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Rent-Free Galleries : LAART’s Installations I pioneers art-for-space swap to give exposure to artists’ works

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The space on the ground floor at the Encino Terrace Center appears to be a commercial art gallery, with paintings and photos on the walls, sculptures placed strategically on the bare cement floors and exposed pipes overhead. Each month, several hundred patrons gather to gaze at a new exhibit and schmooze and sip wine. Some of them occasionally buy an artwork.

But Installations I, which takes up only a portion of the first floor of the Ventura Boulevard building, is not a typical gallery. The gallery owner doesn’t pay rent. And someday the building owners hope they’ll be able to throw their tenant out.

Installations I is the brainchild of Micky Kaplan, a Los Angeles painter who came up with the idea of asking developers to donate empty building space to an association of emerging Los Angeles artists--called LAART--struggling to get more exposure for their work.

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“It’s an even trade for both parties. We give them a better-looking building, and artists get a free space to show their work,” Kaplan said. LAART, which he founded, runs the gallery.

Kaplan came up with the concept while curating shows as a volunteer for the San Fernando Arts Council. For two years, he displayed the work of a variety of artists in the council’s nonprofit community space, the Warner Center Arts Gallery. The space, on the ground floor of a partially rented office building on Oxnard Street in Woodland Hills, was donated by the owners, the Voit Cos. The gallery folded in August--the ground floor was leased to a card and gift shop--but Kaplan knew that he wanted to continue the art-for-space swap.

When another developer in the midst of a project expressed interest in donating space when his building was finished, Kaplan realized that he had a commodity to sell.

Kaplan began approaching developers and property managers with his proposal. Fujita Corp. USA, which owns the Encino Terrace Center, was immediately interested. With only 25% of the ground floor leased after two years, the development company was willing to provide temporary rent-free space, according to building manager Scott Flanagin. (Fujita had previously donated the same space to a Cal State Northridge student gallery, so it was already transformed--with walls and lighting--into an art showplace.)

Installations I opened in November. The 3,500-square-foot-gallery “got some life going down on the ground floor,” Flanagin said, and costs nothing to run except for the lighting bill. He added that employees who work on other floors like having the steady stream of changing artwork in the lobby’s display cases. (The current exhibit is a one-man photography show by Moses Sparks.)

Kaplan is negotiating a second space in the Valley, to be called Installations II, and is looking to expand into other rent-free locations around Los Angeles.

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In the competitive Los Angeles art market, many small galleries go out of business their first year because of high rents and burdensome overhead, gallery owners say. But “we’ll probably be here longer than some galleries with leases,” Kaplan said. “They’ll be in business for a year; we may be here for two years.”

Thus far, Kaplan has invited nearly 70 painters, sculptors, photographers and mixed-media artists to join LAART, an organization that he describes as a “benevolent dictatorship.” About half the artists, who range in age from 18 to 70, have shown in other galleries, while the others have never been represented.

The group features a wide range of work--from minimalism and pop to impressionism and realism. Shows change every month and include the work of up to 40 artists.

Sharon Maney Lomanto, a painter and photographer who is also a member of LAART, said most artists don’t know much about the business of art or marketing their work. “Commercial galleries don’t always show the best stuff, but stuff that sells,” she said, adding that the advantage of LAART is that “you’re not dealing with a gallery owner worried about selling to stay open or having to please his customers.”

“I’m always amazed, going around to artists’ studios, at the incredible work that’s not being represented in galleries,” said Lomanto, a curator for the Los Angeles Arts Council, a nonprofit organization formed to raise scholarships for artists, and past president of Artists Equity, an artists’ lobbying group. “There’s a lot of good work that never gets shown.”

Kaplan hopes that LAART will help put the right collectors and artists together. “I’m trying to attract emerging collectors who think they can’t afford real art or don’t know where to find it,” Kaplan said. “I don’t care if someone’s budget is $1,000 a year.” Besides trying to attract first-time buyers, Kaplan hopes to bring in as many dealers and gallery owners as possible to interest them in representing members’ work. In lieu of an advertising budget, members rely on their own network of dealers, collectors and friends, and are encouraged to bring as many people as possible to the gallery to see their work.

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This isn’t the first time that Kaplan--who worked as an art wholesaler in the late 1970s selling lithographs and silk screens of such artists as Picasso and Chagall--has organized artists.

In 1986 he engineered an ambitious yearlong, bi-coastal project for California artists to get more exposure in New York. Frustrated over his failure to get his own work shown in New York (he has had one-man shows at the Dushane Gallery in Los Angeles, Warner Center Gallery, Limited Editions Gallery in Beverly Hills and the Platt Gallery at the University of Judaism), he rented gallery space in the city’s SoHo art district, formed an artists’ cooperative and gathered 100 Southern California artists, who each paid $670 to exhibit their work for a month. “It was a great project, but I got burned out traveling back and forth every month,” he said, adding that he also lost $10,000 on the project.

Now he travels back and forth between his Los Angeles home and Installations I, where he works until LAART can cover the expenses of a full-time person to man the gallery. LAART members pay $20 a month to cover expenses, including printing, insurance, telephones and sending out invitations. Kaplan takes up to a 45% commission on all sales, a percentage that falls within the range of commercial galleries. After four months of operation, the gallery has sold $6,500 worth of artwork. “That would only be a mediocre haul at best at a regular gallery, but it’s great when you’re not paying rent,” Kaplan said.

The gallery is only one aspect of LAART. The group meets each month to decide on upcoming shows, to get to know one another, and to share contacts and skills. Kaplan also hopes to start a buying cooperative for art supplies.

“L.A. is so spread out that artists don’t know each other,” said LAART member El Gordon. LAART is “a central meeting place where artists can start working together and giving each other feedback.”

Referring to Kaplan, she said: “He does the work of an agent for $20 a month. He took over jobs that would keep me away from my art.”

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But whether LAART will take off as a concept remains to be seen. Members of LAART say the snob appeal of established galleries and dealers is a force to be reckoned with in the art world.

Harriet Hochberg, a sculptor who has shown at a variety of galleries and museums and has taught sculpture at the University of Judaism for the last 12 years, joined LAART two months ago. Already she has sold one of her large outdoor works to a New York architect.

“LAART is an adventure,” she said, “and I’m willing to be part of it. He’s promoting local artists in a fresh way.”

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