Review of Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2017-2020, California, United States
Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) is Los Angeles’s international art fair. The fair feature top established and emerging galleries from around the world, with a strong focus on Los Angeles galleries. Participants present some of the most dynamic recent works from their roster of represented artists, offering an informed view on contemporary art making. ALAC has helped solidify Los Angeles as an art epicenter and nurtured a generation of young collectors.
With deep roots in LA’s creative community and a global reach, ALAC has acted as a gateway to an international exchange. ALAC’s recipe of combining emerging and established galleries is key to its longevity and success: ALAC is thrilled to usher in the next generation of galleries as LA’s discovery fair, while continuing to partner with the most exciting established programs in the city. ALAC maintains an unparalleled commitment to art-making, collection-building, and the galleries that are the bridge between the two.
Los Angeles is knocking hard on the door of the elite club of art-world cities.Art Los Angeles Contemporary has come into its own. With more international spaces renting booths than in years past, an indication of L.A.’s growing importance in the art market.
There is a kind of younger, fun feel at this particular fair and special surprise always be found.The ambiance was ultra-cool, with tremendously spacious booths and hallways that looked dramatic against the pitch-black domed ceiling of the hangar. The fair kept the Barker Hangar buzzing. The fair has helped launch an art-focused weekend in Los Angeles at the end of January.
There was incredible diversity in the range of mediums and the curatorial directions taken by artists and galleries. The balance between emerging and more established galleries is what defines ALAC as an international platform for contemporary art in Los Angeles. It’s this spirit that carries forward in all ALAC do at the Hangar and throughout the city, from the performances and lectures to the VIP program that is built around the energy and enthusiasm that our galleries, collectors and institutional partners provide. ALAC built a very solid foundation to move forward and expand.
A strong mix of international exhibitors alongside local galleries, Art Los Angeles Contemporary has managed to turn an otherwise anti-art fair town into a place where both emerging and established galleries from around the world can connect with an important West Coast audience. The fair serves to showcase L.A.’s growing presence as an international hub.
ALAC 2020
The 11th edition of Art Los Angeles Contemporary, held at The Hollywood Athletic Club on Sunset Boulevard, February 13-16, 2020. In the spirit of the Club where stars once met and mingled, ALAC 2020 open its doors to a new boutique style art fair. The 11th edition of Art Los Angeles Contemporary present forty-five galleries in an open format floorplan.
Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) returns to Hollywood for its international art fair producing a dynamic and informed cross-section of international contemporary art. ALAC 2020 span the Club’s two floors, inhabiting both its vaulted ceiling ballroom and its athletic infrastructure, including a gymnasium and racquetball courts. Reenvisioning the space’s original, 1920s architecture was Mexico-City based PRODUCTORA in collaboration with Part Office.
The massive exhibition feature 50 artists at the historic Hollywood Athletic Club on Sunset Boulevard utilizing the ballroom, bars and athletic spaces of the once celebrity hot spot.
A new fundraising edition with artist Jess Johnson, debuting this week at our booth. WOR is a deep dive into a multi-layered hypnotic world complete with cultural symbology, humanoid clones, messianic figures, and tumbling alien runes. The image reveals the hypercolored and complex inner workings of a fictional world that is seemingly self-regenerating. Johnson’s drawing, installation, and video practice is heavily influenced by science fiction, language, early video games and computer graphics, architecture, and graphic novels.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles with a presentation of new paintings by Düsseldorf-based Erik Olson and New York-based Josh Reames. Erik Olson renders people and experiences that are familiar and new as he moves through the world questioning presumptions and perceptions of reality through paint. The figures that populate his canvases are likened to characters in mystery plays, each flaunting their own constructed personas and exuberant color. For Olson, each portrait is a means to express many attributes or identities in one person simultaneously.
Josh Reames’ new “bumper sticker paintings” continue to reference a vocabulary of transient signs and symbols, untethered in space and anchored by visual and textual puns. The paintings are frequently structured ways that reflect what is seen on a computer screen: content that is floating, often indexical, shifting, disappearing, and non-hierarchical. This familiar visual framework for almost all image, news, and information consumption is painstakingly translated through the analog process of painting.
