A Night of Openings in Chinatown's Galleries

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Robert Apodaca’s Fifth Floor Gallery sits on Chung King Court, off the 500-foot alley known as Chung King Road that headlines Chinatown’s nationally recognized art scene. While Art Walk and Gallery Row get most of the attention here in Downtown, the community on Chung King Road continues to be worthy of attention.

Apodaca’s gallery, which opened this year, continues its clean mix of craftmanship and art theory with the opening of shared interdisciplinary works from artist Emma Garr and artist/writer Johanna Reed in “HEDVA : the first collection.”

By applying non-traditional materials and colors, garments become artworks, and, once worn by selected models, become an installation. The show explores how relationships between wearer and clothing develop, along with the idea of how the mind will sometimes respond to clothing. If the garment’s intent is art; how will that be interpreted by a crowd inside a gallery?

On Friday, as Garr and Reed were prepping works for Saturday nights opening of “the first collection,” outside the gallery Tahereh Sheerazie was trimming her evolving work of small unnamed plant sculptures. The garden artist mixes dried and live indigenous plants, found objects, and the arrangement is shaped as she thinks of L.A.. One could be considered a conceptual cacti skyline of Downtown – arid, dry, worn and looking for water.

“HEDVA : the first collection” / Johanna Reed and Emma Garr / Opening reception September 6th, 6-9pm

Other Openings: Chung King Project will have the first Northern America solo exhibition by Michael Müller. Reception starts at 6pm. (945 Chung King Road)

Sam Lee Gallery: “Pipo Nguyen-duy, The Garden” and John McGuire Olsen in Project Space. (990 N. Hill Street #190)

POV Evolving: Kiel Johnson exhibit. Opening Reception starts at 7pm. (939 Chung King Road).