Veteran Los Angeles dealer François Ghebaly is expanding into a new space in Hollywood.
Next week—not coincidentally just ahead of the latest edition of Frieze Los Angeles—he will open his second gallery in a raw, un-renovated space, left “as we found it.”
“I was looking for spaces and I came across one that was perfect for us,” Ghebaly told Artnet News. The dealer, who opened his own gallery in 2009 after cutting his teeth under dealer Mihai Nicodim, previously operated galleries in L.A.’s Chinatown and then Culver City. For the past decade, Ghebaly has run a space in downtown L.A. “We’ve been downtown about 10 years. We have a wonderful space and community there and it’s been very successful. We love what we’ve done there.”
The facade of François Ghebaly’s new space in Hollywood. Image courtesy François Ghebaly.
“We’re not moving away, we’re expanding,” he said of the new Hollywood locale, which is situated off of Santa Monica Boulevard, on Poinsettia Drive.
“We are going to have a wonderful gallery that kind of keeps the spirit of our downtown gallery.” Both spaces are housed in 1940s-era buildings with brick facades.
Ghebaly said the new site is “basically the very beginning of West Hollywood, so my immediate neighbors are Karma and Nino Mier, and right down the street from Jeffrey Deitch and Matthew Brown.”
Sharif Farrag, Bodach, (2019). Image courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly.
The gallery will open with a show of work by Patrick Jackson, and then will shut down for a while. Ghebaly is in conversation with several architects about the space, but hasn’t decided what route he will take.
When the gallery reopens, it will be with a solo show from Sharif Farrag, a young L.A.-based artist. Farrag’s fantastical ceramic sculptures feature a mashup of imagery including body parts, cigarettes, pop-culture cartoon references and imagery from graffiti and skater culture as well as his Syrian-Egyptian heritage. “He’s been building on an incredible body of work,” said Ghebaly.
Patrick Jackson, Heads, Hands and Feet, (2011). Installation view, “Made in L.A. 2020: A Version,” The Huntington, Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is “such an ever-changing city and there is a very exciting group of galleries and a great community that is developing in Hollywood,” Ghebaly said. “L.A. is such a large, wide city that there are many cities within L.A. itself. In Hollywood, something very exciting is happening right now, and I felt like it would be interesting to be a part of it.”