M+B presenting Volta Photo, an exhibition of black and white photographs by West African artist Sanlé Sory. The booth includes studio portraits from the 1960s-1980s, a stunning cross-section of the postcolonial culture of an economically challenged, but recently liberated country negotiating its local, regional and international identities. Sory’s photographs provide a view from the ground of the shifting boundaries delineating local customs from mass culture, and self from an imagined community spread across borders by such means as radio, music recordings, film and photography itself.
LACE is the longest-running incubator for contemporary artists and curators in LA. This year, LACE presents The Revolting Lumpen!. a video installation and performance by Los Angeles based artist duo Beck+Col. The Revolting Lumpen! a classical opera explores alternate universes populated by monsters. The monsters are at once silly, playful and exceptionally brutal. As the title’s play on words suggests, the work relies on humor and chaos to speak to contemporary economic and social structures. Performance is on Saturday, February 15 at 5:30pm.
“The Right Place at the Right Time” is a selection from artist Luciano Perna’s vast archive of photographs. Taken both in sittings and spontaneously from the early 1980s on, these images document Los Angeles’ most luminary figures, and comment on the photographic norms of portraiture.
Court Space is a curatorial initiative activating communities through facilitating arts programming, talks, and pick-up games in public sports courts. In his first exhibition with Court Space, installation artist Gozié Ojini repurposes sports gear and equipment to highlight the history of the Hollywood Athletic Club.
Siebren Versteeg’s video installation, “Possibly Living People” commemorates approximately 5,661 people who may or may not be alive today, based on a Wikipedia categorization. With this work, Versteeg questions our technological urge to publish, memorialize, and bear witness.
ALAC 2019
LOS ANGELES, CA- (January 18, 2019)- LA’s international contemporary art fair celebrate its 10th anniversary with new visual branding, a reimagined floor design, as well as new “Salon” and Publishing sections. ALAC bring together international contemporary galleries, collectors, curators, artists, and art enthusiasts for an extended five-day cultural event from Wednesday, February 13-Sunday, February 17.
Over ten years, ALAC has helped to solidify Los Angeles as an art epicenter, nurtured a generation of young collectors, and acted as a gateway to international exchange. ALAC’s unique combination of emerging and established galleries has been key to its longevity and success. ALAC maintains an unparalleled commitment to art-making, collection-building, and the galleries that are the bridge between the two. ALAC’s 10th Edition introduce the next generation of galleries, while continuing to partner with the most exciting established programs in the city.
The 10th anniversary is a chance for us to recommit to who we are: content-forward, trusted but inventive, international and LA. Our work is really about putting together the best program of established and emerging galleries, to show off the best of LA and around the globe. ALAC collaborate with, from new galleries with audacious programming to respected partners we’ve worked with from ALAC’s beginning a decade ago.
For the new visual identity of the fair, ALAC has teamed with award-winning graphic designer and artist Brian Roettinger (WP&A). Inspired by the fair’s physical venue at the Santa Monica Airport, ALAC’s new branding explores the language of way-finding. This year, a magnificent redesign of the hangar by the award-winning Seattle architectural firm Olson Kundig, which opened up the layout so collectors could flow through with ease. The new bold black and white identity is a modular typographic system. The look focuses on the fair’s better-known name ‘ALAC’ instead of its official full name.
For its tenth anniversary edition, ALAC was housed within a new architectural design by principal architect at Seattle-based firm Olson Kundig Jerry Garcia, who has collaborated with world-renowned artists such as Anish Kapoor, Jaume Plensa, Oscar Tuazon, and Doug Aitken. Claudia Rech, Berlin-based art historian, curator, and former gallerist of Gillmeier Rech, curate a “Salon” section called “The Academy,” offering a new way for galleries and the public to participate in the fair through a curated exhibition. Frances Horn, Brussels-based curator and initiator of the art book fair PA/PER VIEW at WIELS, has been selected to lead the ALAC publishing section, “Movable Types.” More details on the architectural design as well as the Salon and Publishing sections to come.
Some edgy, younger galleries showed at ALAC for the first time, including Mrs. and False Flag. The Berlin dealer Javier Peres of Peres Projects, which has shown at ALAC since its inception, presented a series of bold, colorful works by buzzworthy Ghanian artist Ajarb Bernard Ategwa. Making its debut at the fair was VI, VII from Oslo, which presented striking new, yellow-and-black wall works by rising star Eva LeWitt, as well as some vibrant paintings by young Norwegian artist Jorunn Hancke.
