LA culture vultures, here’s an opening you might want to add to your dance card tonight: After thirteen years in Chicago, Century Guild, the leading Art Nouveau and Symbolist gallery in the world (specializing in works dating from 1880 through 1920), is opening a West Coast location in Los Angeles tonight with a show by manically intricate artist Jeremy Bastian displaying some of his amazingly detailed pieces. 

Jeremy Bastian (b.1978) uses an ink well and brush to create works that reveal the influence of early American comic art and classical engravings (Winsor McCay, Albrecht Dürer, and Piranesi are all present) while ending in a place that is absolutely contemporary, brilliantly sensitive, and wholly unique.  Like something from a cabinet of curiosities, Bastian’s artworks are only inches in size; the figures and nautical scenarios contain details only visible with a magnifying glass.  For example, one artwork—“The Sacking of the Royal CIty of Cub”—is the artist’s largest work to date at only 13.5 x 19 inches and took over 500 hours of brush work. 

For the very first time, work from the artist’s graphic novel Cursed Pirate Girl will be on display, and 100 advance copies of the new hardcover collected edition customized with an event bookplate will be available at the reception.  The exhibition will be up for viewing for two weekends, then the gallery will be rehung for a special Holiday Sale featuring period works on paper by Gustav Klimt, Alphonse Mucha, Egon Schiele, and styles from Arts & Crafts through Expressionism.

Century Guild, 6150 Washington Blvd. Culver City, CA. Open by appointment, exhibition or by chance.