The Abstract and Concrete Coalesce Inside a Warehouse

Silent streets run through a dark, sullen section of downtown Los Angeles. Old warehouses are scattered along a flank of the Santa Monica Freeway, lifeless hulks--or so they seem. But on the third floor of one huge building, in an airy loft accented with fluorescent tubes and classical music, Yuroz is preparing for a night of work.

“There is some kind of mysterious energy in the evenings,” the artist says over a glass of Cabernet, while two immense, unfinished canvases await his attention. “Your mind gets more concentrated, especially for painting or creative things.”

At night, undistracted by intruding sunlight, Yuroz brings to life a surreal world of electric colors and bold highlights--a world populated by languid figures with spherical heads and pointed chins. They are abstractions inspired by the sights and emotions of Los Angeles--its streets, clubs and people--and shaped by a personal background that is unusual and compelling.

Eight years after fleeing Soviet Armenia, Yuri Gevorgian belongs to that dwindling colony of artists--estimated to number 1,000 or so--who hang on in the warehouse district of downtown Los Angeles. Sequestered behind high walls and wrought-iron gates in an area marred by street crime and roving crack-cocaine addicts, the artists work and live in uneasy interaction with the city. The enthusiasm of a decade ago--when warehouse lofts were crowded with new artists and galleries--is gone, yet many of the remaining painters and sculptors seem oblivious to the decline. Yuroz, as Gevorgian signs his work, regards this place as an important stronghold for an art world so tainted by East Coast snobbery. Creativity flourishes here, he says. When an inspiration hits him, he sometimes drives himself for up to five days at a time, forgoing sleep and food for the sake of his art. The satisfaction of these frenzies is greater, he says, than sex.

“The biggest ecstasy you can have in your life,” Yuroz calls it, expressing sorrow for those poor souls who “go through their whole lives and never understand what it’s like to have that kind of energy.”

A rumpled mattress occupies the paint-stained hardwood floor. The windows are typical of a warehouse--tiny square panes clustered for a view of the freeway. Walls of red brick and plasterboard rise to heavy support beams.

Of the two unfinished canvases that dominate his loft, one is larger and more complete. It shows a topless red-haired woman--a dour stripper of voluptuous lines--who leans against a bar. A bored-looking bartender and a second stripper are nearby, alone together on a late night.

The work, “Business Is Slow,” is typical of the sexual imagery that appears in much of the artist’s work.

Yet Yuroz finds inspiration anywhere that humor, emotion and irony surface. A few years ago, near the Beverly Center, he saw a homeless man lying on the grass, holding a bright pink balloon. The image still amazes him. “(I thought,) ‘This is surreal. This is magic. . . . He is holding this symbol of flying, this balloon. You could create poetry in how he can’t fly.’ ”

Now a sketch, the scene one day will be a painting.

Like so many downtown artists, Yuroz has struggled. After coming to Los Angeles, he was homeless for three months, sleeping on the streets and in the Greyhound bus depot. He worked as a carpenter and a pizza deliveryman and got an apartment, painting at night. It took three years to make his first sale.

Now, at 37, he is that rarest of artists--a rags-to-riches story. With four lofts in this refurbished building on Long Beach Avenue, Yuroz sells paintings for $1,500 to $250,000. In February, his “The Magic of Sound”--a striking purple-on-black abstract of a gramophone surrounded by enraptured listeners--was the featured artwork of the Grammy Awards show.

Success has not changed his lifestyle, however--or his outlook. Yuroz remains an unpretentious philosopher of art. He eats simply, dining on cheese, fruit and wine, and talks at length about the moods and human dramas that inspire him.

“You try to create a sense of poetry,” he says, placing emotion and insight above technical mastery. “I don’t believe you have to be a great technician. You have to have a great imagination and a great soul. . . . You can take a thing and improvise and improvise and improvise, like a jazz player.”

In spite of the beauty they might create, he and the artists in their warehouse lofts often find themselves confronting insecurities, Yuroz says. “Artists feel they are secondary citizens sometimes . . . (that) they are not important in business life, not important in this fast-moving society.”

The question is one to which the artist has given much thought. His answer: From the third floor of his building near the freeway, he helps spread an appreciation for the beauty of life.

“I don’t make speeches; I hang my paintings,” Yuroz says, smiling as he adds: “If you appreciate your life, I can be 100% sure that you aren’t going to take a gun in your hand and take someone else’s.”