Ahead of Frieze LA, Perrotin Expands to Los Angeles, in a Historic Theater 

After more than 30 years in business and more than a decade of opening locations beyond its Paris homebase, Perrotin will inaugurate its latest space this week, in Los Angeles. Coming just before the fifth edition of Frieze LA opens on Thursday, the gallery’s debut in the City of Angels marks yet another significant milestone in its global expansion, underscoring the city’s increasing role as a thriving hub for contemporary art.

Located within the former Del Mar Theater on Pico Boulevard, just past La Brea Avenue, Perrotin’s new space is a testament to the city’s rich architectural heritage. Inside the gleaming, blue-painted historic building, several key elements of the theater have been meticulously preserved, including its ticket booth, glass poster boxes, and the theater hall, which have been adapted as unique sites for exhibiting work. From the restored neon sign to the iconic marquee, the gallery’s design pays homage to Los Angeles’ storied past while embracing its vibrant present.

Prior to officially committing to opening a permanent space in the city, the gallery has presented successful pop-up exhibitions in the space, including installations by Jesper Just and Barry McGee. The gallery’s founder Emmanuel Perrotin told ARTnews that “although we knew we had to undertake some renovations, we were eager to get into the space right away. So by the time of the pop-up, we had in fact already decided to invest in a permanent presence in Los Angeles.” 

The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, dedicated to Izumi Kato, highlights the Tokyo-based artist’s blend of timeless figures and primal forms. His enigmatic creations seem to reflect a spiritual kinship with LA’s diverse landscape of ancient tar pits and modern skyscrapers.

Kato’s figurative subjects, with their protruding round eyes and unsmiling mouths, exude a stoic tenderness that belies their initial appearance of menace. Drawing inspiration from ancient petroglyphs and contemporary culture, Kato’s artworks evoke a sense of mystery and invites viewers to contemplate the intersection of past and present, nature and technology.

The exhibition features a comprehensive survey of Kato’s recent multidisciplinary work, showcasing paintings, drawings, and sculptures crafted from an array of materials including wood, stone, plastic, and fabric. At the heart of the exhibition stands a monumental fabric figure that hovers above the gallery space like a guardian spirit, while a plastic model kit offers viewers the opportunity to create their own miniature versions of Kato’s sculptures.

Born in 1969 in the Shimane Prefecture of Japan, Kato’s artistic practice is deeply intertwined with his upbringing amid the region’s rich cultural heritage and natural, mountainous landscapes.

Los Angeles, with its vibrant Japanese community and diverse cultural scene, serves as an ideal setting for Perrotin’s presentation of Kato’s work. “This is the first time I will have a solo exhibition in LA, and the first time is always very exciting,” Kato, who has mounted 13 solo shows with Perrotin since 2014, told ARTnews. “It’s a new place with a new audience, and I’m looking forward to seeing how people will react to my work.

Perrotin’s expansion to LA follows several international dealers who have set up shop in the city in recent years, including Lisson, Marian Goodman Gallery, and David Zwirner, a testament to the city’s growing status as a global hub for contemporary art. It also comes at a moment in which the gallery itself is undergoing a transformation. 

After opening in Paris in 1990, the gallery, has expanded at a clip since the 2010s, opening new spaces in Hong Kong (in 2012), New York (2013), Seoul (2016), Tokyo (2017), and Shanghai (2019). Earlier this year a planned collaboration between Perrotin the art dealers Tom-David Bastok and Dylan Lessel was called off. The collaboration would have seen the three dealers go into business with a focus on secondary market sales, with Perrotin adding another Paris space to his portfolio and expanding into the Middle East with an outpost in Dubai. (Those two spaces will now operate under the name Bastok Lessel.)

But more interesting, Perrotin made headlines late last year, when he sold a 60 percent stake in the gallery to Colony Investment Management. At the time Perrotin told Bloomberg that “The art market has experienced an enormous revolution in the past few years, but there’s still lots to come. We need to boost our activities throughout the world and conquer new geographies.” Details of the deal are still scarce, though Perrotin said that a clearer picture of the gallery’s new structure would come later this year.

Overseen by partner Alice Lung and senior directors Nadia Ng-Middleton and Jennifer King, Perrotin Los Angeles plans to embrace collaboration as a way to offer its artists new audiences to engage their work, while also tapping into the gallery’s current ties to the city. Its roster already includes multiple artists based on the West Coast, including Emma Webster, Claire Tabouret, Barry McGee, Zach Harris, and the collective MSCHF. 

And with that in mind, Perrotin said he is interested in tapping the “energy in creative fields like music, film, and dance” in Los Angeles, which is also reflected in the gallery’s diverse program. That diversity, he said, “allows us to create synergies between the different worlds our artists inhabit, and their degrees of fame. These connections benefit everyone. Our role is to bring our artists visibility so that they too can achieve success on a long-term basis.”