Gallery ALL isn’t your typical art gallery. East meets West in a unique art setting, and with one location in Los Angeles and a second in Beijing, Gallery ALL introduces Chinese and international artists to a steady stream of curators, artists and designers through special events that highlight art and design. The founders of Gallery ALL personally select and showcase the talents of Chinese art both in Beijing and abroad, and recently held an event featuring designs by Naihan Li and Zhoujie Zhang.
We recently had the opportunity to chat with two of the creative minds behind Gallery ALL: Co-Founder Yu Wang, an architect/designer and real estate developer (who founded the gallery with business partner Qingyun Ma, an internationally renowned architect and Dean at the USC School of Architecture), as well as Xiao Lu, the gallery's Managing Partner who is an expert in international PR and marketing. Yu Wang and Xiao Lu took time out from jet-setting between the LA and Beijing spaces to talk with Privy about their inspiration, recent events, artists, and the difference between the L.A. and Beijing art scenes.
1.
How did you all meet?
Xiao Lu: Yu and I are long-time friends from college. I was studying for my master’s degree at USC, where I had a chance to meet with Qingyun Ma, Dean of the USC School of Architecture. We pitched the idea to him and he was very interested. That’s how it all started from the very beginning. We had the idea of opening the first design gallery in China and then Ma also wanted a gallery in LA to represent Chinese designers as well.
2.
How did the idea for Gallery ALL come about?
Yu Wang: The idea to open a design gallery came from our Gallery Director Xiao Lu in 2013. She was working at Johnson Trading Gallery in New York before she moved back to L.A. At that time, I was partnering with Aranda\Lasch to open a design and fabrication company in Tucson, Arizona called IDF. She pitched me the idea to open a design gallery in China and connected me with Qingyun Ma, a strong architecture\design\art influencer in L.A. and China. The meeting with Ma went well, and he came on board immediately and suggested that we start in L.A. and follow up with a second gallery in Beijing. When Ma showed me the gallery space in the Bradbury Building in Downtown L.A., I immediately fell in love with the building and we decided to open a gallery in LA.
Businesswise, contemporary design galleries are not well- established on the West Coast compare to the East Coast and almost non-existent in China. We want to fill the gap for the market in those regions. So when I talk about Gallery ALL, it references both the Los Angeles gallery and the Beijing gallery.