ART : Old Hollywood's New Artistic Jolt : LACE and RE:SOLUTION have moved from the central city into Hollywood. The goal for both arts institutions is a new energy. Broader audiences would be nice too

By SUZANNE MUCHNIC

June 12, 1994 12 AM PT

<i> Suzanne Muchnic is The Times' art writer</i>

Forget Frederick’s of Hollywood’s racy underwear, his ‘n’ hers spike heels in every color of the psychedelic rainbow, leather jackets splashed with images of Marilyn and Elvis. When you consider the attractions of Hollywood Boulevard, think contemporary art.

Sequined string bikinis and other bizarre enticements still twinkle in shop windows along the legendary thoroughfare, just as transvestites and tourists continue to parade on sidewalks embedded with stars named for celebrities. But the opening of two nonprofit art institutions--with public receptions Thursday from 7 to 10 p.m.--has given one block of Hollywood Boulevard an infusion of painting, sculpture, photography, video, performance and computer art.

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, a 15-year-old multidisciplinary forum for cutting-edge art, has moved into the former Newberry School of Beauty, at 6522 Hollywood Blvd., two blocks west of Cahuenga Boulevard. Two doors east, at 6518 Hollywood Blvd., is RE:SOLUTION, a reincarnation of the 20-year-old Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, which supports photographic arts, video and digital imagery.

Both organizations have forsaken the mean streets of central Los Angeles for Hollywood. LACE initially resided above the Victor Clothing Co. on Broadway, then moved to Industrial Street, in a warehouse district that has become increasingly crime-infested. In its former life, RE:SOLUTION operated a gallery at Spring and 8th streets until the neighborhood became too dangerous, then relocated at 6th Street and Beaudry Avenue.

Tawdry as their new neighborhood may appear, the two institutions consider it a step up, and their leaders speak longingly of joining Hollywood’s arts community and building a broader audience in an area that has such assets as pedestrian traffic and convenient parking.

“My favorite fantasy is that everyone will see every show, every video, every performance we offer,” said Gwen Darien, LACE’s executive director. “We have the possibility of a public space with an incredibly diverse audience, and we want it to be a center of vitality that reflects what goes on in the contemporary art world--not just in Los Angeles, but throughout the world.”

RE:SOLUTION’s expanded gallery space will provide an opportunity to display a much wider range of art, and heightened visibility will ensure that more people see it, said Joe Smoke, director of the photography center. An important factor in his organization’s new image is a merger with EZ Arts, the nonprofit video and digital branch of EZTV. This partnership will allow RE:SOLUTION to become “a true gallery of the 21st Century, featuring video screening in the evenings and looking ahead to new technology,” he said.

These aspirations have been hard won, however, and the future of Hollywood’s new art block is uncertain. After a two-year process that was complicated by a change of city administration, following the election of Mayor Richard Riordan, LACE and RE:SOLUTION have secured five-year leases with renewal options through the Community Redevelopment Agency, in a block owned by the city’s Department of Transportation.

Long-range plans call for building a larger complex and parking structure on the site--perhaps a sort of farmers’ market--but no plan has been adopted and financing is not available. Arts institutions could be incorporated in the new development, but they would not be its focus, said Lester Burg, assistant project manager for the CRA’s Hollywood Redevelopment Project, a $1-billion plan bordered by La Brea, Fountain, Western and Franklin avenues.

In the meantime, the CRA expects the new arrivals to enhance a redevelopment district that already claims about 30 live theaters and has several other arts projects in the works. Just west of the art block on Hollywood Boulevard, American Cinematheque, a nonprofit center for the appreciation of film and video, is remodeling the historic Egyptian Theatre. To the east, the Pacific Theater building is being transformed into the Hollywood Entertainment Museum.

Hollywood Moguls, a cafe-theater-gallery, is already entrenched on the art block. And TRI, an adventurous gallery operated by artist Rory Devine, is moving to 6365 Yucca St. and opening on Thursday.

“I love this neighborhood,” Darien said, leading a visitor on a tour of LACE’s new surroundings. “It’s urban and gritty. It has some of the qualities that were a positive attraction for the downtown space, but it’s safer and we have accessible, attended, cheap parking.”

