Founded in 2015, OCHI is a contemporary art gallery with locations in Sun Valley, Idaho and Los Angeles, California. Nurturing and contextualizing a diverse roster of interdisciplinary artists, OCHI highlights a mix of traditional and experimental practices that investigate the conceptual and material boundaries of art. OCHI’s program focuses on emerging and mid-career artists, collaborating with each artist to build momentum and visibility through robust activities such as institutional exhibitions, gallery partnerships, artist-initiated opportunities, educational and curatorial platforms, art fairs, and a range of press and publications.
Drawn to the culture and community of the Arlington Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, Pauli Ochi opened the doors of Ochi Projects in 2015 after Noah Davis recommended a storefront at 3301 W. Washington Boulevard, a couple of blocks from The Underground Museum. Ochi Projects began as an experimental space in which the artists were handed keys and encouraged to dream big—a journey that mirrors the origins of OCHI’s Idaho space.
The original Ochi Gallery was founded by Pauli Ochi’s parents, Roberta and Denis Ochi, in Boise, Idaho in the 1970s. What began as an artist-run space evolved into an impressive program of exhibitions that featured renown artists. In the 1990s, the Ochi’s designed and built a 6,000 square foot white box gallery with 30-foot ceilings located at 119 Lewis Street at the base of a ski mountain in Sun Valley—a gallery that OCHI still uses for year-round programming alongside its Los Angeles location.
OCHI is built upon a multi-generational belief that art has the power to build community, to evoke joy, expand horizons, to define culture, and to create a future that has not yet been imagined.
