PUBLIC INTEREST: PAINTED OVER/UNDER

PAINTED OVER/UNDER: PARTS 1-4
Kim Schoenstadt’s Painted Over/Under Parts 1-4 is a year-long project based on the mismatched color patterning created by “graffiti maintenance” on freeway retaining walls and other open walls in the city. Parts 1-3 will incorporate guest curators Les Figues Press, Jens Hoffman and Erin Cullerton who will invite writers, artists and architects to create drawings in shifts on the walls in LACE’s rear gallery. With each part of the project, works will be written and/or drawn onto the walls, then painted over with Schoenstadt’s color palette, creating a layered, abstracted painting defined by the shapes of past projects, offering a new starting point for the next group, and so on.  Prior to each “painting out,” Schoenstadt will apply tape on the large wall drawing to preserve portions of the work below. Part 4 will reveal the complete drawing, which will be constructed out of fragments of the project’s history. www.kimschoenstadt.com.

Click here to visit the Painted Over/Under blog.

PART 3: MAKING PLACE (13 January – 20 March 2011)
Closing Reception and Panel: 17 March 2011, 7 – 9 PM

Embracing the theme Making Place, Painted Over/Under: Part 3showcases two-dimensional, abstracted vignettes of the Los Angeles cityscape envisioned by architects and designers. As both an exercise in artful placemaking and a response to the powerful imagery of forgotten places, Making Place explores the myriad ways Los Angeles has layered itself into a complex network of activity—at once dense and urbanistically challenged—that defies its semi-arid condition. Taking inspiration from various forces such as access to water and transportation and the impact of sprawl and developer-led density, each selected teach of architects investigate the mini cities that constitute Los Angeles. By exploring successful and not-so-successful examples, both real and imagined, Part 3 attempts to reveal the complex essence of Los Angeles. Making Place includes the work of Los Angeles-based architecture firms Predock_Frane Architects, Chee Salette Architecture Office, and Florenica Pita mod.  

Erin Cullerton is the founder of Design Agency Co., a boutique agency specializing in communications and strategy services for the creative industries. The former Assistant Director of the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco, she has produced nearly 40 exhibitions on a range of topics from public art in architecture to investigations on the urban environment. In 2003, she founded the Architecture and the City festival, an award-winning, city-wide event held each September in San Francisco that reaches more than 20,000 participants and draws support from hundreds of cultural institutions and community partners. In 2005, Erin was instrumental in founding the Center for Architecture and Design, a new nonprofit organization seeking to educate the public about the importance of architecture and design. A consummate advocate for good design, Erin sits on the editorial advisory board of The Architect’s Newspaper, California edition, the Development Committee of the A+D Museum, and the Founding Committee of the Southern California Architecture and Design Consortium. Her writing on design has appeared in ARTnews, Metropolis, ReadyMade, Surface, Time Out London and she is the editor of the publications Contemporary Prefab Houses and Young Architects Americas.

Led by Tina Chee and Marc Salette, Chee Salette Architecture Office (csao) is a multi-faceted practice that was founded after each partner honed their craft working on extraordinary projects with some of the most accomplished architecture firms in the world, including Gehry Partners, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, and Foster and Partners. Committed to sustainable design, csao believes architecture and urban design can play major roles in addressing fundamental issues such as global warming, overpopulation and finite natural resources. csao strives to design buildings and places that bring people together and enrich their lives in a meaningful way, while engaging their environment and challenging conventional culture. Current projects include the development of a Master Plan for Piggyback Yard, an initiative of the Friends of the LA River (FoLAR), as part of the PBy Collaborative, and the HSBC Building and Queen City Landing Master Plan in Buffalo, New York.

Founded by Hadrian Predock and John Frane, Predock_Frane Architectsis a collaborative research and development design studio whose work ranges from small-scale installations to large public venues. Named one of ten emerging architectural firms by Architectural Record and one of six emerging international firms by the Architectural League in New York, they were selected to represent the United States in the US Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, participated in the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial – Design Life Now, and have exhibited at the LA Forum Gallery in Los Angeles, and Pomona College Museum of Art. They have won numerous awards, including multiple national and local American Institute of Architects (AIA) Honor Awards, their work has been published internationally, and they have lectured widely.

Florencia Pita mod is a collaborative practice dedicated to the use of digital technology. An architect, teacher and researcher, Florencia Pita currently teaches at Sci-Arc in Los Angeles and is also on the visiting faculty of Lund University, Sweden. She has practiced architecture in the offices of Greg Lynn FORM, where she participated in the World Trade Center Design Competition as part of United Architects, Eisenman Architects and Asymptote. Her work has been showcased in solo exhibitions at SCI-arc Gallery and LA><ART, and in group exhibitions at The Art Institute of Chicago, the 2007-08 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Biennial of Urbanism and Architecture in China, and Artist Space in New York. Her work is part of the permanent collection of the MAK Museum in Vienna, and is currently on view at The Art Institute of Chicago.

