L.A. summons the spirit of glam-surrealist artist Steven Arnold

The sun, played by Love Bailey, and the moon, played by Logan Wolfe.

He has been described as a magician and “being of light.” As Salvador Dalí’s kindred spirit and protégé. As the Andy Warhol of the West Coast. The artist Steven Arnold ought to be a household name. The exhibition “Cocktails in Heaven” at Del Vaz Projects in Santa Monica, which opened this week with a party co-hosted by Karen Hillenburg and Christine Messineo of Frieze, is a hopeful step in this direction.

On Monday night, the gallery transformed into a replica of Arnold’s legendary home and studio in Los Angeles, known as Zanzabar, which has been compared to Warhol’s Factory for the luminaries it attracted (Timothy Leary, Debbie Harry, Ellen Burstyn) and the creative synergy it inspired. Throughout the ’80s and into the early ’90s, Zanzabar was host to queer gatherings and parties, as well as surrealist photoshoots with exquisite paper-cut set designs that Arnold entirely made from hand. “My house is a temple for me. It’s a religious space, it’s where the creativity happens,” he says in the 2019 documentary made on him, “Heavenly Bodies.” Arnold died at the age of 51 in 1994, from AIDS-related complications, and left behind a mind-bending body of work that is now housed by ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.

Steven Arnold "Cocktails in Heaven" exhibition at Del Vaz Projects.

At Del Vaz, characters from Arnold’s ethereal photographs and films came to life in performances directed by artist Tyler Matthew Oyer: At the door, two French waiters, dressed in Mozart wigs and original coats hand-painted by Arnold, checked off guest names from an 8-foot scroll. Inside, performers dressed as the sun and moon — their mostly nude bodies spray-painted gold and silver — languorously laid over a banquet table abundant with crudités, conjuring a scene from Arnold’s most famous film, “Luminous Procuress,” which was projected on the wall. In the courtyard, a bodybuilder posed as a live version of Michelangelo’s “David” sculpture. It was an ode to the joyous, maximalist world that Arnold meticulously and affectionately built in both life and art — because for him there was no distinction, art was life.

Steven Arnold, "Intersection of Dreams," 1985

Every detail of the party came from something found in Arnold’s archive. The artistic director of the exhibition, Orrin Whalen, planted a few of Arnold’s actual belongings in the warm room where his photographs and drawings hung: his ornate metal bracelet rested on a seashell, and replicas of his red leopard print business cards fanned open on the front table. “Cocktails in Heaven” is also the title of Arnold’s unpublished memoir and became the source material for the party’s chef, Gerardo Gonzalez, who scanned for passages where the artist mentioned his favorite foods — mainly hors d’oeuvres and copious glasses of Vermouth.

Guests on Monday included fashion and art world luminaries, including artists Ron Athey and Joey Terrill, designer Zana Bayne, former Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin, and jewelry designer Sophie Buhai, who mingled under the dangling grapevines and in a tent where upside-down paper umbrellas suspended from the ceiling. The dress code was “Complete Fantasy Conglomerata Divina Magnificata,” and the crowd did their part wearing feathered hats, leopard-print tops, golden sequinned dresses and polka-dotted face paint. It was only fitting to pay homage to Arnold this way, a fashion icon in his own right who was once voted the best dressed man of Los Angeles by L.A. Weekly.

The evening signaled that this is not the type of show that will deaden an artist behind glass vitrines. “We can summon artists’ spirits through gatherings,” says Jay Ezra Nayssan, founding director and chief curator of Del Vaz Projects, which is also Nayssan’s home. “This opening is an aspect of a project that should be equally important as the exhibition itself … Queer culture is carried not only through scholarship but through laughter, perfume, embrace and touch, through dinners and concerts — and whatever forms are waiting to be invented.”