We Believe Today’s Graffiti is Becoming Tomorrow’s Treasures

L.A. Street Art Shifts to the Art Gallery

“I would love to see what you look like in Paris” by artist Louis XXX

Last year, when the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) mounted Art in the Streets, the first major museum exhibition of graffiti and street art history in America, the response for the event broke all attendance records. The exhibition traced the development of this 1970’s genre to modern day and included popular known street artists such as New York’s Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat and Los Angeles-based artists Shepard Fairey and Chaz Bojorquez.

We noticed a few art galleries that were featuring local artists who made the shift from painting on outdoor spaces to creating gallery-worthy artworks on canvas. Lab Art, the largest gallery in the nation to feature these local underground artists, is located on S. La Brea Avenue. Lab Art also opened a small gallery in the Mondrian Hotel’s lobby in West Hollywood. The gallery has an online store where the artists’ portfolio may be viewed and purchased. Now you can bring the street scene right into your home, office or business.

A few artists that caught our eye are Louis XXX, Thank You X and Andrea LaHue (aka Random Act). LaHue is best known for “Cross Country Random Acts of Flowers” — a two- year trek acrossAmerica where she painted flowers on abandoned buildings.

               “She had violet eyes,” by Andrea LaHue.

Discovering Fine Art hanging in trendy hotels isn’t necessarily a new concept. Studio 54 founder and the creator of the boutique hotel concept, Ian Schrager commissioned a series of Robert Mapplethorpe prints for his Manhattan Morgans Hotel in 1984. Morgans is considered to be the world’s first boutique hotel and is now owned by the Morgans Hotel Group, the same owners of The Mondrian. More recent, the Roger Smith, an intimate property in Midtown Manhattan also has a lobby art gallery that’s used as a performance space. And, The James New York hired artist Matthew Jensen to select artworks for the hotel’s 14 floors of guest rooms.

                                  “Boy Wonder” by Thank You X