Bringing the street into the gallery

You might not expect a Fairfax district art show to draw the gangsta rapper likes of Compton’s the Game and Sen Dog of Cypress Hill. But then, the “Hamburger City” photo exhibit at TurnTable Lab, a new record store with a small gallery, strives to project a street essence reaching beyond typical gallery-goers.

The images, 102 in all, are culled from the pages of the magazine Hamburgereyes and feature a mix of raw street life, scenester hip, the wild, the mundane and the horrendous. More than a dozen artists are represented, including L.A. street photographer Estevan Oriol, former pro-wrestling picture-taker Ted Pushinsky and emerging Bay Area shutterbugs.

Hamburgereyes (slang for “an infatuated stare”) is a limited-run, glossy black-and-white underground-photo magazine -- a self-described “pictorial history of both the unseen and iconic moments of everyday life.” Started by brothers David and Ray Potes, with friend Stefan Simikich, about five years ago, the budding San Francisco publication has gained an international fan base.

Ray Potes, 31, says they chose the L.A. branch of TurnTable Lab, which opened in December, as a showcase to mark the venue’s first art exhibit and to repay the commitment the store has shown them in the past. Its flagship New York City shop “carried us since we were a lean, Xerox-copied mag,” he says.

Two of the most popular images come from Hamburgereyes regular Ryan Furtado and Potes. In Furtado’s, a backyard with an excessive amount of junk plays center stage to a basketball dunk from a trampoline. In Potes’ shot, two men on an old motorcycle are ready to speed off. One wears a biker jacket and sports a James Dean-cool look on his face, while his passenger, who has a beer belly and no shirt, clutches the rider’s waist and flashes a grin.

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-- Camilo Smith

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“Hamburger City,” TurnTable Lab Los Angeles, 424 1/2 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A. (323) 782-0173. 1 to 9 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, noon to 8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Ends Monday. www.hamburgereyes.com