A new gallery show spotlights Benny Chan’s unique photographs of Los Angeles

Back in the 1960s, artist Ed Ruscha conjured a picture of Los Angeles entirely devoid of the sun-kissed beaches, palm-lined boulevards, and glittering Hollywood premieres that had defined the city in the popular imagination for decades. Ruscha’s deadpan photographs of common L.A. streetscapes and urban infrastructure—collected in seminal works such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations; Thirtyfour Parking Lots; and Every Building on the Sunset Strip —offered an alternative view of L.A. that probed the aesthetics of the city in all its jolie laide grittiness and glory.

In a similar spirit, photographer Benny Chan has trained his discerning eye on L.A.’s lonely all-night laundries and serpentine freeways in a body of work that departs from the glossy, optimistic perfection of his more commercial odes to avant-garde architecture and design. These alluring, disquieting images of the city now take center stage in his debut gallery show, "(Extra-ordinary) Los Angeles: Photographs by Benny Chan," presented by the Christopher W. Mount Gallery in West Hollywood’s Pacific Design Center.

The exhibition features selections from several of Chan’s photo series, many of which are presented at enormous scale (pictures in his "Traffic" series, for example, measure eight feet by six feet). In all of them, a palpable sense of dystopia is tempered by Chan’s unexpectedly humane gaze—a point of view that embraces the complexity of his subjects and the sweet sorrow of the modern metropolis.

For more information, visit christopherwmountgallerom

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