ACE Gallery was a spectacular white box whose monolithic walls and rays-from-heaven- like lighting lent import to any damn thing on the wall when it was in SoHo back in the day. And while the adjacent deli that sells tallboys remains on 6th Avenue, ACE has long moved to LA  where it became grander; occupying theme-park-scaled gallery space at two locations. We hit their Wilshire Avenue space the other night for the opening of opera designer Achim Freyer’s painting show


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February 3, 2010 - Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Last night’s opening at ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills was proof there is an Art World, as distinct from reality as that dimension we call the Twilight Zone. No recession specials here among the municipal scaled bronze works. And you’d never know the pawn shop on Wilshire was doing record business if you just touched down for the evening, enveloped as we were by an acre of designer duds and flowing Absolute, to see the “Black Totem” sculptures of Herb Alpert. Yes, Tijuana Brass Herb Alpert; the trumpeter, composer, arranger, songwriter, record producer, philanthropist, and vocalist is also a painter and sculptor. His dozen towering, darkly patinated bronze works arrayed across the massive gallery space are well worth seeing without the crowd.