On Friday evening, the design-minded masses along with LACMA Muse and the Los Angeles Art Association flocked to Minotti, the high-end Italian furniture showroom on Beverly Boulevard, where owner Mary Ta opened her minimalist glass doors to celebrate the LA Art Show’s Young Collector’s Night.

The week-long Art Show, which kicked off on January 20 as our local answer to Miami’s Art Basel, is a city-wide art walk (or more L.A. appropriate, art valet), where galleries unleash their budding talents to those wealthy enough to support them.

But surprisingly, there were fewer art pieces displayed at Minotti than we expected, as it seemed that the featured group of young, international artists were each only permitted to show one or two works of their choosing.

Standout pieces included Italian artist Mattia Biagi’s “Stay out of My Closet,” a life-size black tar wolf wearing Little Red Riding Hood garb, and Joe Davidson’s “Bed Landscape,” a yard-long cluster of plaster cast pill bottles and toiletries meant to replicate a miniature city. The work provided me with a sense of pride that if I one day decide to clean out my medicine drawer and paint the bottles red I too could compose the city of my dreams.

The crowd, which included jeweler Loree Rodkin and designer Valerj Pobega, wore outfits that were almost more interesting than the artwork. The ladies were all about patterned tights and faux fur while pea coats and scarves served as the standard attire for amicos in attendance. But highlights included a Beverly Hills native (after all, Ferrari Maserati was a sponsor) toting her medium sized pooch in his holiday-red sweater, a man with cat-eye reading glasses and a thin handle-bar mustache, directional twenty-somethings who looked as though they pulled a page from Lady Gaga’s playbook and one super-tan, Ed-Hardy clad cougar who had clearly been under the knife recently and had no idea why she was at the event (or, more likely, her face just permanently feigns surprise).

But perhaps that is what a true Angeleno scene really is: a diverse mix of those searching for a cultural landmark, those who just landed without a clue and those simply seeking champagne gratis.

–Liza Kaplan
Photos above from left to right: Kristen Jensen and Andre Marciand; Valerj Pobega and Minotti owner Mary Ta. Below from left to right: Loree Rodkin, Jeff Berry, William Moore and Carolina Gray; Mattia Biagi’s “Stay out of My Closet”; general atmosphere and Lars Hypko and Lani Hammetp. Donato Sardella/WireImage.com