In 1923, when much of Los Angeles was still empty and movies were still silent, the Hollywoodland Realty Co. set up shop in the area now known as Beachwood Canyon, building the first-ever structure in what would come to be known as Hollywood: a romantic, storybook building that looks as though it plopped straight out of Snow White. One hundred and two years later, when partners Alec Smythe and Noah Ruttenberg were taking a walk in the neighborhood, they saw the building, with its quaint wooden sign and bright blue trim, and were summarily enchanted. And now, it hosts their gallery, Mariposa, opening at the beginning of LA Art Week. “There’s a little bit of camp and Disney and fairytale in it,” says Smythe.
Ruttenberg adds, “It’s serving the Hollywood fantasy.”
“This building was built before the Hollywood sign, the Hollywood sign was built because of this building, and now the Hollywood concept itself is kind of named after this building,” Smythe continues. “And it stands for so much. It’s about dreaming and fantasy and obviously film and the West and all that it stands for. The fact that that’s all contained here is kind of amazing.”
Photo: Michael Schmelling
Smythe, who put in five years at megagallery David Zwirner before attending law school during the pandemic, and Ruttenberg, an interior designer named as one of Architectural Digest’s 2025 “New American Voices,” previously ran Mariposa as a pop-up, initially launching in a vacant space in Paris’s Marais district. After presenting exhibits in temporary spaces, like New York’s Independent Art Fair and an antique shop in Aspen, they decided to give the gallery a full-time home in LA. “The space just felt so distinctly Los Angeles that it could have been a part of a movie set,” says Ruttenberg. “And there’s a lot of fantasy that comes with that.”
In 2023, Mariposa debuted in Paris with a photography show by the legendary multi-disciplinary artist Peter Schlesinger. And now they’re opening the new LA establishment with a show of swan-shaped ceramics, also by Schlesinger, who was born in 1948 in Los Angeles. “It’s a really big moment for us to be able to present this body of work,” says Smythe. “Because I think of him as one of the most significant ceramic art sculptors living today.”
Photo: Billal Taright