PART 2: NO TITLE (13 October – 19 December)
Curator Jens Hoffmann invited eight international emerging visual artists to comprise his curatorial segment for Painted Over/Under. Each artist has designed a site-specific piece inspired by the street art and its prevalence practice throughout the world. Wall works will go up throughout the exhibition via long-distance communication between each international artist and select Los Angeles art student and young artist partners.

Participating artists: Zarouhie Abdalian, Johanna Calle, Arabella Campbell, Adriana Lara, Jazmín López, Anna Parkina, Gitte Schäfer, and Maaike Schoorel.

Zarouhie Abdalian was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2010. Working fluidly between drawing, video, and installation, Abdalian investigates landscape as both the material site in which the viewer is located and as an index of the historical accumulation of images. She currently lives and works in Oakland, California. (On view 13 October – 17 November)

Johanna Calle was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1965. She has had numerous solo exhibitions, Perspectivas(upcoming 2010) at MUZAC,Zona Maco Sur in México 2010, Zona Torrida2006 and Variaciones  2010 at Casas Riegner Gallery in Bogotá. She has participated in group shows such as VII Mercosul Biennial 2009 (by invitation of Victoria Noorthoorn), Interrogating Systems  at CIFO in Miami ; 20 Desarreglos, Artists and War 2009. In 1992- 1993 she was granted a British Council Scholarship to pursue a Masters Degree in Fine Arts at Chelsea College of Art in UK and in 2001, an Alliançe Française Fellowship at the Cité des Atres in Paris. She lives and works in Bogotá. (On view 17 November – 19 December)

Arabella Campbell lives and works in Vancouver.  She has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia (1996) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr Institute of Art and the San Francisco Art Institute (2002). Her work was recently included in Enacting Abstraction at the Vancouver Art Gallery and Stowaways: The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengersat CCA Wattis. Campbell was selected to be part of the 2009 Glenfiddich Artist-in-Residence Program, Glenfiddich Distillery, Dufftown, Scotland. In 2008 Campbell exhibited a site specific work for a window installation at Artspeak, Vancouver, British Columbia and produced a solo exhibition at Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver. She has also participated in the following selected group exhibitions: THIS IS NOT A VOID, curated by Jens Hoffmann, at Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil (2008), Museum as Medium at Koldo Mitxelena, San Sebastian, Spain (2008) and Museo de Art Contemporanea de Vigo, Vigo, Spain (2008), Everything Should Be As Simple As Possible But Not Simpler, curated by Juan Gaitán, The Western Front, Vancouver, British Columbia (2008), Field Workat The Apartment, Vancouver, British Columbia (2008) and Past as Present at York Art Gallery, York, England (2008). (On view 17 November – 19 December)

Anna Parkina was born in Moscow in 1979 and currently lives and works in Paris, but received her MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. Her art career has included many solo and group shows, including exhibitions at COMA, Berlin, Haswellediger, New York, Daniel Hug, Los Angeles and Michael Janssen, Cologne. Parkina’s work investigates the Self in relation to the culture of spectacle through a series of collages cum self-portraits cum performance art. Her aesthetic embodies Soviet design, 80’s computer graphics, and screen-printing, which together provide an ironic anachronism relevant in a common desire to create ulterior social orders. (On view 17 November – 19 December)

Johanna Calle was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1965. She has had numerous solo exhibitions, Perspectivas(upcoming 2010) at MUZAC,Zona Maco Sur in México 2010, Zona Torrida2006 and Variaciones  2010 at Casas Riegner Gallery in Bogotá. She has participated in group shows such as VII Mercosul Biennial 2009 (by invitation of Victoria Noorthoorn), Interrogating Systems  at CIFO in Miami ; 20 Desarreglos, Artists and War 2009. In 1992- 1993 she was granted a British Council Scholarship to pursue a Masters Degree in Fine Arts at Chelsea College of Art in UK and in 2001, an Alliançe Française Fellowship at the Cité des Atres in Paris. She lives and works in Bogotá. (On view 17 November – 19 December)

Adriana Lara was born in 1978 in Mexico City, Mexico. She createsplayful conceptual works that conflate institutional critique and surrealism, introducing an idiosyncratic kind of mysticism into the exhibition space. In her installation workBanana Peel,(2008), a museum employee is instructed to eat a banana each morning and discard its peel somewhere in the exhibition space. It is a seemingly careless gesture, a trap fit for a Saturday morning cartoon, but upon further examination it can also be seen as an insolent soiling of the antiseptic “white box” of the exhibition space, achieved through the insertion of a small mess of life into the hallowed halls of art. Lara works tricks of “readymade magic” with her piece Opening Hours, 2008, for which she has simply designated the New Museum’s opening hours as one of her works. Though it is totally invisible, once we become aware of the work we are given an uncanny sense, that everything around us might be in the process of being orchestrated by an unseen force. (On view 13 October – 17 November)

Jazmín López was born in Buenos Aires in 1984. She  graduated from the Film Direction career in the Universidad del Cine, Buenos Aires. Her film shorts have been selected for the Toulouse Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand, Gijón Film Fest, and the Locarno Film Festivals. Solo exhibitions include Yo Odio a Wagner(2007),  Lo que pasa en la tierra, Centro Cultural Borge (2008), and Yo soy más fuerte que yo, Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte (2009). (On view 13 October – 17 November)

