ART dealers seem to have an opinion about everything and a great willingness to share it. Ex-soldiers are known for reticence, especially about their military experiences.
Robert Gunderman is an Army veteran and the co-owner and operator of ACME, one of Los Angeles' leading galleries of contemporary art. As a dealer, he's unusual because he won't talk your ear off when there's art to be looked at. But the veteran in him is more conventional: Trying to pin down details about what he did as a soldier is more difficult than prying apart discretion and valor.
"I just believe in privacy," the tall, lean and clean-cut 43-year-old says. "I think that familiarity is earned."
Gunderman's posture suggests he was never uncomfortable standing at attention. He speaks with patient precision, answering a question about leaving a career in the military and embarking on one in the arts by saying, "I was in the Arctic Circle doing something, and I had a little downtime." Then he changes the subject.
Three weeks later, when the question comes up again, he explains: "I was in a small military hospital receiving treatment for frostbite. It was the middle of winter, the sun never came up, and the aurora borealis was on in full force. The hospital had a tiny library, where I came across two albums by Brian Eno, 'Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy)' and 'Before and After Science.'
"Coupled with the aurora borealis," Gunderman says, "those records planted a seed. Something changed then. After continually training and preparing for three years to go to war and being so invested in that mind-set, somehow the idea of producing something that people might receive pleasure from viewing found me and became increasingly more appealing."
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A fascination with 'guy stuff'
GUNDERMAN was born in Los Angeles in 1963 and grew up in Seal Beach. He attended Huntington Beach High School from 1978 to '81 and then kicked around for three years, working odd jobs, following the Southern California punk scene and reading Nietzsche. In 1984 he enlisted in the Army for a six-year stint. After basic training in Texas, he completed jump school at Ft. Benning, Ga., and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, N.C.
At Ft. Bragg he became a small-arms specialist. His job was to train a company to use weapons that ranged from .45-caliber sidearms to M60 machine guns and to maintain its arsenal.