Functional Art Gallery in Berlin presented a dazzling solo booth dedicated to the designer Anna Aagaard Jensen. A graduate from the esteemed Design Academy Eindhoven, she creates exaggerated anthropomorphic chairs in fiberglass that have been tinted with blush makeup to challenge social norms and encourage women to claim more space with their bodies. A series of curious resin assemblages by Erin Jane Nelson at Chicago’s Document that alluded to Joseph Cornell’s readymade boxes were a standout of the night.
Among the handful of young galleries and artist-run spaces from New York making their debut at the fair were Queens-based Mrs. gallery, which presented a series of comic-book- and cartoon-inspired collages by Mark Mulroney; Safe Gallery, which showed vibrant, playful paintings on mirrored surfaces by Alex Eagleton; and False Flag, with a striking carpet installation by Asif Mian.
Bortolami offering the entire estate of local artist Eric Wesley for $1 million, transformed its space into a “Bohemian artist’s living room from the 1920s,” and is presenting a smattering of eclectic art-and-design pieces, including works by Petra Cortright, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, and Serge Attukwei Clottey. Starkwhite from Auckland, New Zealand, showed works by Billy Apple and Michael Stavros.
ALAC 2018
The global contemporary art scene descended into Los Angeles during Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) with cutting-edge galleries, collectors and major figures from the entertainment and creative fields. Running from January 25 to January 28, the fair ended its ninth edition with reports of sold-out booths and otherwise strong sales performance matched with quality presentations and steadfast interest from collectors, bringing in over 16,000 visitors total.
The fair brought in 68 local and international exhibitors that brought in a range of works, spanning small and large-scale sculpture, painting, installation and video pieces from both emerging and established artists. Tim Fleming is owner and director of Fair Grounds Associates, producers of Art Los Angeles Contemporary and the publisher of Art Los Angeles Reader, the platform for established and emerging voices in art criticism.
ALAC looks to create a global art world environment that affords any Angeleno a chance to get a sampling of what emerging art curators, institutions and collectors are paying attention to. In addition, there were installations by established artists such as Betty Woodman, Allan Ruppersberg and Tony Marsh that give necessary historic weight to the fair. This year’s focus on diversity and gender equality was quite noticeable. This year also featured the launch of the ALAC Music Series at Zebulon, which presented concerts and live music performances following the first two nights of the fair.
Highlights of the fair included diverse presentations, such as Trenton Doyle Hancock at Shulamit Nazarian, a solo booth of work by late female artist Betty Woodman at David Kordansky Gallery, and a sprawling solo presentation by FriendsWithYou at The Pit. On Saturday, Carmina Escobar hosted a performance piece Passing Through Dimensions that offered fair guests the opportunity to turn the Art Los Angeles Reader into a musical instrumental resembling a megaphone and saw them explore the space of the Barker Hangar using their voices.
Throughout the fair weekend, the organic juice bar Tropics served a selection of their freshly made juices on a specifically designed Juice Bar / Skate Ramp installation and Chef Alisa Reynolds offered her unique take on Southern soul food cooking through her restaurant My Two Cents. On Sunday, CoachArt took over the ALAC Theatre with an allages workshop led by local artists including The Haas Brothers, Channing Hansen, Rosson Crow and Ry Rocklen, solidifying links between ALAC and community arts advocacy organizations and non-profits.
The VIP program solidified links between fair guests and artists, collectors, and local institutions. A featured event was a tour of Cheech Marin’s private collection, which focuses on Chicano and other artists of color. ALAC provides an important opportunity to present Brazilian and other Latin American artists that may not otherwise be exhibited or shown in L.A.
The ninth edition of the fair featured galleries drawn from a diversity of geographic regions, with a large contingent of new and returning galleries from Asia, Latin America and Europe. These included Instituto de Visión, Bogota, with a group presentation including Carmen Argote, Luis Ernesto Arocha, Pía Camil, Manuela Viera-Gallo and Sebastián Fierro; LAZY Mike, Moscow; Revolver Galería, Lima / Buenos Aires; and Vermelho, São Paulo.
Local galleries also reported a heightened sense of collector interest that ran throughout the opening and all public days of the fair. The presentation attracted known collectors and curatorial figures as well as viewers unfamiliar with the work. Many great collectors came through the fair and new works sold to private collections both before and throughout the fair week.
