ART/SNEAK PEEK: ARTSPACE GALLERY LEAVES VOID.

One Valley arts group calls the situation ``devastating.'' A Los Angeles city councilwoman, venting concern, hopes to broker a solution to the nascent crisis.

Those were some of the stronger reactions to news that the city-sponsored Artspace Gallery in Warner Center Plaza is closing after nine years of providing amateur and emerging professional artists with a convenient, inexpensive venue for displaying their works.

Artspace director Ross Hopkins said the nonprofit gallery was obliged this month to vacate its digs in the sprawling Woodland Hills office park after the building's owners decided they no longer could afford to donate the space for free.

Though the insight pains him, Hopkins conceded that what's bad for the gallery is, in fact, good news for the region's economy.

``I've talked to a number of Realtors, and I've talked to a number of people at the malls, and there's no space available - unfortunately for us and fortunately for everybody else. We're in pretty good economic times right now,'' Hopkins said.

The gallery's final show, of abstract oil and acrylic paintings, closed June 28 after the building's managers had granted the gallery a one-month lease extension. Hopkins said he has identified two potential new sites for the gallery on Sherman Way near the planned Madrid Theatre center, but added that ``we're still probably a long way from anything happening with those spaces.''

AH Warner Center Properties, the limited liability corporation that owns the gallery space, intends to lease the 7,000-square feet, second-floor premises ``very soon,'' possibly to an insurance company, its general manager, David Garcia, said Tuesday.

``We just felt that it was time that we look out for the interests of the ownership,'' said Garcia. ``That space is very marketable, and we have people that are always interested in the space.''

The gallery is operated by the Cultural Foundation, a nonprofit private arts-support group, with the assistance of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, which has funded the gallery with a $10,000 annual grant for each of the past three years. In return, the gallery agrees to host a certain number of public exhibitions per year, sometimes as many as one per month.

Exhibitors are charged a flat $200 monthly fee plus a 15 percent commission on any works sold - both far less than commercial galleries typically extract. Cultural Affairs operated the gallery through July 1994, when it passed to the Cultural Foundation.

Garcia said the total value of the free space provided by the gallery's current and previous owners over the years was more than $1 million, a figure Hopkins said was probably accurate. Building management recently had proposed moving the gallery to a fourth-floor space, but Hopkins said that location would further discourage drop-in foot traffic.

``Going to the fourth floor would've been the kiss of death,'' he said.

The gallery's closing leaves a number of West Valley visual-arts organizations without a place to call home. While in recent years Valley performing artists have benefited from the city-sponsored NoHo theater district in North Hollywood, visual arts groups have few exhibition outlets available to their members.

``Space is becoming practically nonexistent, other than the occasional restaurant or libraries,'' said Connie Larson, president of the 275-member Valley Watercolor Society, which has held its annual juried exhibition at Artspace for the past two years.

The gallery's closing, Larson said, ``has been devastating for us.''

Officials said the situation is being followed closely both by the Cultural Affairs Department and L.A. City Councilwoman Laura Chick, who has been involved in efforts to procure a new space.

``This office has worked very closely with the Cultural Foundation to try and find a space, and we're very eager to find a space,'' said Karen Constine, Chick's chief of staff. ``So far, we have not been successful.''

To some, the closing marks not only the loss of a useful showcase but another instance of the Valley not getting its fair share of cultural resources and attention.

``So many artists come from the Valley, and yet the Valley doesn't receive the kind of recognition it rightfully deserves,'' said Laura Selwyan, executive director of Everywoman's Village, a Van Nuys-based community education center. ``A lot of it seems to go to the city. The city is very deserving, but the Valley has a lot of talent.''

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PHOTO Ross Hopkins, director of the now-closed Artspace Gallery in Woodland Hills, is hopeful that the gallery will relocate in the West Valley, but acknowledges that ``we're still probably a long way from anything happening ...''

Myung J. Chun/Daily News