroy’s, Los Angeles, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist and Leroy’s. Photo: Evan Walsh.

Joshua and Rachael Oduga, who operate Central Server Works, suggested that this current moment is “a reflection of the growing desire among artists to take control of their narratives and create platforms that reflect their unique visions.” Joshua told me, “I believe this trend is sustainable, as long as there is a continued emphasis on community, collaboration, and adaptability.” It strikes me that this new assortment of DIY gallerists are all progressive pragmatists. They have an admirable amount of idealism that is balanced by realism, creating new models, new systems, and new outlooks while acknowledging that change takes time and the resources necessary to nourish conceived projects are often limited.

The six artists behind the Lincoln Heights gallery Timeshare embody this ethos of community focus, despite being well aware of the precarity of artist-run projects. Founders Andy Bennett, Antonio Bever, Brandon Bandy, Colleen Hargaden, Ines Kivimaki, and Rachel Jackson contribute equally to the curatorial program and financial responsibility, focusing on concepts over profits. “We felt the desire to create a space to build community and conversations around work that was driven by ideas, as opposed to the market,” they told me over e-mail. By the time I spoke with the Timeshare founders, I had come to find that many of these gallerists had goals that were centered around community, conversation, collaboration, experimentation, and freedom. Money—making a profit, or even breaking even—while certainly not ignored, didn’t feel like a primary motivation.

Tuite told me that the Gaylord program is “very much driven by personal connections, fostering collaborations between friends and artists we admire,” and the openings do indeed feel very friendly and laid back, with music playing in the background and people smoking and drinking and chatting for hours. This is a vibe that Tuite says is very important to him and Geagan, who like to call the building “The Chelsea Hotel of L.A.,” adding that “it’s a very offbeat collection of tenants, [but] the building just has so much character, too.”

For James of Leroy’s, having a nighttime gallery that also functions as a cheap bar allows him to provide a space to congregate, get lubricated, and look at art without doing the standard 15-minute spin. Following his previous venture, metro pcs, in which James and co-founder Siegle lost money on every show, he wanted to figure out a different model. The bar makes the space cost-neutral and allows James to offer artist fees—uncommon for small project spaces—without any pressure to make sales. This more relaxed and approachable model keeps the focus on the art, the ideas, and the people—all of the reasons why so many of us went to art school and decided to adopt this life and lifestyle in the first place.

Squirm (Ekim Karakurt and Karina Remer) at Departure from Music Venues (DMV), Commerce, California, 2023. Image courtesy of the artists and DMV.

Marie Angeletti installing Hail Mary. Gaylord Fine Arts, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of Gaylord Fine Arts.

Timeshare noted that the myriad academic institutions in L.A. indeed play a role in the newly revitalized artistrun scene: Each school is connected to multiple generations of artists who are hungry for spaces to continue rigorous conversations after they leave campus. A prime example of such an artist is Dakota Higgins, who founded the ad hoc, cooperative experimental music space DMV in an active auto body shop in the industrial city of Commerce. Seeking new ways to release his creativity and connect with the city’s art community, Higgins started the project in 2022. It has become more actualized following his graduation from the MFA program at the University of California, Los Angeles this past spring, and he has been developing myriad plans for it to continue to grow and evolve. His point of view mirrored that of the Timeshare crew, proposing that the number of down-to-earth DIY spaces in L.A. has to do with the number of MFA programs in the region pumping out ambitious cohorts in a city whose commercial gallery scene can’t possibly support them.

Therefore, said Higgins, these young, recent graduates need to manufacture opportunities for themselves and their peers in order to have public-facing practices. After mulling over Higgins’ position, I realized how noteworthy it is that so many millennial-and-younger Angelenos seem to be shunning the stark and staid white-wall traditions that have been propped up by and on globalist, neoliberal foundations in favor of more tangible connections in which peers elevate each other personally, professionally, and otherwise.

In a moment when every art publication seems to be covering the tumultuous state of the art market,⁵ L.A.’s alt galleries seem to be operating under totally different rules. While sustainability is a common theme among most of these new gallerists (and sustainability can essentially be equated to survival), they all seem to have artists and community at top of mind—as opposed to profits and reach, which are typically the primary concerns of traditional commercial galleries with high overheads and international influence.

Ultimately, many of these individuals are intentionally avoiding these market forces, instead seeking out actual joy, intellectual fulfillment, community, and connection. Jacob Lenc co-founded The Hermitage with Billy Frolov and Paloma Dooley —the three host exhibitions in unusual playhouse/shed-like spaces in two L.A. backyards. Lenc explained that they actively avoid getting involved with money, and instead, have each artist deal with any prospective sales directly. “Once money is involved, the spirit of what we are trying to do would be compromised. It would take the fun out of it,” he said, adding, “We have no interest in becoming art dealers.” And, while each of these alt spaces has different motivations and relationships to sales, it does appear that fun—which is often forgotten amid crises of capital—is inherent to the zeitgeist of this moment.

The sense of fear that this could all go away at any time—because it often does—still prevails, but there is also a generally accepted attitude that it doesn’t really matter. New paths are always forged, new models and systems are always created, and new outlooks are always developed and shared. As it becomes increasingly clear that the established models within the art market aren’t serving most of us, the persistent sentiment among the folks I’ve spoken with has been: If it doesn’t exist already, let’s fucking make it for ourselves.

This essay was originally published in Carla issue 38.

Tyler Morrison, Checkerwork (installation view) (2023). The Hermitage, Burbank, California, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and The Hermitage. Photo: Paloma Dooley.

Artist Lenard Smith views a collection of prints by Daniel Paul Schubert on custom artist furniture in Schubert’s Countless is the Time (2022). Central Server Works Horner, Los Angeles, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist and Central Server Works.

Keith J. Varadi is a Pittsburgh-born, Los Angeles-based artist, poet, critic, and curator who has been employed by multiple intelligence and investigations firms, mostly focusing on corporate due diligence. Previously, he was a researcher for the long-running television game show, Jeopardy!. He runs the gallery Gene’s Dispensary out of an old medical office building near MacArthur Park.

More by Keith J. Varadi