In the Freeways section, returning now for its third year, eight young exhibitors presented new works to the Los Angeles art community, including a solo presentation by the German painter Hans-Jörg Mayer at the new Chicago gallery M. LeBlanc, works by Guy Yanai at the booth of Galerie Derouillon as well as works by Dustin Metz and Franklin Williams in Parker Gallery’s booth.
In its 9th edition, Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) presents a comprehensive programming series that underscores the fair’s relationship to Los Angeles and its diverse cultural community through concerts, performances, talks and unique outreach activities. Participants for the 2018 edition span artists, curators, institutional figures and writers that include Carmina Escobar, Ben Fain, Amanda Hunt, Naima J. Keith, Jesse Fleming, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Matthew Schum, Keith J. Varadi and Neville Wakefield. In addition to on-site programming at the ALAC Theatre, the organic juice bar Tropics was presenting a skate ramp installation at the front entrance to the fair where professional skaters perform, showcasing their links to community, youth and integration of community outreach.
On the opening night of ALAC, artist Jesse Fleming, represented by Five Car Garage, presents Jane the Baptist at the ALAC Theatre, an immersive light and sound installation that offers a meditative, sci-fi voyage through automated car washes throughout Los Angeles County. Viewers are able to view the artwork in a space that is both meditative as well as reflective on the nature of our mechanized environment, with the accompanying original soundtrack remixed live by Miguel de Pedro / kid606. Following the VIP preview, ALAC hosts its official after party featuring Cat Power, launching a two night music series at Zebulon.
Friday’s events comprise panel discussions regarding community-building within Los Angeles and the surrounding area. Desert X artistic director Neville Wakefield joins co-curators Amanda Hunt of MOCA Los Angeles and Matthew Schum to discuss the inaugural edition of the regional biennial as well as the upcoming second edition in 2019. Following this, Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock joins in conversation with Naima J. Keith, Deputy Director of the Californian African American Museum in Exposition Park, to discuss his practice and upcoming projects that embrace exuberant and subversive narratives that span cultural tropes ranging from comics, superheroes and medieval morality expressed through both text and abstraction. Following Friday’s activities, ALAC continues programming at Zebulon with a performance by the seminal Los Angeles hip-hop group Freestyle Fellowship
On Saturday, talks, screenings and performances confront the idea of interventionism in the contemporary art world. Artist Keith J. Varadi leads a discussion with New York-based artist Ben Fain following a screening of some of Fain’s public projects conceived over the past fifteen years. The conversation that follows address cults of personality and populist communities in the art world, followed by a question and answer session open to all in attendance. Following this, Los Angeles-based Mexican artist Carmina Escobar leads an on-site performance of her artwork Passing Through Dimensions (2017) featured in the current edition of the Art Los Angeles Reader, where the artist offers instructions of how to turn the Reader into a musical instrument. Art Los Angeles Reader is published biannually by Fair Grounds Associates and is edited by Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal.
Sunday features a special takeover of the ALAC Theatre with workshops hosted throughout the afternoon by the nonprofit organization CoachArt, which connects families of chronically ill children and their siblings to volunteer mentors in sports, music, dance, cooking, the visual arts and more. Ideal for ALAC visitors bringing their families, the workshops was hosted by a variety of prominent Los Angelesbased artists including Rosson Crow, The Haas Brothers, Channing Hanson and Ry Rocklen, who was offering hands-on activities specifically geared towards children and youths between the ages of 5 and 16.
ALAC 2017
Art Los Angeles Contemporary, the International Contemporary Art Fair of the West Coast, concluded its eighth edition at the Barker Hangar on January 29, 2017. With over 16,000 people in attendance, the fair brought out spirited presentations of work by its local and international participants, highlighted by robust sales, exceptional collector attendance and participation from artists, museum groups, curators and critics. The ALAC Theatre hosted a number of performances, talks, screenings and lectures in its most comprehensive schedule of events and programming yet. The 2017 fair additionally debuted the Reader Lounge that presented the third edition of the Art Los Angles Reader.
New international galleries at the fair in 2017 were drawn from Brazil, China and South Korea. These included 10 Chancery Lane, Hong Kong, that presented works by Chinese artists Huang Rui and Wang Keping; 313 Art Project, Seoul, with a solo presentation by Kiwon Park; Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong; ONE AND J. Gallery, Seoul; and Vermelho, Sao Paolo. It also marked the return of Henrique Feria, Buenos Aires and Yuatepec, Mexico City, with a solo presentation by Sergio Bromberg.
