Considerably unexpectedly on West Hollywood’s Melrose Avenue, with its gaudy colors and billboards, gallerist Rosa Park has cleverly created a sanctuary that immediately soothes the senses. Increasing from Francis Gallery’s first location in Bathtub, UK, Park’s second area has just lately completed its year-long renovation.
Francis Gallery Los Angeles: the artwork of gallery design
(Picture credit score: Wealthy Stapleton)
Working in partnership with Lindsey Chan and Jerome Byron of LA-based studio BC, Park has created the antithesis of a stark white dice, as a substitute exploring her expertise for creating restrained environments which can be harmonious with the works she reveals. ‘I needed so as to add softness and curves to what’s in any other case a really clear, hard-edged area,’ she says. In contrast to Francis Gallery in Bathtub, a Georgian townhouse, the Los Angeles gallery includes a concrete shopfront. ‘LA is the sort of place the place you may make something that you really want it to be, proper?’ she jokes. She did so by referencing shapes and kinds synonymous with Korean tradition, such because the curved partition wall constructed on the centre of the gallery that emulates the type of a Korean moon jar, when considered from a chicken’s eye perspective.
Park labored solely with pure supplies, in a color palette she calls ‘nuanced neutrals’, impressed by Korean and Californian hues, including heat and texture. Partitions are painted with Portola’s Lime Wash in an off-white (nothing is optic white or black) and pure linen blinds diffuse the sunshine (deliberately blocking out the busy avenue exterior). She selected the smoked oak flooring from Madera and used solely vintage brass {hardware} for a similar purpose: ‘It should age superbly over time.’ She provides, ‘Though the gallery has simply opened, I needed the area to really feel as if it’s been round for some time, for it to already be imbued with a way of time.’
(Picture credit score: Wealthy Stapleton)
She commissioned artist Minjae Kim (who confirmed at Matter Tasks throughout New York Design Week 2022) to create a spherical desk and bench set for the again space of the gallery, whereas the lengthy benches for the inside and courtyard had been custom-made by Park herself. She additionally made the upholstered cushions for a uncommon two-piece vintage Korean summer season mattress, used individually as two low stools.
Outdoors within the courtyard on the rear of the gallery, Park factors out the weather which can be redolent of a standard Korean hanok courtyard: ‘The low bench seating; the stone-like concrete steps; the only tree – in our case, a maple planted within the center.’
All of the consideration paid to the environment speaks on to the consideration Park pays to her artists, who’re on view throughout the gallery.
(Picture credit score: Wealthy Stapleton)
The inaugural present: ‘Morning Calm’
Titled ‘Morning Calm’, the gallery’s inaugural Los Angeles artwork exhibition contains principally unseen works by six modern artists, each Korean and of Korean-American descent, at varied phases of their careers, working in a number of mediums, and dwelling in Los Angeles and Seoul.
John Zabawa is a Korean American artist specialising in portraits imbued with a way of nostalgia. Park first confirmed his work in Bathtub in 2020, and for this present, he painted a uncommon self-portrait.
That is the primary time younger painter Music Jaeho has proven work exterior of Korea. ‘I really like the lightness, wit and humour to how he paints,’ says Park of his summary oils.
Rising star Bo Kim works extra historically, carrying on the ‘Dansaekhwa’ motion centered on monochromatic simplicity. Utilizing layers of acrylic and sand, her works tackle decay and bodily ageing over time.
(Picture credit score: Wealthy Stapleton)
Famend photographer Koo Bohnchang has travelled the world photographing vintage Korean vessels in prestigious museums, with the hope of ‘reuniting’ these artefacts that had been taken in another country because of conflict and colonialism by way of his photographs. The present additionally contains never-before-seen works of previous Korean farming and fishing instruments.
Rahee Yoon created some sculptural acrylic tables completed with the normal ‘ottchil’ lacquering method, which makes use of tree sap to create an intense darkish brown hue. The end takes two years to completely treatment and can maintain subtly altering color till then.
LA-based ceramic artist Nancy Kwon has created wall hangings that decision on her conservation experience and abstractly resemble ariel footage of rice paddies, cities, and coastlines.
The present takes its title from the generations-old mistranslation, ‘The Land of Morning Calm’, and questions notions of time, place, reminiscence, creativeness and historical past in addition to the thought of ‘Koreanness’. ‘This phrase leads me to a spot the place Koreanness shouldn’t be absolute, however slightly a group of private beliefs, meanings, and values that’s ever-changing and shape-shifting,’ says Park.
(Picture credit score: Wealthy Stapleton)
(Picture credit score: Wealthy Stapleton)
(Picture credit score: Wealthy Stapleton)
(Picture credit score: Wealthy Stapleton)
‘Morning Calm’, till 7 January 2023 at Francis Gallery, Los Angeles. francisgallery.co (opens in new tab)
Supply: Wallpaper
