The behemoth on La Cienega Boulevard, Blum & Poe features heavy-hitters of today and tomorrow.

The clearest and most oft-cited testament to the gallery’s prescient taste: Owners Timothy Blum and Jeff Poe jumpstarted the careers of Takashi Murakami, Superflat maestro and designer of loud, sunny Louis Vuitton bags, and cutesy bad-boy Yoshitomo Nara. Using the 5,000-square-foot Escher and Gunewardena-designed space wisely, Blum & Poe has not retreated from its initial interest in high and low, making a home for luminary Los Angeles photographer and filmmaker Sharon Lockhart, local conceptual provocateur Sam Durant and painter Mark Grotjahn. Some exhibits in the three-roomed space aim for humor (the poster image for a group show called "Werner Herzog" featured a portrait of Larry David). Others toy with music and its subcultures (Slater Bradley’s Michael Jackson moonwalk redux and Dave Mueller’s megatone and multi-volume iTunes playlist book and radio system among them). —Melissa Lo