Pioneering gallerist Mark Quint has put his keen curatorial eye to work for plenty of powerhouse collectors. After all, his eponymous La Jolla gallery showcases seriously cool contemporary art from San Diego and beyond. But even for a renegade like Quint, opportunities like this don’t come along very often. ! e challenge? Build a world-class collection for the minimalist-leaning home of a private client who’d just fi nished fi xing up a Russell Forester-designed, midcentury abode. When the collector fi rst wandered into Quint’s gallery a decade ago, he owned mostly Latin American artwork. “It was a slow transition,” Quint says. “But he started to see work at my gallery, and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and he began to gravitate toward contemporary art.” Today, with Quint’s guidance, the collector has transformed his clean-lined dwelling

Mark Quint

THE CURATOR Gallery owner Mark Quint in the La Jolla Shores home of a private client.

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Tapping the brightest talent from S.D. and Tijuana, Quint has built a world-class reputation with his La Jolla gallery. Now, private clients areknocking.

! e La Jolla Shores home of a private Quint client boasts a dizzying mix

of art. 1. A quirky vase, Kiki de Montparnasse, from N.Y.-based artist

Jonathan Adler. 2. Julian Opie’s Watching Suzanne (2006 screenprint

on acrylic panel). 3. ! e living room features Daniel Buren’s ! ree

Light Boxes for One Wall (1989 silkscreen on Plexiglas) and Alan Saret’s

sculpture ! e Aura Arc (1982 metal wire).

BULL’S-EYE Untitled (1989), by Ojai-based artist Gary Lang, is on display in the backyard. “My paintings defi ne infi nity in their own terms,” says Lang of his work.

EXPLOSIVE MATERIALS! Liquid Ballistic (2003), by Tijuana artist Roman de Salvo, whose fi fth solo exhibit is this month at Quint Gallery. Save the date: Sept. 18-Oct. 17.

IN THE MEX! Cross Roads, by TJ’s Marcos Ramirez, directs front-yard traffi c.

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Quintessentially Quint?

The California Center

for the Arts hosts an

exhibit on the man, the

gallery, and the artists he

pursued. Through Dec. 31.

POP QUIZ? The Need for Practical Obscurity (2005) by NYC painter Ryan McGinness uses electro-pop swirls that reference advertising and pop culture. Both MOMA and MCASD have recently acquired works by McGinness.

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TILT TO LAST Roy McMakin’s Sculptural Chair (2003).

into an enviable home gallery stocked with enough buzz-worthy artwork to warrant charging admission. ! at wooden cannon standing guard in the garden? Titled Liquid Ballistic, it does double duty as a seesaw and water fountain and was created by esteemed local artist Roman de Salvo. “He’s taken one of the more traditional sculptures that you’d see in a park, a cannon, and has translated it into a contemporary mixture of seriousness (a weapon of destruction) and playfulness (turning it into a seesaw and water fountain),” Quint explains. Quint says his client owns several de Salvo pieces. He’ll surely have his checkbook handy this September when Quint hosts “Split, Splice, Splay, Display,” the gallery’s fi fth solo showing of the witty artist’s engaging conceptual work. Buying local has proved to be a priority. Quint estimates about 40 percent of the sizable stash hails from regional talent. For example, another outdoor piece, a colorful signpost titled Cross Roads, is by Tijuana’s Marcos Ramirez (MCASD-La Jolla has a similar installation). He also owns works by locals Kim MacConnel and Jean Lowe, international art-world darlings who’ve both shown at Quint. Quint’s client occasionally makes quite daring choices, recently picking up a piece by Kelsey Brookes, an edgy local artist who uses sexually charged imagery of deities and exotic animals, and has recently incorporated text into his fi gurative paintings. ! e two met at one of Quint’s infamously happening openings that included a live performance from Grand Ole Party. Brookes, who designs all the artwork for the hot local band, must’ve made a lasting impression. He has a solo show coming up at Quint later this fall. ! ough one of the gallery’s largest shows in 2009 was this summer’s “Homing In: An Exhibition of 50 Local Artists,” Quint maintains that locals get no special treatment. “! ey can stand beside artists from anywhere,” he points out. “I try not to di" erentiate between local artists and national and international.” Neither does his client, who conceived an entire space around Toothpick, a sculpture made from thousands of tiny toothpicks by Brooklyn artist Tara Donovan, who has an upcoming exhibition at MCASD. He also converted a rundown garden courtyard into an outdoor video screening space, which is visible from the dining room at night. Also in the collection: pieces by cult pop artist Ryan McGinness (who’s been called a “Warhol for the Information Age”), Gary Lang (meditative pieces inspired by modernism), and Peter Dreher (his female nudes defy classic beauty conventions, but are striking nonetheless). Such dedicated collectors don’t come around often, says Quint, who opened his gallery in 1981. “And it starts out slowly, so you don’t know at fi rst what you’ve built. ! ere’s defi nitely a sense of accomplishment.” As for his own collection? “Everything I have is for sale!” Quint laughs, admitting that it sometimes pains him to part with exceptional pieces. “I buy quite a bit. It’s the things I can’t sell that I end up keeping.”

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ART BUFF Peter Dreher has created more than 2,000 paintings with the same title, Tag um Tag Ist Guter Tag (Day by Day is a Good Day), which evokes a Zen-Buddhist mantra that everything is of equal importance. In the works depicted here, Nakeds II (oil on linen, 1997), the nudes are done in a similar manner with one model painted each year. While Dreher lives in Germany, his visits to San Diego inspired much of his work, including Beachcomber Shores (2000-01) and Seascapes (1998).