With Honolulu’s construction boom in the high-end condominium market, it is clear that a renaissance of millionaire culture is coming to Oahu.

To take advantage of the lucrative markets for aesthetic objects that follow the wealthy, there is GalleryHNL, a creation of renowned Pacific art collectors Mark and Carolyn Blackburn; Gaye Chan, chair of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Art and Art History Department; and Sanford Hasegawa, managing director of Studio Becker in Hawaii. The international company produces high-end, custom cabinetry.

This innovative public-private venture channels a percentage of sales to support UH programs, experiments with moving artists into roles typically occupied by architects and interior designers, and demonstrates that world-class art needn’t necessarily be imported.

Recently opened in Na Lama Kukui (formerly Gentry Pacific Design Center), GalleryHNL’s space showcases the best of Hawaii’s contemporary art with works by UH faculty members Mary Babcock and Jonathan Swanz, and recent Manoa graduates Theresa Marie Heinrich and Tom Walker.

Though some viewers expect artwork "portraying" Hawaii’s people, landscapes and lifestyles, the work of GalleryHNL’s artists would be well received anywhere on the planet — this is one definition of "contemporary art." Mark Blackburn in particular recognizes that there is a market for work of this caliber that buyers typically look for in New York, Los Angeles and Berlin, and then ship to their Hawaii residences.

Bringing his experience with Studio Becker to the table, Hasegawa realizes that aesthetic "problems" developers, designers and decorators face can be creatively solved by local contemporary artists with world-class talent.

Chan sees a unique opportunity for artists like these to not only support themselves with their work, but also to explore avenues that do not require a practice that accommodates the lowest common denominator of the popular imagination.

Consider the definitively weird, beautiful and accomplished ceramic work of Heinrich. Her surreal sculptures are more than a little delirious and might have been assembled by children, cultists or a natural disaster.

"Reliquary 2 || Geisha" is a ceramic female bust with features that look like they have been weathered and smoothed by some organic process, or slathered in the wet latex of an aborted mask-casting session. Far from a horrific image, Heinrich’s minimalist portrait is adorned with a "living" headdress, evoking the forms of frogs, flowers, giant cicadas and small birds.

Babcock’s amazing, nigh indestructible tapestries made from recovered fishing line and netting are another strong example. Her genius is not only demonstrated in the unexpected textures she generates, but also in a surprisingly diverse color palette derived from ocean, stone, forest and fur, expressed through a limited industrial source.

Walker’s paintings come from the realm of 8-bit graphics and unstable video signals, but they echo Babcock’s art with allusions to weaving. Working in bands and grids, Swanz plays with mirroring, self-similarity and the color segregation of the digital.

Swanz’s glass sculptures are clearly inspired by ocean and nature, but are not necessarily a narrative or promotion thereof. Like the rest of the artists, he uses abstraction and a gentle formalism to craft objects that relate to the sea but also stand on their own as demonstrations of masterful technique.

Though Hawaii has a deep reservoir of modern and contemporary artistic talent, it is no secret that a sustainable contemporary art market in Hawaii is deterred by a lack of space for artists to show their work. This retards the processes that support artistic collaboration, failure and success — and thereby refinement, improvement and innovation.

In an ideal art market, artists are rewarded for taking risks in media and meaning, with collectors investing in the production of their unique visions that become currencies in their own right. GalleryHNL is a strong step in that direction.