Where art is Job 1

On a recent morning, artist Ruben Ortiz Torres stands in front of a muffler shop on Whittier Boulevard, waiting for an audience.

It’s near noon, and the day is getting hotter. Then, almost simultaneously, a dozen women arrive. They have come for a tour of the muffler shop.

Still used by mechanics, who on this morning are replacing mufflers, the garage also houses a large, bizarre collection of objects: a “museum of a million things.”

“Other muffler shops are very attractive in the area, but this is a whole different program,” Torres says.

Since February, a group of L.A. artists has been creating walking tours as part of “A Walk to Remember,” organized by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. To document their experiences, participants are given disposable cameras, which are collected at the end of each walk. Developed photographs are exhibited at LACE, along with maps outlining the respective routes, in a show that runs through May 8.

Although not quite aimless, these walking tours relate to Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “flaneur” -- “a figure who derives pleasure from the hustle and bustle of the city streets, who moves purposelessly among the urban crowd with the eye of an artist: a spectator of contemporary life and urban scenes,” a gallery statement says.

One artist, Eric Wesley, conducted midnight hikes through Griffith Park with the accompaniment of ghost stories. John Baldessari’s walks took place between his studio in Santa Monica and his second studio in Venice (participants were asked to photograph street signs). Meg Cranston’s tours, which are upcoming, will go to Sherman Indian High School in Riverside -- one of three remaining off-reservation Indian boarding schools in the United States. (The other artists in the show are Jennifer Bornstein, Morgan Fisher, Evan Holloway, Allen Ruppersberg and Paul McCarthy.)

A tricolor motif

SHORTLY after noon, Torres takes the group of women (and one husband, Andrea Loreto) to a restaurant across the street for tamales and an outline of what to expect at the muffler shop.

The proprietor is Guillermo “Bill” London, but he refers to himself as Bill Al Capone.

“He considers this place a museum, although it’s a muffler shop,” says Torres, pointing to the view of the garage through the window.

“As you can see,” he says, Capone “has a color scheme: yellow, blue and white.”

Indeed, the outside of the garage -- awning, roof, signs, even a telephone pole on the sidewalk -- is decorated in these colors.

“He has an elaborate color theory: the yellow and blue are dualistic, together they form a third dimension,” says Torres, adding that -- beyond these outlines -- it’s hard to explain.

Capone’s biography is equally murky. Torres knows more about his aspirations. And in any case, “You wonder when he’s truthful.”

Outside, an older woman hawks trinkets from a cardboard box. A few minutes later, a man wearing a baseball cap enters the restaurant, holding up a sliced orange. “Naranja,” he offers.

“Guys, I want to tell you something else,” Torres says. “Obviously, as you see, we’re in East L.A., I want to emphasize, a kind of different locality.”

Born in Mexico in 1964, Torres started out in the 1980s as a photographer, printmaker and painter. He studied art at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City and received his masters of fine arts degree from CalArts after moving to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1990.

In the last decade, he has explored a wider range of media -- including video, installations, customized cars, performances and a series of altered “ready-mades.” His work often examines cultural boundaries and aesthetic hybrids.

Driving down Whittier Boulevard several years ago, he spotted Capone’s muffler shop.

“It defies stereotypes about the neighborhood, and museums, and muffler shops,” Torres says, adding that the garage challenges American notions of immigration, place and culture but also Mexican ideas about East Los Angeles, often imagined as a place of murals and lowriders.

The muffler shop and museum is known as El Pedorrero (The Farter), a reference to the sound made by a noisy exhaust.

“It’s social commentary and, at the same time, it’s very vulgar,” Torres says. “It’s a ride between high and low. And the low gets really low.”

A vintage Police Gazette poster advertises “semi-nude antics of two Newark NY girls.” In another corner towers a large plastic ice cream cone. Around it are an old U.S. Marine Corps poster, an advertisement for Capone’s chess club, and a sign: “Stars and Spanish Personalities Whittier Sidewalk.”

Inside, a few mechanics are repairing cars.

