QUICK TAKES - Sept. 9, 2009

Most directors of Los Angeles art galleries are gearing up for this fall’s season, installing shows to open in a week or so. Sarah Watson, head of the L.A. branch of L&M; Arts, a high-end New York gallery, is making plans for September 2010.

L&M;’s two-building complex, at 660 Venice Blvd., is a work in progress. But Watson has lined up an L.A.-based artist with a hefty international resume to launch the exhibition program. It’s Paul McCarthy, known for roasting fairy tales and family values on a fire of grotesque humor in performances, installations and sculptures.

“I’m pretty excited about this because I haven’t had a show in L.A. for a long time,” says McCarthy, whose local presence has faded since his 1998 and 2000 exhibitions at Patrick Painter’s gallery and 2000-01 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art. His big project this summer was a park-full of inflatable sculptures in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY architecture in Culver City describes the gallery he has designed for L&M;’s triangular site as “a garden with two pavilions.” One pavilion is a recently refurbished brick power plant, built in 1930; the other, to be constructed soon, will be a more modern brick structure. Each building will have about 1,200 square feet of exhibition space.

-- Suzanne Muchnic