Gallery 169 to Host ‘3M (Letraset)’ Exhibition

By LILY TINOCO | Reporter

Gallery 169 is preparing for its first exhibition since the COVID-19 pandemic first prompted closures, which is in collaboration with Santa Monica Canyon’s Pietro Brooke Alexander.

Alexander brings to the gallery, which is located in Canyon Square on West Channel Road, “3M (Letraset)”—a solo exhibition of works by artist Daniel Healey that explores the historical post-war avant-garde. Healey retools objects and mundane materials in his works—including 3M Scotch tape, old consumer catalogues, vintage papers and Letraset—into new, unexpected forms.

Healey is a California native and Angeleno who has had his work displayed in galleries and museums nationally and overseas.

“He’s an incredible artist I’ve known for a few years … he definitely took a chance on me,” Alexander said about Healey. “I think he just wanted to do something… where we can experiment and show the new work he’s been working on and communicate the visual language that reaches across different mediums he works in.”

Alexander graduated from Brown University in May before pursuing and founding his own independent creative platform, PBA Projects, for him and his cohort.

“We all graduated during COVID and … we didn’t want to wait to do anything, we wanted to get our lives going,” Alexander said to the Palisadian-Post. “This is sort of a way for us to build up off of our ideas and all of the art that we’ve been making, and make something out of ourselves.”

Alexander studied art history and writing, but his artistic roots stem deeper.

“I’ve been around art all my life, my parents were artists,” he said. “The idea of curating a show myself has always been in my mind.”

As he prepared to curate his first show at Frank Langen’s Gallery 169, he recalled that his father, artist Peter Alexander, showcased his work at the same gallery in 2009.

“It feels right, I have a vivid memory of my parents coming and showing here when I was a kid, and the idea of coming back around and showing the works of my friend has a nice balance to it,” Alexander said.

Langen said that the gallery has been closed since the start of the pandemic in March, and he is excited to reopen its doors in collaboration with none other than Alexander.

“The whole gallery is geocentric and is all about the neighborhood,” Langen said to the Post. “I knew Pietro as a little guy, and now he’s studied art and is a college graduate, and he approached me about doing the show … it’s a beautiful continuum of the lineage of Canyon artists and Canyon neighbors, it has a lot of meaning.”

Alexander admitted that he is going to miss the social space that art often creates.

“There’s something missing, the magic of having an opening exhibition where everybody meets the artist and eats chips and looks at the art,” he said. “But we trudge onwards and will still try to have those interpersonal special experiences with the art while we’re all in the middle of this COVID meltdown.”

The exhibition opens to the public on Friday, December 11, and is slated to run through January 21, 2021.

The gallery recently relocated from an upstairs space down to the primary level. Langen said this has helped make the space more accessible and safe.

In-person viewings are by appointment only, and are limited to 50 minutes and four guests at a time.

For more information or to schedule a viewing, visit pba-projects.com/appointments or email Alexander at info@pietroalexander.com.