In Capone’s office, every surface is packed with knickknacks. The moldy head of a bear lay on the floor. (What looks like a human leg protrudes from its mouth.)

Capone walks out into the light. A large man with white hair and suspenders, the 68-year-old, Colombian-born proprietor hands out candy and compliments. Because his English is limited, Torres translated the gallantries for the audience.

With their cameras, the group begins exploring the large garage, which consists of several connected buildings.

“Oh. My. God,” a woman exclaims as she walks inside a room where every surface is crowded with figurines, sculptures and clocks. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence hangs on one wall, a gasmask from the ceiling. Another room contains larger pieces: a carriage carrying almost life-size prince and princess dolls.

Some of the objects, or their arrangements, have symbolic meaning -- discernible only to Capone.

“Everything also seems to have this scientific edge,” Torres says. “It relates to the wunderkabinet,” the curiosity cabinet.

A thin layer of dust clings to the objects, meticulously arranged inside the rooms.

“This is the classic period; now we’re going to the post-classic period -- the painting salon,” Torres says, and leads the way.

Split shifts

The building next to the packed garage is large, pristine and empty except for a series of large-scale paintings that decorate the walls. Framed by blue, yellow and white patterns, they appear bright and glossy.

By one wall, a mechanic named Oscar Sandoval, 33, is perched high on scaffolding. Capone employs him to weld and change mufflers two days a week and paint during the rest of his work week.

Paintings created at Bill Al Capone’s shop are not for sale. Rather, they constitute a business plan of sorts -- a visualization of ambitions. What began as a muffler shop and became a museum, he now wants to transform into a mall that would contain not only the collection of “a million things” but also a cinema, a carwash, a chess club and other inventions.

“This is the craziest thing I’ve seen in a while,” says Kate Mondloch, 33, a doctoral candidate in UCLA’s art history department.

The paintings illustrate Capone’s dreams. One depicts a cinema frequented by cartoon characters from the last five decades. Among the featured shows -- written on a playbill and part of the scene -- are “The Alamo,” “The Passion of the Christ” and “Ladykillers.” Other paintings advertise lemonade, cotton candy, popcorn and ice cream. Capone is a recurring figure in most of the images.

“They don’t work so well as advertisements, but they work very well as paintings,” Torres says. Behind him, a painting advertising the chess club shows a horse that could have jumped from Picasso’s “Guernica.”

Sandoval is at work on a painting depicting a surreal farm, and the visitors -- some of them artists -- talk shop with the mechanic: Has he used stencils for any of the paintings? (The answer is no.) What kind of paint does he use? (Just regular paint.)

Torres motions for the group to follow -- the final stop is underground.

Golden replica Aztec knives decorate double doors leading into a basement.

“There’s an order to it,” Mondloch says. “That’s what makes it so creepy; there’s some bizarre order.”

Laboriously, Capone opens each of the locks and flings open the doors to reveal another layer of the collection.

Inside, the floor has been painted to resemble a chess set. Copper dinner plates hang on the wall, intricate model ships are stranded on the ground. A draped tapestry depicts a hunting scene. A model train and a few dolls are surrounded by Capone’s own sculptures.

Capone introduces each object to his visitors: This one he made, that one he fixed; someone else made this one, or -- most often -- that one is valuable.

One sculpture he does take credit for. It looks like a cross between a tricycle, a postbox, a harvest tool and the kind of electric light halo used by dentists.

Capone explains its significance with a spiel that winds around American farming in the 1930s, “Gone With the Wind,” the third dimension and jokes about trucks.

After a while, it becomes a little hard to follow. As the tour draws to a close, even Torres gives up.

“As much as I’d like to explain, how can I?”

The logic of this subterranean world -- like everything else in this muffler shop world -- is completely subjective, he says.

“It’s this other notion of what art might be.”

*

‘A Walk to Remember’

Where: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 6522 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Noon to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, and until 9 p.m. Fridays; closed Mondays and Tuesdays

Ends: May 8

Price: Exhibition, free; tours, $20

Contact: (323) 957-1777; www.artleak.org