LOS ANGELES, CA.- United Talent Agency, one of the world’s leading talent and entertainment companies, announced its new UTA Artist Space home in Beverly Hills. UTA Artist Space will take over a former warehouse that has been redesigned with the internationally renowned artist and UTA client Ai Weiwei. The 4,000 square foot space was originally constructed in 1940 to house a diamond-tooling facility. As UTA Fine Arts grows into its third year, the space will provide an expansive new outpost for exhibitions and programming opportunities. The new UTA Artist Space, located within walking distance of UTA’s Los Angeles headquarters, will open in July 2018.
Ai Weiwei first began working with the talent agency during the development of his acclaimed documentary Human Flow. Upon seeing the raw concrete facade of the new location, similar to his Beijing studio, the artist was moved to help execute an exclusive design concept for the Beverly Hills space. Ai will present a solo show with UTA Artist Space this October, his first gallery exhibition in Los Angeles.
UTA Artist Space is an extension of UTA’s commitment to the Los Angeles arts scene as much as it is a venue for showcasing global talent and new work. The new venue continues UTA’s history of helping artists gain access to new and better opportunities and commitment to the development of community-based projects; it solidifies UTA’s reputation as a forward-thinking agency devoted to expanding and redefining the role of talent and literary agencies globally.
“What better way to usher in our third year than with an incredible, iconic new space,” said Josh Roth, Head of UTA Fine Arts. “It’s an indication of how far UTA Artist Space has come in such a short time, and what we’ve carved out for ourselves in the incredible cultural landscape of LA.”
UTA Artist Space will inaugurate its new space with One Shot, a group exhibition featuring a series of works by select Color Field painters including Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, Sam Gilliam, and Jules Olitski, among others. Previously overshadowed by the Pop Artists of the 1950s and 60s, the Color Field group was born from a band of outsiders – renegades and academics seeking to revolutionize American painting in the post–Jackson Pollock age. The movement challenged the frenetic motions of action-painting and embraced the simplicity of the optical response to color.
As UTA Artist Space enters its third year, it will continue to leverage partnerships and collaborate with artists and galleries alike to generate high-level programming for the Los Angeles community on both local and international scales. The announcement follows a series of successful activations like the debut of Kurt Cobain’s never-before-seen artwork at the Seattle Art Fair and one-of-a-kind exhibitions with Larry Clark, Jake & Dinos Chapman, The Haas Brothers, Enoc Perez, Derrick Adams and Petra Cortright’s largest video survey to date. The three-year mark also celebrates a series of cross-media initiatives, such as a partnership with Microsoft in which digital artwork by Tabor Robak was commissioned for the company’s flagship location in New York City.
