At OCHI, Generational Love of Art Mirrors a Lifelong Commitment to Artists

Amid the picturesque landscapes of Idaho, the gallerist Pauli Ochi grew up among artists. Her family roots in the state began with her grandfather, Fred Isao Ochi, a landscape painter who ventured from California during the 1940s to open a sign painting shop in Idaho Falls. Later, her father, Denis Ochi, together with his wife Roberta, established a gallery (originally akin to a modern-day artist-run space) in Boise in 1974, fostering a hub for creativity and expression. By the late 1980s, the family had moved, along with the artist-run gallery space, to the state’s resort town of Sun Valley, where visitors can find OCHI’s permanent flagship gallery near the base of Bald Mountain. Artists were a common part of daily life: Pauli recalls cross-country skiing with Pat Steir or seeing work from Sam Francis in her childhood.

“It was a big deal to be bringing these artists and this work to very rural Idaho,” Ochi said. “Everyone’s upbringing is unique, but it was a pretty specific thing to be traveling with them and exposed to contemporary art, but then also growing up in this town where there’s a really big emphasis on athletics and the outdoors.”

Today, Pauli Ochi leads her family’s gallery, taking the artist-run space and transforming it into a platform for contemporary artists across the American West. Once she completed her master’s in art business at Claremont University in California, Ochi opened a second space in Los Angeles in 2015, which she established to work with more emerging artists. The L.A. location, initially launched as Ochi Projects, began as a project space that has since flourished into a vital part of the two-gallery operation.

Ochi’s approach to the gallery has evolved significantly over the last decade, particularly as her relationships with artists have matured. Several artists, such as Lilian Martinez, who debuted her work at OCHI in 2016, have grown with the gallery.

“We’ve gotten much more intentional in thinking about trajectory and the long-term careers of the artists,” Ochi said. “That happened when my daughter was born at the end of January 2020, which was right before the pandemic. I hired my first director [Meghan Gordon], and there was this moment when I realized I needed to start thinking about leadership in a different way. Not that I wasn’t being thoughtful before, but in the early days, I would basically just give artists the keys and encourage them to do whatever they wanted.

In part, this heightened focus on artistic development is inspired by her time in Los Angeles’s grassroots art scene, notably by The Underground Museum in Mid City—a space founded by the late Noah Davis that offered free access to world-class art and diverse cultural experiences. Above all, Ochi’s work as a gallery owner is a lifelong role as a collaborator, upholding the mission to help propel artists into the spotlight. After nearly a decade, the gallery has become a key figure in a burgeoning L.A. art scene, which has seen an influx of new galleries in recent years, including prominent names like David Zwirner and nearby newcomers like 1226 Gallery.

“The artist-run space scene in L.A. was so important to me early on,” Ochi said. “I would go to a lot of the artist-run space openings and meet artists. I was doing about five-plus studio visits a week. I feel [that scene] contracted for a minute during COVID, but it seems like it’s back. And now so many new spaces have opened in L.A. I’m curious to see how that plays out—there are so many great artists here.”

Meanwhile, Ochi remains actively involved in the Sun Valley gallery, where the idyllic setting offers artists a chance to exhibit their work outside the major art capitals. One such artist, Devin Farrand, who will soon open his third solo show with the gallery during Frieze L.A. next month, moved to Sun Valley after attending a temporary residency at the gallery. Ochi underscores the importance of Idaho and its community, not only for the gallery’s foundation, but also looking into the future.

“[In Idaho] there’s that sense of spirit, the people who move to Sun Valley to raise their families—it’s an adventurous vibe,” Ochi said. “It’s very closely related to an artist’s spirit—there’s an open-mindedness. That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about in terms of the gallery. I feel that sense of spirit did inform this [space]…I grew up really appreciating people who are creative and dedicate their lives to cultivating creativity.”

Ochi has developed an unconventional gallery model in which the distinct atmospheres of both Idaho and Los Angeles offer different opportunities for Ochi and her artists to showcase their work to a broad and varied audience.

“It’s seasonal [in Idaho],” Ochi said. “It’s a resort town, so traffic ebbs and flows. In some ways, it couldn’t be more different [than L.A.]. Here, you’ll have a collector walk in in their ski boots and hang out with you for an hour. In L.A., I very rarely see collectors when they’re not in a hurry. In Sun Valley, they come and learn and really have a conversation. They’re in a different mode, so there’s a much different level of engagement. On the flip side, a collector might only be here once a year, so it’s important to think about programming around that. It’s a fun challenge to navigate.”

Over the past eight years, OCHI the gallery has held over 130 exhibitions between Los Angeles and Sun Valley and presented at more than 20 art fairs. In the coming months, OCHI will show work from Ben Sanders at FOG Design + Art in San Francisco and new paintings from Martinez at Frieze Los Angeles. While working closely with its current roster of artists, the gallery continues to seek out additional emerging artists to work with. For instance, OCHI Los Angeles will show new work from the sculptor Kristy Moreno in an upcoming show, “The Company We Keep.”