A Merchant of Venice Opens Shop in N.Y. : Art: Louver Gallery goes bicoastal by setting up an outpost in the heart of SoHo. The move indicates a tendency to think of the marketplace in more global terms.

Los Angeles’ seaside art scene has made a splash in Manhattan. While Eastern galleries open outposts in Santa Monica, L.A. Louver Gallery of Venice has gone bicoastal.

Louver Gallery New York, in the heart of SoHo, opened in October with a museum-quality show of sculpture from the ‘80s by Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz.

Is this a trend? Not in the obvious sense. Los Angeles dealers aren’t lining up to rent New York spaces, but the move indicates a growing tendency to think of “the art world” in global terms and not as a New York hothouse.

As international art fairs assemble far-flung galleries under one roof and the art market becomes increasingly mobile, many dealers establish themselves in more than one city, if not more than one country.

Peter Goulds, owner of the two Louvers, and Sean F. Kelly, director of the New York gallery, talk about making European connections through New York and reaching across the Pacific from Los Angeles. Traffic will run both ways, they say, with Louver Gallery New York providing a forum for some Los Angeles artists while L.A. Louver continues to include British and European artists in its California program.

“We have the advantage of interlinking while running distinctive programs. This isn’t a franchise, but we have more things in common than differences,” Kelly said.

Aficionados of L.A. Louver will find that the lineup of New York shows has a familiar ring: Los Angeles artists Ed Moses, Peter Shelton and Tony Berlant, and Britons John Virtue and David Nash.

The Kienholzes, who divide their time between Berlin and Hope, Ida., are also better known in Los Angeles than in New York. Though they show regularly at L.A. Louver and have an enormous following in Europe--a major exhibition of their work that began in Dusseldorf is now in Vienna--this is the pair’s first show in New York.

Edward Kienholz, who got his start in Los Angeles, hasn’t had an exhibition in New York since 1966, long before Nancy Reddin became his wife and creative partner.

“Despite the long absence, people who really know, know about them. The response has been tremendous,” Kelly said.

The exhibition of about two dozen sculptures, largely composed of flea-market foundlings, is prime Kienholz. A disturbing mixture of rage, criticism, empathy, hope and humor throbs through these artistic metaphors for aggression against humanity and nature.

“The Grey Man’s Parade,” with a flag-waving, baby-faced man looming over a stag’s head, raises issues about sending children to war and killing off their natural legacy.

“Claude Nigger Claude,” featuring two life-size figures--one caged as an elevator operator and the other as a businessman--questions the impact of race, education and opportunity on social standing.

In “Fast Walking Through Sparrows,” a pair of sturdy legs plows through a forest of birds. “Septet,” a particularly poignant assembly of dress forms and an old photograph of German girls, suggests that lost innocence is the price of youthful dreams and inevitable maturity.

Such messages are open to interpretation, however, and each cast-off component is cloaked in its own ambiguous history. The resulting mystery allows the art to rise far beyond politics.

The Kienholz show (through Saturday) has launched the new gallery as well as a remodeled building. Louver Gallery New York is currently the lone tenant in a handsome five-story structure at Prince and Wooster streets, but not for long. Tony Shafrazi, Victoria Munroe, Christine Burgin, Andrea Rosen and Luhring Augustine galleries and Petersburg Press will move in as soon as construction is complete.

At that point, Louver will be tightly embedded in the New York scene. West Coast art won’t be its only L.A. connection, however. Los Angeles architect Frederick Fisher, who adapted an old brick building in Santa Monica to the needs of the Eli Broad Family Foundation’s collection, has designed the 6,000-square-foot gallery.

He has married the existing structure with new additions, using an effective mixture of natural and artificial light. Subtly detailed themes include coffered ceilings and a cutaway form under a counter that echoes a volume projecting below one corner of the ceiling.

Oddly enough, the building itself was formerly owned by Los Angeles developer Edward Broida, who had planned to use it for a private museum. Reportedly frustrated by red tape, Broida gave up the project a couple of years ago and sold the building to another developer.