Two years ago, Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld was toiling as an assistant producer for Paramount Pictures. Today, he’s a hot young art entrepreneur with backing from fashion heavyweights like Giorgio Armani and Louis Vuitton.

The 24-year-old son of French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld is currently promoting the New York solo debut of French artist Nicolas Pol. The opening earlier this month featured an A-list crowd, including designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, collector Aby Rosen, heiress Daphne Guiness and hotelier Andre Balazs. Carine Roitfeld arrived in a black bodice and lace body suit by Dolce & Gabbana.

“I don’t think small,” said Restoin Roitfeld, wearing an Alexander McQueen jacket as we walked through the Pol exhibition in a 15,000-square-foot warehouse on the Lower East Side. “I wanted to recreate the environment of the Venice Biennale.”

His fashion-world connections help explain why Restoin Roitfeld, a gaunt graduate of the University of Southern California, is able to attract investors amid a global economic crisis.

Louis Vuitton contributed $50,000 to his first New York exhibition last February. Coinciding with Fashion Week, it featured photographs by three of Restoin Roitfeld’s friends: P.C. Valmorbida, David Mushegain and Salim Langatta.

Armani Funding

Giorgio Armani SpA is funding three exhibitions by Richard Hambleton, an artist popular in the 1970s whose career Restoin Roitfeld decided to revive this year. The first installment took place during September’s Fashion Week in New York. The second will overlap with runway extravaganzas in Milan next March.

Restoin Roitfeld grew up in Paris surrounded by cinema, fashion and photography, and briefly worked at Paramount Pictures after college.

Disillusioned with Hollywood’s corporate culture -- “It would take a hundred years to feel like you are part of the artistic vision,” he said -- he moved to New York and began producing art shows. In June 2008, he organized an exhibition by photographer Marco Perego in Paris.

Though he liked presenting art, “I was so new in the industry I could not handle the overhead of the gallery,” he said. So he decided to focus on finding talented artists and mounting one-off exhibitions at venues around the world.

Bible, Intestines

Restoin Roitfeld met Pol six months ago through Stavros Niarchos, an heir to a Greek shipping fortune. Niarchos is friendly with New York philanthropist Agnes Gund and is a partner in RUCA, a fashion brand that promotes contemporary artists.

“I fell in love with his work,” Restoin Roitfeld said of Pol. “You can look at these paintings for 20 years and always find something new.”

Pol’s 18 large canvases glow in the darkened, cavernous space downtown. The explosive compositions are made from silkscreen layered with wild brushstrokes, doodles, heraldic symbols, graffiti and text. They bring to mind works by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jonathan Meese while using source materials, including the Bible, 16th-century Venetian painting, intestine scans and Tim Burton’s animated films.

“Vladimir is very sweet and fun,” Pol said after Restoin Roitfeld instructed him in French not to say a word to the reporter about who had bought the paintings marked with red dots.

Big Team

Restoin Roitfeld offered the artist a New York solo debut that “sounded like a dream,” Pol said. The building has 20- foot ceilings, dilapidated grandeur and the history of being part of the Essex Street Market complex.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation leased him the building for $40,000 from Oct. 21 through Dec. 12, according to spokeswoman Janel Patterson. (Insurance added $11,000, Restoin Roitfeld said.)

He dismissed the notion that he’s benefiting from being fashion royalty.

“Whoever your mom is, people won’t give you hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Restoin Roitfeld said. “It gives you access but then you’ve got to build trust. We work extremely hard.”

He hired a team of 30 people, including production assistants, builders, shippers, light technicians and Nadine Johnson & Associates Inc., a public-relations agency.

While young downtown dealers are charging $15,000 or less for works by emerging artists, Restoin Roitfeld priced Pol’s works between $35,000 and $75,000.

To produce “The Martus Maw,” Restoin Roitfeld turned to private European investors. Two weeks after the exhibition opened, all but one painting sold, with an average price of $40,000, he said.

“It’s such a big production that it had to make sense financially,” he said. “We recouped the investment and made a very large profit.”