ART / SNEAK PEEK : A BLISS-FUL PACE AT LACE.

Separated by a half-generation in age and roughly 15 miles of freeway, two unconventional L.A. arts institutions - one in Pasadena, the other in Hollywood - are celebrating this month.

Technically, the guest of honor is Bliss, the quirky, semi-obscure, artist-run exhibition space in Pasadena's historic Bungalow Heaven section.

Officially throwing the party is Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), the avant-garde, multimedia space that has served for nearly 20 years as an innovative, low-rent forum for performance art, video, spoken word, film, music, dance and virtually everything that goes under the name of ``visual arts.''

``TRUE.BLISS,'' as the exhibition at LACE is named, features the work of 45 artists who've exhibited at Bliss since 1987. Organized by Bliss director Ken Riddle, LACE board members Mike Mehring and Andrea Bowers and LACE executive director Brian Karl, the show will run through Jan. 26 at LACE's newest abode, a converted former beauty school at 6522 Hollywood Blvd., two blocks west of Cahuenga Boulevard amid the tourist traps and bohemian hangouts.

It's almost unheard of for one gallery to pay homage to another in such fashion. Yet in raising a toast to Bliss, ``TRUE.BLISS'' also implicitly recognizes LACE's role in shaping the city's contemporary arts culture. Though Bliss didn't consciously model itself after any existing space or gallery, LACE offered an example of a place where underexposed, experimental work could happen and also could find an audience.

``I think of these galleries as colleagues, in a way,'' says LACE's Brian Karl.

It's easy to understand why.

Since opening nine years ago in a single-story Craftsman home at 825 N. Michigan Ave., Bliss has been a little piece of exhibition paradise for local experimental artists. In the caste-conscious modern art world, Bliss has offered a safe and democratic haven, free of the economic pressures and bureaucratic strictures of museums and hoity-toity, for-profit galleries.

Never organized or coherent enough to be called a ``school,'' Bliss was rather ``a place to go for art's latchkey kids,'' as artist David A. Grene writes in a witty, informative essay in the handsomely designed, 56-page ``TRUE.BLISS'' exhibition catalog.

Open to offbeat ideas and multiple, open-ended configurations, the Bliss space became a particularly popular spot to mount site-specific installations. Artists drifted in and out, showing new work and sharing inspiration, including

Julie Bamber, Jorge Pardo, Carter Potter, Sam Durant, Jennifer Steinkamp and T. Kelly Mason. Some, like Pardo, who's currently completing a large-scale ``house-sculpture'' project for L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art, subsequently found acceptance among the region's more established arts brokers.

But Bliss, in Karl's words, never saw itself as a ``farm team'' for the majors. If anything, he says, it's been more of a ``hothouse,'' where experiments could be nurtured in a supportive environment.

``It really started, I think, from a natural feeling of camaraderie,'' he observes. ``The first people who worked at the space were just kind of hanging out.''

LACE already had been around for nine years when Bliss came on the scene. Founded by a group of 13 artists, many of whom first met through a federally funded arts program centered in East Los Angeles, it subsequently has presented the work of more than 3,500 artists in 800 exhibitions. In addition, it produces educational materials and sponsors activities to promote contemporary art forms among young people.

Following a major financial and organizational restructuring a few years ago, LACE relocated from the warehouse district in central Los Angeles to its current home in the heart of a city-sponsored arts redevelopment project. Ever neighborly, LACE has been reaching out to the block's other businesses, the kitsch emporiums and 24-hour drug stores and diners for which the area is famous. An ongoing video project involves taping interviews with employees of these ordinary boulevard landmarks.

If there's a certain continuity between the open-minded communalism of LACE and the anything-goes adventurousness of Bliss, the show's organizers aren't making a huge deal out of it. That also goes for the show's split focus between a Valley art space and an ``over the hill'' one.

``Hopefully, people will come from the Westside or the San Fernando Valley as well,'' says Karl, ``but we were pleased that Pasadena Arts Alliance was an early sponsor of this show.''

Other supporters include the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

LACE gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays, noon to 8 p.m. Thursdays and noon to 5 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. Admission is free. Parking off Wilcox Avenue is $2 with validation. For information, call [phone].

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Photo: ``Gender Specific'' by Jennifer Steinkamp, one of 45 artists featured in the ``TRUE.BLISS'' exhibition, is on view at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.