A few years ago, my friend Bill Dunleavy and I started Superchief Gallery in a loft space in Brooklyn. In 2013 we moved it to the Lower East Side, where we hosted 47 week-long gallery exhibitions, including VICE's annual photo show. This year we're opening up a new branch on the West Coast, in a 4,000-square-foot warehouse in downtown LA. Our first show opens this Thursday, May 15, and it's the biggest thing we've done so far. It's called Grand Opening, and it features more than 45 artists, many of whom you've seen in the pages of this very publication.
A few weeks ago we drove a 16-foot box truck (packed to the gills with $500,000 worth of art) from New York to LA, hoping like hell we wouldn't get busted for weed on the backroads of some ratball country town. Almost every night we slept in sleeping bags on top of the truck, but once we stayed in the slave quarters of a mansion owned by a high-level Mason with a one-eyed cat. We climbed through hollowed-out airplanes in the City Museum of St. Louis, visited the Westboro Baptist Church, got pushed off the road by a flash sandstorm in Kansas, bought overpriced legal weed in Denver, and drove through the gorgeous desert panoramas of Utah, Nevada, and California, pissing off GTA 5–style biker freaks as we slowed down to take their photos from the passenger-side window.
These are some of our flicks of America, taken in a hurry as we hustled across it. And if you're in LA this Thursday, roll through the gallery and party with us. Here's all the info you need.
