What is an archive without context? Why are these businesses worth preserving and historicizing for Connor? How does bringing this “archive” without shared context to a rarified space like Château Shatto flatten their cultural and civic legacies and speak - or doesn’t - to a larger narrative of this time?ĭetail of Fiona Connor, “Closed Down Clubs, Circus of Books” (2018), commercial aluminum-glass doors, silk screen on coated aluminum foil, vinyl, surface coatings, 83.5 x 41.75 x 2 inches (photo cat yang/Hyperallergic) When questioning the thread that connects these disparate sites of businesses, the purpose of this archive becomes opaque. Interpreting Connor’s categorization of a “club” can vary: Are they clubs with a membership of regular patrons or do ‘clubs’ point to an underground culture that exists outside of white and heteronormative spaces driven by marginalized bodies? When taking a closer look, I wondered what connection these doors have to each other and if the psychic space Connor purports to be building is merely a collection of places that she found aesthetically interesting and challenging enough to reproduce. There was nothing apparent that tied these “clubs” together - not a city, type of business, or circumstance of their closures. “Clubs” range from small shops like Circus of Books, bars like Hop Louie and Smog Cutter, and nightclubs and music venues like The Smell and Catch One. However, Connor’s relationship with each “door” and their categorization as “clubs” are unclear. Installation view of My muse is my memory, an archive of Closed Down Clubs at Chateau Shatto, 2022 (photo by Ed Mumford, image courtesy the artist and Château Shatto, Los Angeles) Being able to frequent somewhere as a regular and see familiar faces almost feels like having a membership to a club. I felt transported to 2015: I’m a new graduate, living in my first outside-of-college apartment, and learning about LA treasures like Hop Louie (which closed in 2016 after 75 years), a divey cocktail bar and restaurant staffed with Chinese bartenders attending to a crowd of mainly non-Chinese patrons on a weekend night. I was immediately drawn to a familiar set of brown double doors that proudly states “Welcome to Hop Louie” in orange “Chop Suey” lettering. Almost like portals, these “club” doors are synecdoches of the businesses they are replicated from. Meticulously recreated details of the wear and tear of their lives, ranging from scratched metal hardware to ornate wooden carvings, tell different stories of what once awaited patrons behind the threshold. By recreating 1:1 replicas of their doors in My muse is my memory, an archive of Closed Down Clubs, Fiona Connor presents a simulacrum of closed-down businesses she would frequent or come across in Los Angeles, New York City, and New Zealand. Upon entering the gallery, twenty freestanding doors are arranged into a neat grid, their original purpose now obsolete. LOS ANGELES - Nestled in Los Angeles’s Downtown Fashion District is Château Shatto, up on the 10th floor in the historic Bendix building. Fiona Connor’s Portals Into Closed-Down Clubs
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