`ORLANDO' GETS ITS VERY OWN SHOW; LONGTIME SHERMAN OAKS GALLERY HONORED WITH RETROSPECTIVE AT CAL STATE NORTHRIDGE.

Byline: Reed Johnson Staff Writer

Neither wars nor recessions, mudslides nor earthquakes have been able to come between Orlando Gallery and its mission of selling quality contemporary art. Nor have fickle art prices or anti-Valley snobbery, although these things have made life difficult on occasion for gallery owner Robert Gino and his partners.

Forty-one years ago - an eternity in the volatile art world - Gino and Phil Orlando, a fellow Midwesterner, opened a dance studio in Encino. At that time, orchards stood along Ventura Boulevard and the Ventura Freeway was nothing more than a glimmer in the eye of some urban planner.

When Gino and Orlando's artist friends needed a space to display their works, the men offered the use of their studio walls. Not long afterward, a free-spending Texan strolled into the gallery and bought several paintings right off the wall.

Thus was a Valley institution born.

Today, Orlando Gallery is so much a local fixture that it's being honored with a retrospective art exhibition at California State University, Northridge. ``Orlando,'' which runs through Saturday, surveys the gallery's four decades in business, during which time it has hosted exhibits of more than 500 artists, including many Valley residents.

In addition to scores of individual artists, Orlando Gallery has promoted a wide variety of artistic styles and genres, including photography, video art, assemblage, construction, collage, xeroxography, 3M imaging, pop art, op art and finish-fetish.

``There isn't (an art) movement in existence today that we did not partake in,'' says Gino, an upbeat man with a neat black mustache and a shaved head that gives him the appearance of a dapper Buddha.

Louise Lewis, director of CSUN art galleries, says Orlando's longevity is remarkable, given the number of small Valley art galleries that have come and gone over the years and the absence in the Valley of a large, diverse art audience comparable to that on the Westside.

``There are very few (galleries) that have been around consistently and stably for 41 years,'' Lewis says.

She credits the Orlando's resilience in part to ``the very strong sense of community that they have instilled by bringing in artists, certainly from the San Fernando Valley but also from Southern California, and they're very supportive of other artists. They're very supportive of CSUN in exhibiting faculty, alumni and, in some cases, promoting students.''

Indeed, Gino has consistently supported untested talent and been willing to stick by artists who were in temporary financial straits. The Orlando gave early-career shows to such artists as Eleanor Antin, Betye Saar, Robert Heinecken and performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, all of whom subsequently achieved national and international prominence.

And the Orlando has paid particular attention to Southern California and Valley artists, even when Los Angeles was barely an audible blip on the international art scene.

CSUN's Lewis thinks Gino has mastered the entrepreneurial art of ``knowing how much you can do (for struggling and lesser-known artists) without taking everybody under, including yourself.''

``It's part of the whole aesthetic of the Orlando that it is a community and it is a family,'' Lewis says. ``He (Gino) has been very prescient and he's been very supportive.''

There's another aspect to this family affair: Gino's current gallery partner, Don Grant, is the nephew of Phil Orlando, who died in 1992. Grant and Gino share a humorous, easy-going rapport that makes the gallery an inviting place to drop in, as much for browsers and passers-by as it is for the cognoscente.

In choosing artists, Gino relies on ``my belief in the person, if the person comes across to me as intelligent in their presentation. Some artists may have something to say but don't know how to say it properly.''

Do his instincts ever mislead him?

``Sure, nobody's ever completely right,'' he replies. ``But let me put it this way: I feel, in the history of being in the gallery business, like 90 percent of what we put on is very significant. So if I'm wrong 10 percent, I have a right to be!''

At times, Gino admits, he has wondered about the commercial wisdom of supporting so much untested talent. As if on cue, Grant yells from a back room, ``That's why we're not rich!''

Kidding aside, like most small galleries, the Orlando has its good months and its lean ones, its artists who sell well and those who appeal to a narrower marketing segment.

For example, Gino says he already has sold 19 of the 23 works in the Orlando's recently opened exhibition of works by Don Lagerberg, an Orlando mainstay and professor of art at California State University, Fullerton. The show, a witty conceptual effort, purports to be ``the recovered drawings'' of the mysterious (and fictional) 18th-century French draughtsman Jean-Claude Mur Dubois.

Gino's broad-minded taste is evident from the ever-changing works he displays in deliberate, sometimes startling juxtapositions at the 8,100-square-feet Sherman Oaks building where the Orlando has been since 1978.

Passing through the gallery, you'll spot a George Grosz pen-and-ink drawing, an Eleanor Antin photo-conceptual piece called ``Seven Deadly Sins,'' figurative painting from the '60s through the '90s, and an impressive display of African wood sculpture, some pieces dating back several hundred years. Gino, who began collecting African art in the 1950s, calls it ``the forerunner of all modern art.''

The works in CSUN's exhibition, which Gino selected with Grant, display a similar aesthetic fearlessness. Spanning virtually the gallery's entire existence, they range from Reseda artist Caroline Kent's mixed-media assemblages, to Fidel Danielli's '70s acrylic paintings, to Panorama City artist Edie Ellis-Brown's pop art mixed-media sculptures and a pair of Lagerberg oil paintings that put modern spins on classical myths.

``You see a rather open-ended willingness to test different things,'' says CSUN's Lewis.

Looking at the Valley's cultural prospects for the new millennium, Gino concedes a certain amount of pessimism. Though galleries continue to crop up, and areas such as Burbank and the NoHo (North Hollywood) Arts District are attracting new cultural enterprises, the area has a spotty track record in backing the visual arts.

``Not enough support from collectors, if you want to know the truth,'' Gino explains evenly. ``Not enough collectors willing to support lesser-known artists.''

Yet Gino, an Encino resident since 1954, has never bought the notion that ``the Valley was a second-rate country.''

``He challenged it,'' says Grant. ``And he changed it.''

The facts

What: ``Orlando.''

Where: CSUN Art Galleries, Art Dome, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge.

When: Through Saturday. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, noon to 4 p.m. Saturday.

Admission: Free. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Robert Gino, left, and Don Grant own the Orlando Art Gallery in Sherman Oaks, which has its own retrospective showing at the Art Dome at California State University, Northridge, through Saturday.

Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer