Los Angeles Art Show Now Has Room to Grow

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The cavern known as the Los Angeles Convention Center's West Hall isn't your typical venue for art and sculpture. The hall is a massive 150,000 square feet, with thirty-six foot high ceilings. While the 14th Annual Los Angeles Art Show had the feel of a trade show at times, the new space paid off by giving galleries and dealers room to work.

The result was overwhelming to the senses. In cloes succession a visitor could gaze at the visual language of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol immediately following Ralph Chessé, see multiple works by modern Asian artists and check out booths with lithographs of test sketches by Mexican muralists.

The galleries did a good job in preventing the presentation from coming off as an elite sample sale. That sometimes happens when so many styles and forms of composition are butted up against each other outside the controlled confines of musuems or galleries.

While it remains to be seen how the Convention Center did as a business move, it was very good to see the Los Angeles Art Show finally staged in its namesake city. The space gives the show a solid framework to expand on, as it continues to make itself into a internationally recognized stop on the art show circuit.