Regen Projects Gallery in Los Angeles

Editorial Profile

Regen Projects is a commercial contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles, founded in 1989 by Stuart Regen and Shaun Caley Regen and operating today under Shaun Caley Regen. Since the early 1990s it has built a program weighted toward ambitious, museum-scale solo exhibitions rather than thematic group shows, working with both internationally established figures and younger practices across conceptual art, painting, photography, sculpture, and installation. Since 2012 the gallery has occupied a purpose-renovated building on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, designed by architect Michael Maltzan, whose top-lit galleries and rooftop sculpture deck were conceived for large-scale installation and sculpture. Artists associated with the gallery include Doug Aitken, Catherine Opie, Wolfgang Tillmans, Glenn Ligon, and Theaster Gates. Within contemporary art in Los Angeles, it occupies a central position in a city where commercial galleries frequently overlap with museum and nonprofit circuits, and its presence adds to the density and visibility of galleries in Los Angeles, particularly along the Hollywood and Mid-City corridors where major spaces have clustered.

The gallery's curatorial direction favors sustained, single-artist projects staged at a scale closer to an institution than a typical commercial space, a tendency visible from its early years — including Matthew Barney's first solo show in 1991 and its early representation of Catherine Opie — through to its more recent program. Its roster pairs historically influential artists with emerging ones, engaging architecture, politics, identity, and media culture, while participation in international art fairs and long-standing institutional relationships extends its reach beyond the city. Its Los Angeles base nonetheless remains central to its identity as a site for large-scale and experimental exhibition-making. In dialogue with the city's museums and nonprofit infrastructure, including those mapped through institutions in Los Angeles, Regen Projects functions within a network where institutional validation and commercial visibility are closely interconnected.