Peter Kirby, chairman of LACE’s board, believes that the move was essential. “To stay put--in the particular part of downtown Los Angeles where LACE was located--would be to die. We are running away from that, but Hollywood Boulevard is not exactly the suburbs,” he said.

No one would confuse the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard with a commercial district in Palos Verdes Estates or Westlake Village. But for all its rough edges and kinky sideshows, the change of address reflects a serious attempt to get a grip on LACE’s future. Buffeted by a shifting art scene, squeezed by a sour economy and embattled by city politics, LACE finally has a chance to re-establish itself as a vigorous community arts center, slimmed down and toned up for the ‘90s.

LACE was founded in 1978 by a group of 13 artists, most of whom had joined forces in East Los Angeles in a program funded by the federal Comprehensive Employment Training Act. The organization developed into a lively--if contentious--exhibition and performance center under the direction of artist Marc Pally, from 1979 to 1983, and Joy Silverman, from 1983 to 1990. But Silverman’s resignation and Roberto Bedoya’s subsequent seven-month term of leadership coincided with a downturn in the economy and the central city.

When Darien became director in 1991--after 8 1/2 years as deputy director of New York’s PS1, a well-known contemporary art center--she took over an organization that was troubled by financial woes, falling attendance and dissension over the representation of minority artists. Known as an energetic and adroit consensus builder, she has presided over a tumultuous period when LACE seemed to fade from the scene as its move was delayed. The final exhibition, featuring Jean Lowe’s work, closed last June. In recent months, LACE’s video program has been presented at the Ruth Bloom Gallery in Santa Monica, while Hollywood Moguls has served as a forum for LACE performances.

A mission statement defines LACE as “a nonprofit interdisciplinary contemporary arts organization that presents art and ideas and serves as a forum for an evolving dialogue between both emerging and established artists and their audiences.”

“Our challenge in Hollywood is to develop and make clear to the public the multidisciplinary nature of the institution,” Darien said. “The move allows us to fulfill our mission more completely and in a more public way, and to reach out beyond people who went downtown because they were interested. We want to attract new people as well as sustain our consistent audience.”

A recently completed five-year strategic plan calls for promoting the multidisciplinary aspect of the institution, strengthening the program’s critical context by publishing a brochure or catalogue on each exhibition and developing educational programs and public outreach, she said.

This is all part of adapting LACE, a so-called alternative space, to the present realities of the art scene. Organizations such as LACE were hatched in the 1970s as artist-run alternatives to museums and commercial galleries, giving artists a place to show experimental work without strictures of tradition or the market. But the concept became confused during the boom of the 1980s, when artists fresh out of school were snapped up by galleries. Then the art market crashed, wiping out a large number of galleries and sharply curtailing collecting. During the past few years, artists and youthful entrepreneurs have taken matters into their own hands by opening shoestring commercial operations that show works similar to what might be seen at LACE.

“The field is wide open now,” Kirby said. “The whole art world is trying to find out how to operate after the bubble burst.

“LACE has a history and the momentum of that history, but it’s still on the fringe. We just want to show good work, as we have always done. LACE is not the only place where this work can be shown now, but there are never enough spaces.”

LACE’s emphasis on video and performance is particularly critical because forums for them have always been in short supply in Southern California, Kirby said.

Paul McCarthy, a prominent sculptor and performance artist who got a leg up at LACE, agrees. “If work doesn’t get shown, inevitably it doesn’t get made,” he said, adding that Los Angeles has a dearth of showcases for experimental art.

Darien calls LACE a contemporary arts center rather than an alternative space.

“ Alternative has a specific meaning--reacting against something, and reacting is a limiting concept,” she said. “One of the things we do is to provide alternatives to museums, which collect art, and to galleries, which sell art. We provide a forum for experimentation, but experimentation doesn’t mean simply reacting. It’s building something as well.”

LACE’s program will be lodged in a building that has undergone little exterior change. The stucco and blue tile facade will remain the same, with the exception of a splashy LACE sign replacing the old Newberry School of Beauty label. Inside, the front room is a 640-square-foot gallery, named for LACE patrons Fred and Janet Kessler. The space will be used for exhibitions until funds are available to turn it into a cafe-bookstore with window displays of art.

