L.A. Galleries: A Work in Progress : Art: Despite the toll the recession has taken on the local gallery scene, many newshowcases are opening.

Los Angeles’ gallery scene is perpetually in flux, but the boom of the late 1980s and the bust of the early 1990s set off an unprecedented upheaval.

Following a period of rapid growth and decline, Southern California seems to have settled into an interminable recession in which one of the few constant elements is change. With every passing week, however, another gallery opens, even as others move, shrink, merge or close.

For Shannon White, opening her own space was a matter of youth in pursuit of meaning. After graduating from Pitzer College in Claremont and becoming an avid traveler during a study-abroad venture in Kathmandu, Nepal, she took a trip to Asia and the Middle East. As she made the rounds of museums and monuments, she began to understand the power of images and how art serves as a record of cultural values.

Pondering what she wanted to do with her life, White decided that art had a role to play. Choosing the medium was easy. The daughter of photography dealers and collectors Stephen and Mus White--who closed their Los Angeles gallery in 1991, a year after selling their immense collection to the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum--had been around photographs all her life and her parents would be first-rate advisers.

As for her direction in the field, she relied on idealism and her interest in social issues.

“My goal is to use photography as a means of social change, in addition to keeping the business going,” White said. “I’d like to be part of the change and the solution to problems that are so prevalent in our society.”

The Shannon White Gallery opened in July at 8214 Melrose Ave. with striking images of black women from Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Brian Lanker’s traveling exhibition “I Dream a World” (through Sept. 4). Larry Clark’s “Tulsa,” consisting of 50 photographs documenting the artist’s adolescent life in Oklahoma in the early 1960s, is next on the schedule (Sept. 11-Nov. 6), followed by exhibitions of Cliff Badowsky’s photographs of Los Angeles gang members who have become musicians and Kevin Bubriski’s pictures of Nepali people.

For artist Chuck Arnoldi, launching a show space is a way of coping with new realities in the gallery system.

“The art world has changed a lot in the last couple of years,” he said. “Art dealers used to represent a small number of artists and really represent their interests. Now there’s a department-store mentality and artists get lost in the shuffle.”

Finding that dealers had stopped taking care of artists’ resumes, photographs of their work and other details, and that the entire gallery system was in crisis, Arnoldi said he became frustrated with having to spend more and more time on activities that took him away from making art. “I needed more time to work, a buffer to the outside world, someone I knew and could trust to handle all that,” he said.

The solution was to enlist old friends Richard and Lia Polsky, who have experience as private dealers, as his business managers, and to provide a space where they could represent his interests. He had the space--a large industrial property that he bought several years ago and has used for a studio and residence--so he renovated it to suit the new arrangement.

“I don’t want to be in the gallery business,” Arnoldi said. The Polskys will take care of that in the elegant white gallery, spacious courtyard and office in a complex with Arnoldi’s studio at 721 Hampton in Venice. Word of mouth already has brought in a stream of visitors by appointment, Arnoldi said. An official opening is planned for late September, when regular viewing hours will begin.

In yet another sign of the times, Richard Telles, former director of the Roy Boyd Gallery, who found himself out of a job when the Chicago-based gallery closed its space in Santa Monica, plans to open Richard Telles Fine Art at 7380 Beverly Blvd. He will present monthly exhibitions of works by Los Angeles and New York artists, beginning Sept. 10 with a Brian Tucker show.

Among other well-known personalities who are altering their operations:

* Fred Hoffman, who last year joined Salander-O’Reilly Galleries on Camden Drive in Beverly Hills, will launch his own gallery in the same space as New York dealer Larry Salander scales back. The first event is a September show of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s paintings, drawings and prints.

Hoffman, who said the show is his response to Los Angeles museums’ failure to host a traveling Basquiat retrospective, plans about nine shows a year at the gallery. Salander will use the gallery to stage about two exhibitions a year, Hoffman said.

* Another September addition is Leslie Sacks Fine Art, offering exhibitions from a formerly private dealer’s inventory of works by modern masters and African art, at 11640 San Vicente Blvd. in Brentwood.

* Julie Rico, who runs a lively exhibition program at 2623 Main St. in Santa Monica, will also expand her presence. An annex adjacent to her gallery will open on Saturday with a show of paintings by Los Angeles artist David Temianka.

As many gallery-watchers have noted, the most obvious recent change in the local scene is Santa Monica shrinkage. The vigorous cluster of galleries that once drew crowds to Colorado Avenue has eroded as dealers have closed or moved. The group of galleries along Broadway also appears to have dwindled; two major show spaces are vacant and several dealers have retreated to smaller, off-street spaces. But the number of Broadway tenants remains high.

The Ruth Bloom Gallery has not folded--it has merely moved a block west to Richard Green’s former gallery, while Green has relocated in a new building on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade.

The Patricia Shea Gallery has moved to a courtyard space behind her former gallery on Broadway, where she and other galleries have acquired new neighbors. They include the Mark Moore Gallery, an affiliate of the Works in Long Beach and Costa Mesa; Tatischeff/Rogers, a reincarnation of the former Tatischeff Gallery, and the First Independent Gallery, an artist-run organization.

Meanwhile, L.A. Louver is building a new gallery to consolidate its operations in Venice, the arrival of Food House has brought an adventurous new venue to Santa Monica and the Wenger Gallery has settled into new digs, also in Santa Monica.

The scene in West Hollywood, on the other hand, has remained relatively stable. While the Daniel Saxon Gallery has retrenched in a California bungalow near the Pacific Design Center and Michael Kohn has joined Jan Abrams in a new Melrose Avenue gallery, many longtime dealers can be found at their familiar addresses--with no plans to move.

“I’m here because I have always thought it is the best place for me to be,” said Jan Baum of her La Brea Boulevard location.