A letter
from Benji.
I've been extremely lucky to spend much of my life around art, food, music, and, most importantly, people.
At some point, I started wondering why all of those things had to happen in different places.
Why coffee here, lunch somewhere else, art for twenty minutes, then back in the car for a drink in yet another place? Los Angeles is very good at putting a freeway between one bright little room and the next.
I wanted to create a place for all of this, and for the hours in between.
This is Benji's Art Club.
The name is intentional. Art, because I believe there is art in everything we do: contemporary art, certainly, but also food, sound, music, design and, most importantly, warmth. Club, not because there is a membership, but because a club can mean belonging - being part of an idea, a community, a warm and happy place.
It's not really a restaurant, or an art space, or a café, or a music venue, or a bar. It's a little bit of all of those things, but hopefully something more relaxed, more alive, and more human. A place to come early, leave late, meet someone, work for a while, eat something, look at art, have a drink, fall in love, or simply sit around longer than you planned.
Philippe Starck translated that spirit into the perfect space. Skylights beam overhead. Sofas roll. The white-tiled kitchen looks faintly capable of interplanetary travel. Up front, a room ready for artists and friends of all kinds to explore and make their own. In back, wood, leather sofas, soft light, and artworks that can lean a little instead of standing at attention. Almost everything is designed to evolve. Almost nothing is too precious to move.
Somewhere between 2001: A Space Odyssey and the barn of your rich, eccentric uncle.
Every time you come to Benji's, I hope you don't entirely know what you'll find. Things transform. They move. We add, subtract, make, unmake. We're surprised too, and want to stay that way.
Common Wave looks after how the place sounds, from the music shifting through the day to the musicians playing live at night. Brian Aruda looks after the food, François Daubinet the pastries, and Matthias Giroud the drinks.
Piero Golia, that sly conceptualist, will help impresario the program and, knowing Piero, invariably surprise us.
It seems silly to care deeply about the art and then stop caring when you get to the coffee, the pastries, the music, the chairs, or the person welcoming you. All of it is part of the art. All of it matters.
I love making places, and this is the place I wished existed but didn't.
Benji's isn't a concept. Concepts arrive finished: six months of design, a logo, a deck, and by next year it's a cookie place. This one was made with friends. Hopefully it attracts new ones and, over time, becomes something we could never have planned.
Bring your laptop. Bring a friend. Come alone. Have breakfast at four in the afternoon if you want.
Then sunset pulls its little trick.
The light gets softer. Laptops disappear. Tables get dressed. The music changes.
Come early. Come hungry. Come alone or bring somebody you like. Stay longer than you planned.
Maybe much longer.
- Benji
