Always Moving Forward

10 Years of Mirus Gallery

There couldn’t be a better place to interview Paul Hemming than in the vortex of a Future Factory, right? The man behind Mirus Gallery has, for the last decade, taken the energy of his landmark San Francisco nightclub Temple and created gallery aesthetics that, in his words, “ crystallize the unfathomable.” From SF to Denver, and now a new complex in downtown Los Angeles, Hemming is slamming all his chips on the table. We caught him on a rainy day in LA, in the midst of the build-out, reflecting on his new endeavor and the years of channeling movement into everything he does.

Evan Pricco: It’s ten years of Mirus Gallery, and you’re embedded in this gargantuan project. Let’s just start here. What are you doing? 

Paul Hemming: This is the Future Factory. It’s five buildings on three sites in downtown LA where we’re building this immersive, experiential entertainment complex of which Mirus Gallery is a part.

Well, then we should rewind and start from the beginning because this is clearly a massive build-up.

So I moved to San Francisco when I was 19 to go to study filmmaking at SF State. I also studied philosophy and Chinese, as well as DJ’d on the side. During my senior year the building where I lived in the Tenderloin caught fire and destroyed the movie I’d been working on. I ended up dropping out of school, started DJ’ing full-time, eventually opened a record store from money I got from the settlement of the fire, a place in Oakland on Broadway and Telegraph. It was called Zen City Records. We had a music studio in the basement, we hung artwork when the cool artists brought in some artwork and we threw parties. That was the seed that grew into everything I’m doing now, growing into the Temple Nightclub, which I eventually opened.