a store visit with Galerie Half

....
the melodies in my mind (2011)





Galerie Half is a transcendent place. It is a store that blends American primitive works, with the lines of great Swedish, Belgian, French, and Danish furniture works. Galerie Half is for those that believe that rooms need a soul and a sense of history and purpose. On trips to the store, I've come across stunning works by Jean Royere, Kurt Olsen, Poul Henningsen, and Borge Mogensen to name a few. For those that read YHBHS, Galerie Half wrote one of my favorite Card Catalog entries last year for the site. (read it here.)

When researching furniture/design, songs are often in my mind. I see shapes and lines that will remind me of a melody, that slowly turn into muted colors, that eventually become a room. These images were taken by Marco Annunziata, a photographer based in Italy and L.A. who specializes in architecture/interior photography.

Galerie Half 6911 melrose avenue los angeles CA 90038

Zhang Huan 'Ash Painting No. 4' 2007, ash & incense

Underneath our feet, Crystals grow like plants
(Listen how they grow) I'm blinded by the lights
(Listen how they grow), In the core of the earth
(Listen how they grow)

(crystalline, listen here)







I've been looking for your touch.
I've been looking for your touch.
I've been looking for your touch.
everything, you touch....

listen here: holy other







Don't ask me when but ask me why
Don't ask me how but ask me where
There is a road, there is a way
There is a place, there is a place
I know places we can go babe
Coming home, come unfold babe

(I know places... here)









Do you feel any better now?
I'm trying to follow what you told me,
A little, lost colony from the start,
We never see what only you can say

(Relocate, KAUF, here)


Galerie Half
6911 melrose avenue los angeles CA 90038

Photography by Marco Annunziata

Y H B H S (card catalog) selection 26

Galerie Half, Los Angeles
Cameron Smith & Cliff Fong











2 Selections by Cliff Fong,

Fucked Up and Photocopied : Instant Art of the Punk Rock Movement
by Bryan Ray Turcotte and Christopher T. Miller

"a great reference for all things punk , though which one can see the strength of this movement's on fashion, culture , design and history in general."

Pierre Chareau by Brian Brace Taylor (Taschen)

"it's inspiring to have an aperture into this great designer's world; his philosophy, purity , restraint and ingenuity."




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(text via publisher)

"Chareau's work was aggressively innovative and distinctly modern: in 1939 he turned packing containers into furniture for the French government. He boldly worked with materials out of context--turning stone into a lampshade--and built on the art nouveau tradition of combining disparate materials such as metal, wood, and glass into a desk or chair. Mobility and transparency are the leitmotifs of his work. Contemporary readers flipping through the pages of this book will find that the screens, built-in furniture, and moving walls of his interiors look very familiar. But in the '20s and '30s, when most of the work was designed, it verged on revolutionary.

Chareau's furniture, even his rooms, curve around themselves, fan out into triangular elements, combine clean lines and lush upholstery fabrics. He was at his best when he combined his talents as architect and designer to come up with a bathtub-bookshelf unit, a screened washing area, and a table lamp easily mistaken for a sculpture. "

(via here)

1 Selection by Cameron Smith,


Andreas Gursky
by Norman Bryson & Werner Spies (Rizzoli)

"his untouched photographic overviews whether a packed dance floor or a formula 1 racetrack in bahrain in large format are simply inspired, captivating and redundant in their beauty"




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(text below via publisher)

"Following the 2010 exhibition at Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills, this magnificent set of slipcased books captures the grandness and lushness of the epic photographs of Andreas Gursky, one of the world’s greatest living photographers. In these new works, Gursky demonstrates that a photographer can make or construct--rather than simply take--photographs about modern life and produce them on the scale of epic painting. Just as history painters of previous centuries found their subjects in the realities of everyday life, he seeks inspiration in his observations of the human species in the world, whether firsthand or via reports of global phenomena in the daily media."





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GALERIE HALF
The NYT Fall 2010 writes, "In Cameron Smith and Clifford Fong’s large, airy space, pieces by Jean Prouve and Arne Jacobsen sit next to humble found items like a Parisian park bench or a primitive American harvest table. Keep one eye on the door; it’s also a good place for people watching."

YHBHS writes: "Simply stated: this store will blow your mind with all the design that is packed into one room! Smell the history, and look at lamps that could bring you to tears!" If you are in Los Angeles, go check out their Melrose location.... If you are outside of Los Angeles, go to their site to see more...




g a l e r i e h a l f

6911 Melrose Avenue;
(323) 424-3866;
galeriehalf.com





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