Sordid L.A. Hotel Becomes Art Project
Just east of Hollywood, along Sunset Boulevard, lies Silver Lake, a gentrified arts community where the movie business once thrived. There, on the corner of Bates and Sunset, sits the Sunset Pacific Motel, a dilapidated mid-century structure abandoned for 20 years. Its nickname, the Bates Motel, comes from the street name, not Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” But with its sordid past as a longtime mecca for drug dealers and the homeless (having yielded three dead bodies over the years), Hitch might have felt at home there. Last week, that sordid past was erased by artist Vincent Lamouroux, who has recently whitewashed the entire structure, including several towering fan palms surrounding it, for his site-specific piece “Projection.”