“We want LACE to be an open, accessible place where people meet,” said architect Frederick Fisher, who designed the renovation, including plans for the cafe-bookstore.

The main exhibition space--called the Peter Norton Family Gallery, in honor of the Los Angeles-based computer guru and arts philanthropist--is a 1,500-square-foot hall with a coved ceiling. To the rear of the building are a 1,400-square-foot performance space and a 300-square-foot video room for single-channel programs and installations.

The major challenges in overhauling the building were to accommodate LACE’s programs in a space that is a bit smaller than its former home and to work within an extremely low budget, Fisher said. The CRA provided $75,000 for the renovation. (General funding for LACE comes from the Arts Organization Stabilization Initiative, the California Arts Council, the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and other sources.)

LACE will launch its new building with “Nor Here Neither There,” an exhibition of paintings by Suzanne Garrison and Spandau Parks, sculpture by Willie Cole, Chris Finley and Nari Ward, photographs by Sharon Lockhart and Lorraine O’Grady, video by Doug Aitken, Tom Burr and Stan Douglas, film by Valie Export, a spoken-word performance by Cynthia Stewart and a musical performance by Mythter. Representing many points of view, the artists hail from various California cities, as well as New York, Vancouver and Vienna.

While not construed as a model for future LACE exhibitions, the show’s curatorial process and its varied contents offer insight into the organization’s philosophy. Darien appointed not one but four curators--artists McCarthy, Charles Gaines and Stephen Prina, and Fran Seegull, curator of the Norton collection and foundation. Working without guidelines, the curators proceeded to assemble an exhibition that has no theme.

“All four of us were interested in exploring alternative methods of curating,” Seegull said. “We didn’t want a theme; we were looking for a more organic model.” As a result, they each picked artists whose work interested them and brought their ideas to a series of meetings. “There was some overlap, but no political jockeying,” she said. “We continued to meet until the show almost curated itself.”

The title, “Nor Here Neither There,” refers to LACE’s geographical limbo of the past year and to a broader perceptual disjuncture between the present and the future, she said.

RE:SOLUTION was founded in 1974, as the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, by seven photographers who wanted to expand the boundaries of the medium. The center, originally located in a small Westside tract house, in 1981 opened its first permanent showcase, at 814 N. Spring St. The center developed an active program of exhibitions, lectures and workshops, but the neighborhood’s decline led the organization to move in 1987. After three years in a temporary space, it opened a small storefront gallery at 1048 W. 6th St., staging exhibitions there and at other local arts institutions.

The organization, renamed RE:SOLUTION, received $40,000 from the CRA to renovate its new 3,500-square-foot home, in a storefront formerly occupied by New World Jewelry. Architect Josh Schweitzer designed the space to include a 1,200-square-foot central gallery, a smaller installation space in the back and a front window gallery and niche to sell the organization’s publication, FRAME-WORK: The Journal of Images and Culture.

The inaugural event in the main gallery is the annual members’ show, curated by Denise Miller-Clark, director of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography. “El Palacio del Amor,” an installation by Bob de Bris, will christen the back gallery, while Marlo Marrero’s project “Don’t I Know You?” will be in the window gallery.

Street-level window displays, such as Marrero’s, are expected to entice a new audience into both LACE and RE:SOLUTION--and to present the institutions with new challenges.

“When you go to museums, it’s a ritualized experience,” LACE’s Kirby said. “On Hollywood Boulevard, you expect something completely different. This will be more like shopping.”

People who wander into the exhibitions won’t like everything they see, he said. “But when you go shopping, you aren’t disappointed if you don’t like 90% of what you see. And if you don’t like everything, you don’t stop going.”

* “Nor Here Neither There,” Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 6522 Hollywood Blvd. Wednesday-Sunday, noon-6 p.m. To July 21. Free. (213) 957-1777.

“Annual Photo Arts Exhibition,” “El Palacio del Amor” and “Don’t I Know You?,” RE:SOLUTION, 6518 Hollywood Blvd. Wednesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. To July 23. (213) 466-6232.