Inspiring Conversations with Tyler Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tyler Park.

Hi Tyler, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My journey to having my own gallery actually started on the other side of the table as an artist. While I was earning a BFA in Studio Art at Chapman University a professor suggested I do an internship at a gallery during my junior year. I interviewed with a few that were suggested and ended up taking an internship at François Ghebaly. I thought I would intern to learn some skills that would help translate to a job to pay the bills after graduating while I prepare to apply to graduate school for an MFA.

After graduating from Chapman, I immediately got a job as the Assistant Director at a small gallery called Carter & Citizen. I still had the plan in my head to follow the path towards grad school, but I started to notice I wasn’t making my own work any, but instead reading books on art galleries/dealers, spending more time with others that worked for galleries, and getting very passionate about working at the gallery. I was getting the same joys from talking about others’ artwork as my own and decided I wanted to pursue the gallery path and that maybe one day I could possibly have my own gallery.

Over the course of almost a decade, I worked at galleries in Los Angeles including François Ghebaly, The Pit, and Klowden Mann, and even rose up the ladder to a Director level position. In 2020 during my second year as Director for Klowden Mann, I was notified that the gallery would be closing in the summer. As soon as I learned of this, I had an emended feeling that I needed to take this news as a sign that I should open a gallery of my own.

I didn’t have much money saved to start the gallery so I came up with a campaign to help raise some money for seed money and working capital to get the gallery going. I had made 50 hats with the gallery logo created to offer to friends, family, colleagues, and art collectors with the hopes that if I could sell each hat at $100, I would have $5,000 to secure a space and do renovations. I was shocked by the generosity that was given to secure almost $10,000 to start the gallery.

I opened my first exhibition at my gallery called Tyler Park Presents in the fall of 2020 with a solo exhibition of Evan Whale’s work and I am now in my 11th exhibition two years later. It is a very surreal moment for me every day when I come into the gallery and it is something I really cherish.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Starting a business of any kind, not to mention during a global pandemic, is no easy task. You really need to spend a lot of time and energy on opening a business but also be able to accept failures or mistakes as part of the process. I try to look at the bumps along the way as learning moments. I keep a journal of situations or outcomes that I have experienced along the way so that I am able to look back on them for guidance. If you don’t learn from your mistakes as you grow, you will surely repeat them.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Tyler Park Presents is a contemporary art gallery founded in September 2020 with a location in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. The gallery presents solo and group exhibitions by mid-career and emerging artists, often including the first solo exhibition in Los Angeles for artists. Its exhibitions have been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, and The Los Angeles Times, and works by its artists have been collected by museums throughout the United States and Canada.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Follow your instincts and believe in people, their ideas, and their practice.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tylerparkpresents.com
• Instagram: @tylerpark_presents

Image Credits
Photographer credit: Elon Schoenholz