Art Los Angeles Contemporary was a refreshing light in the international art fair circuit. The audience was engaged and curious. Audience was involved the towards our Chinese artists Huang Rui and Wang Keping. Vermelho used the fair as an opportunity to present Latin American artists and show works from a new generation of artists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico that offer a possibility to observe, think and rethink history in contemporary terms.
Numerous returning galleries announced strong sales, many within the six-figure range. The artworks are undeniably gorgeous, and the response has been both revelatory and profound. ALAC to bring wonderful and influential people together in one place. The presence of both collectors and curators has been impressive.
The Freeways section returned for its second year, bringing eight galleries to the fair from Germany, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. These included Club Pro, Los Angeles, with a project installation by Devin Troy Strother; Jenny’s, Los Angeles, with a solo presentation by Liz Craft; PPC Philipp Pflug Contemporary, Frankfurt; and Queer Thoughts, New York, with Puppies Puppies. ALAC carry the spirit of a very creative, energized art scene, as a young art space, it is the right place to be.
The programming schedule for the fair, entitled ANYTHING YOU SOW, was curated by Marc LeBlanc and featured an expanded ALAC Theatre to focus on artists working within time-based mediums including performative talks, film and experimental sound work. Spanning performance, sound work, screenings and talks, the program for this year’s fair centers on the appropriation of archival sources throughout an array of time-based mediums.
The programming builds upon the fair’s tradition of showcasing critical perspectives of ongoing and emerging movements in contemporary artwork. Participants to this year’s fair include William Basinski, Roger Corman, Jasmine Nyende, Rick Prelinger, Puppies Puppies, Huang Rui, Veggie Cloud and Mary Woronov.
The 2017 programming schedule reinforces the notion of Los Angeles as a city whose newness is contingent upon a continual retelling of the past, a constant re-run of the same sequences within increasingly sophisticated yet dissonant new mediums. This program is premised on the fair’s theater as a site dedicated to the present within the prismatic reverberations of the past, focusing on seminal figures in filmmaking, performance and composition. The participants explore these themes through their individual grasp of process and labor, shaping the theater as a site of production through performance and sound.
LOS ANGELES–Art Los Angeles Contemporary is pleased to announce the 2017 programming schedule entitled ANYTHING YOU SOW. Spanning performance, sound work, screenings and talks, the program for this year’s fair centers on the appropriation of archival sources throughout an array of time-based mediums. The programming builds upon the fair’s tradition of showcasing critical perspectives of ongoing and emerging movements in contemporary artwork. Participants to this year’s fair include William Basinski, Roger Corman, Jasmine Nyende, Rick Prelinger, Puppies Puppies, Huang Rui, Veggie Cloud and Mary Woronov.
“This program is premised on the fair’s theater as a site dedicated to the present within the prismatic reverberations of the past,” says Marc LeBlanc, Curator of Programming for Art Los Angeles Contemporary. “Focusing on seminal figures in filmmaking, performance and composition, the 2017 programming schedule reinforces the notion of Los Angeles as a city whose newness is contingent upon a continual retelling of the past, a constant re-run of the same sequences within increasingly sophisticated yet dissonant new mediums. The participants explore these themes through their individual grasp of process and labor, shaping the theater as a site of production through performance and sound.”
On the fair’s opening night, Huang Rui leads a performance that references the legacy of ChineseAmerican cultural and diplomatic relations through the trope of ping-pong, emblematic for the thawing of relations between Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon. Rui performs courtesy of 10 Chancery Lane. Throughout the evening and each day of the fair was performances by Puppies Puppies, employing a number of readymade mascot costumes in marathon works that expose the jarring strangeness of perceiving the everyday from a radically different perspective. Puppies Puppies performances are courtesy of Queer Thoughts.
On Friday, Todd Gray dresses as a West African griot to deliver an account of living with Iggy Pop in the ‘70s, connecting a lineage of rock ‘n’ roll to the Mississippi Delta and back to the traditional African drumming that textures his performance. Gray’s performance is courtesy of Meliksetian Briggs. Dan Levenson presents a lecture on the Staatliche Kunstakademie Zürich (SKZ), a fictitious institution referenced in his work to highlight the difficulty of being original within the context of academic, economic, and ideological structures. Levenson’s performance is courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.
