Los Angeles - Michael Smoler is a man on the move, so it’s not surprising that his current venture would be called High Energy Constructs.  Founded in February 2006 in LA’s Chinatown district, High Energy Constructs is an exhibition and performance venue that has received much attention since its inception.   It is located near the T-spot of N. Hill and Bernard Streets, a roaring corner now host to many contemporary galleries.  Smoler runs High Energy with vision, commitment and fearlessness.  For the coming year he is giving the gallery a face lift - frosted windows and a few interior changes -  and he will recharge his project by developing longer-running exhibitions with more in-depth programming. 

Excited to find out more about this high energy force, ArtSlant stopped by the gallery for a look at the current show and to chat with Michael.  Affable, open and thoughtful, Smoler has a lot to say about art making, the art world, and his own journey, from coast-to-coast, within the two.

To see more about Michael, please check out his ArtSlant Profile (here).

AS:  What is your earliest memory of seeing art?

MS:  I feel like I have always been an artist…when I was young I was constantly drawing…so my earliest memory of seeing art comes from my own mark making.  I grew up outside of Chicago and I remember visiting the Art Institute at a very young age…Marc Chagall’s stained glass piece titled, American Windows, was installed there around 1977 (when I was 4) and that piece with it’s dense blues might be the first actual artwork that I remember having an affect on me.

AS:  What influences and inspires you as a gallerist?

MS:  Mostly the artists.  It is one of the most rewarding feelings to work from concept to product, idea to actuality, when it comes to planning and executing exhibitions.  I like working with other people and I also like working alone, so there’s a nice balance between the two in running High Energy.  My past experiences of working for other galleries, a museum, and a not for profit art space continue to inspire and influence…Specifically, as a “gallerist” I suppose, money and fame for the artists that I work with might influence and/or inspire…but I would only know of such things secondhand…

AS:  Describe HEC – what is your hope and intention with this space?

MS:  HEC is part museum, part clubhouse.  I’d rather not get comfortable with the simple label of “gallery.”  It is primarily an exhibition and performance venue.  And it is very much also an art piece or project of its own, in that it defines itself via the participants’ points of view.  High Energy Constructs is an entity and it goes beyond its current residence. My point is to take “high energy” literally, as in it is a demand to “be” less numb, more awake.”  One of my goals is to go international and open a space in Berlin.  I’d like to have my own building where exhibitions and performances can take place in separate rooms.  It’s difficult to have experimental, punk aesthetics within the white cube.  So if I could have a building that allows for multiple aesthetics, activities, that’d be perfect…But for now, I’m pretty damn proud with what has happened thus far…

(photo credit:  Doug Harvey, Great Expectorations (store-front installation), 2007, photo by Joshua White) 

AS:  What is your experience of the gallery community in LA?  Why did you choose Chinatown for your space?

MS:  The gallery community is immense.  I really like the clusters of galleries throughout LA.  Each scene/neighborhood offering their individual slant, all the while contributing to LA’s culture as a whole.  Historically though, it is the artists and art schools that have helped make LA what it is today.  As to the location, 

I think Chinatown chose me.  I inherited the space through a friend of a friend.  At the time the opportunity presented itself, I was living in Brooklyn and had peripherally heard of LA’s Chinatown scene, mostly through China Art Objects’ growing reputation, and the supposed wild street party style openings of Chung King Road.  But as it were, I was blessed enough to move right into an internationally vibrant art scene.

AS:  Do you see specific ideas or qualities that define art production in LA?

MS:  Absolutely…it seems to me that the history of Hollywood has influenced the way art is made here.  Very production-based.  Crews of multi-talented people willingly working on big projects.  LA is the wild west, the end of the western world, the place where imagination and dreams come true – all of this feeds into how art is made here.

AS:  How do you choose the artists that you show?

MS:  I opened the space with about four emerging artists who I knew I wanted to work with.  Two of them were, and still are close friends, whose work and ideas I really like…and the other two people were artists who were introduced to me via poets.  There is no way to really describe how one chooses artists…it’s very much like choosing friends, lovers, restaurants, books and authors to read...

AS:  Can you talk a little about the community that has developed around HEC - your collaborations with curators and artists?

MS:  HEC has hosted 5 guest curated exhibitions thus far...and each one was "curated" by an artist-friend: Brad Eberhard and Raffi Kalenderian put together a 27 person exhibition called BOAT SHOW...it was HEC's 2nd exhibition and it really connected the place to this sense of a somewhat wild coming community...then in August of 06, Doug Harvey and Christian Cummings put together an 11 day show called Chain Letter, which had over 230 artists in it...nothing hung on the wall, it was a living organism on its own...in Spring 07 David Horvitz put together a diverse group exhibition about boredom, called Is that all there is to fire?, and then Brad Eberhard came back to organize a unique exhibition called Time Machine...and towards the end of the Summer 07, Joseph Imhauser put together a brilliant exhibition titled Internal Mechanisms, which featured internationally emerging and locally established artists...each of these artist/curators is a multi-creatively engaged person, wearing many hats, and doing it well...

(photo credit:  Internal Mechanisms -installation view; Laura Forman, Starr Hansch, Kaari Upson; curated by Joseph Imhauser, 2007)

in the beginning, the cliche mantra for HEC was "if you build it they will come"...who "they" might be is/was not important...coming from New York i didn't really know too many people here...so HEC's co-founder with me, Justin Veach, who is a native Angelino, provided the link to many artists and musicians...

the point is, is that HEC is an open-minded, open-hearted place and we need more places like that if we want to continue using our hearts and minds...

alot of galleries are are based off an elite model that is stuffy, boring and impenetrable...there's no place for community in that...

I'm very much a Duchampian, and Duchamp worked with pluralities...pluralities of genre, medium, and context...throughout his career he was not only an accomplished artist with a sensational life-long studio practice, but he was also an exhibition designer, dealer, consultant, and publisher...and his sense of friendship and love was very close to his ways of creating...so i'm into that, living life as artful as i can...being an organizer and motivator, and the best way to do that is to work with other creative people...forming and sustaining a social sculpture...in many ways, HEC is exactly what it says it is...a high energy construct, as borrowed from the poet Charles Olson...

AS:  What was one (some) of your favorite shows in 2007?

MS:  Gardar Eide Einarsson at Honor Fraser; Francis Alys at the Hammer; SIZE = Sky Burchard + Adam Janes + Brett Lund + Daniel Ruanova at Circus Gallery.

AS:  What do you dig?  What do you don’t?

MS:  I dig health and honesty and collage and poetry.  I don’t dig the spiritually bankrupt state of the world.

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