On Saturday, film collective Veggie Cloud presents a screening of Lost Landscapes of L.A. The film’s director Rick Prelinger, founder of the Prelinger Archives, discusses his use and ongoing collection of studio outtakes and home movies to cast the contemporary terrain of Los Angeles in a new light. Jasmine Nyende presents new poetry alongside home movie footage reflecting on her childhood experiences in South Los Angeles’ Leimert Park and how the neighborhood has developed since that time. M. Geddes Gengras plays an improvisational set showcasing his mastery of analog and modular synthesizers. Internationally acclaimed composer and experimental musician William Basinski performs new sound work that incorporates his use of analog and obsolete recording technologies.
The tension between elitism and egalitarianism in the artworld is explored on Sunday, January 29, with FOR ALL, BY ALL, a talk moderated by visual artist Keith Varadi with Jamillah James of ICA L.A., Eric Kim of the non-profit space Human Resources and Cascade Wilhelm of the Wilhelm Family Foundation. Ian Birnie leads a panel discussion with independent filmmaking legend Roger Corman and actress Mary Woronov, known for their work together on numerous low budget and independent films. The three address their enduring careers and their work’s impact on art, video, and filmmaking over the past four decades.
Anything You Sow is curated by Marc LeBlanc, Curator of Events & Programming for Art Los Angeles Contemporary. Events are held daily in the ALAC Theatre unless otherwise noted. Access to all events is included in fair admission.
In addition, the fair’s education partner Sotheby’s Institute of Art presents a series of conversations and talks throughout the fair organized by the institute’s director Jonathan T.D. Neil. Discussions focus on art in the age of right-wing populism as well as a critics panel composed of prominent writers from Los Angeles’ art community. Participating speakers include Jonathan Griffin, contributing editor of Frieze, Los Angeles-based artist David Horvitz, Kibum Kim, Fred Lonidier, artist and professor at UC San Diego, and David Pagel of the L.A. Times. Sotheby’s Institute of Art is the leader in art business education and object-based learning, with campuses in London, Los Angeles and New York.
Hollywood Athletic Club
The Hollywood Athletic Club is an office building and event space in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. It is located on Sunset Boulevard. Since it was built in 1924, it has had a varied history as a health club, bar, music venue, and billiard room. The Hollywood Athletic Club was acquired by the Nourmand family 1986 and is still operated by them today.
When the Hollywood Athletic Club opened in 1924, Hollywood was entering its greatest and most productive period. The building was the tallest building in Hollywood and loomed above Sunset Boulevard.
During its early years as a health club, its membership included Johnny Weissmuller, Errol Flynn, Charlie Chaplin, John Wayne, Walt Disney, John Ford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Mary Pickford, Cecil B. deMille, Cornel Wilde, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, George O’Brien, Frances X. Bushman, Howard Hughes, Joan Crawford, Rudolph Valentino, Mae West, Buster Crabbe, and Pola Negri.
In 1978, the building was up for sale and investor Gary Berwin purchased it and set about the huge task of restoring the building to its former grandeur. Berwin also purchased the bungalows and the two-story Spanish-style building situated on Hudson behind 6525 Sunset Blvd. The project was renovated at a cost of approximately $11 million. The restaurant, which is a replica of the 14th century Davanzati Palace in Florence, Italy, underwent a complete makeover. The original ceilings had been covered over with a false ceiling and after it was removed, Berwin hired carpenters, artists, and wood carvers to restore the beams and ceilings.
The Berwin Entertainment Complex quickly became popular with the jet set and celebrities. Some of the famous tenants included the Beach Boys, Van Halen, Jose Feliciano, Island Records, and Baby-O Recording Studios.
The list of celebrities who visited the building include Priscilla Presley, Lisa-Marie Presley, members of the Michael Jackson family, Steven Spielberg, Muhammad Ali (a regular visitor and friend), Mayor Tom Bradley, Sally Field, Princess Stephanie, Dudley Moore, Michael J Fox, Prince Mashour ben Saud of Saudi Arabia, Madonna, Rodney Dangerfield, Melanie Griffith, Lesley Ann Down, Jon Voigt, Paul Newman, George Lucas, Jaclyn Smith, Jane Fonda, Alice Cooper, Julio Iglesias, Stevie Wonder, Billy Crystal, Shirley McLane, and Gov. Jerry Brown.