Gitte Schäfer was born in 1972 in Stuttgart. She attended the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee and the Chelsea College of Art in London.  Schäfer currently lives and works in Berlin. Her work explores cultural symbols in her intimate paintings and drawings of interiors, landscapes, and architectural scenes. Using romantic or romanticized icons, such as old magazine clippings and flea market postcards as well as furniture and found objects, Gitte Schäfer’s works present the dichotomy of nature and culture. She is greatly influenced by the applied arts, and frequently experiments with different artistic techniques such as pencil on gesso, perforated and painted metal and painted boxes. (On view 13 October – 17 November)

Maaike Schoorel was born in The Netherlands in 1973. She currently lives and works in London and Amsterdam. Her recent work has shown in solo exhibitions at Marc Foxx, Maureen Paley, Museum de Hallen, and Art 41 Basel. Her work is currently in several other group shows at the Museum of Old and New Art, Australia, Newspeak Part Two at The Saatchi Gallery, London, and recently throughout London and Amsterdam. (On view 17 November – 19 December)

PART 1: NOT CONTENT (23 June – 26 Sept)
Les Figues Press starts Painted Over/Under: Part 1 with Not Content, a series of text projects that investigate the ways in which language functions within public and private spheres and within the tenuous and transitory space between these real and imagined realms.  How does public discourse construct narrative selves, and how are internal voices manifest as public discourse? What is unsaid beneath the saying and said within a silence?  What is covered or uncovered via the incessant text around us, and when is a wall a law, a border, a protective shield, a frame, a taboo?

Not Content will take place as a series of writers-in-residence.  Most residencies will last for three weeks, during which time the writer will engage in a project that considers the physical and temporal space of the gallery/residency.  During the summer section, there may be up to three writers in residence at the same time; at other times of the year, there may be only one writer in residence.  At or near the end of each residency, LACE staff will paint over the text using a matrix provided by Schoenstadt.  In this way, text and image will fuse and accumulate over the course of the year.

Presenting Writers: Vanessa Place, Divya Victor, Douglas Kearney, Maxi Kim, Gaby Torres and Jenny Donovan, Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin, Mathew Timmons, Yedda Morrison, Johanna Drucker, Marco Huerta, Sawako Nakayasu, and Christine Wertheim.

Click here to visit Les Figues Press’ blog on Not Content.

OUR PRESENTERS

Divya Victor | HELLOCASTS | 21 June – 12 July
Divya Victor is from India, Singapore, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Buffalo. She has a Masters from Temple University and is a PhD. candidate in the English Department at SUNY Buffalo. Her work has appeared in ambit: journal of poetry and poetics, XConnect, ixnay reader 3, dusie, President’s Choice, P-QUEUE and Drunken Boat. Her recent chapbooks are SUTURES (Little Red Leaves) and Hellocasts By Charles Reznikoff by Divya Victor by Vanessa Place (ood Press). http://oodpress.net/

Douglas Kearney | COVERAGE | 21 June – 12 July
Poet/performer/librettist Douglas Kearney‘s first full-length collection of poems Fear, Some, was published in 2006 by Red Hen Press. His second manuscript, The Black Automaton, was chosen by Catherine Wagner for the National Poetry Series and published by Fence Books in 2009. In 2008, he was honored with a Whiting Writers Award. An Idyllwild and Cave Canem fellow, Kearney has performed his poetry at the Public Theatre, Orpheum, and The World Stage. His poems have appeared in journals such as Callaloo, jubilat, nocturnes, Ninth Letter, Washington Square and Gulf Coast. Born in Brooklyn, now living in California’s San Fernando Valley, he has a BA from Howard University and an MFA in Writing from the California Institute of the Arts, where he now teaches courses in African American poetry, myth, hip hop and opera. http://www.douglaskearney.com/

Vanessa Place | STATEMENT OF FACTS | 21 June – 19 July
Of Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman’s Notes on Conceptualisms, Mary Kelly said, “I learned more about the impact of conceptualism on artists and writers than I had from reading so-called canonical works on the subject.” Place is also author of Dies: A Sentence, La Medusa, and The Guilt Project: Rape, Morality and Law, based on her work as an attorney representing indigent sex offenders on appeal. Place is co-director of Les Figues Press, and a regular contributor to X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly. Her most recent work is forthcoming in French by éditions è®e, as Exposé des Faits, and in English by Blanc Press, as the trilogy, Statement of Facts, Statement of the Case, and Argument. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_Place

Maxi Kim | THE PRINCIPLE OF NORTH KOREAN CHARITY | 14 July – 11 August
Maxi Kim was born in a military camp on Mt Paekdu, the tallest volcanic mountain on the East Asian peninsula.   He studied Japanese and American literature at University of California, then studied French theory at California Institute of the Arts, where he wrote his first novel One Break, A Thousand Blows. His writing has been compared to the visual art of Richard Prince, Wallace Berman, and the films of Sofia Coppola.  In 2008 he moved to London, and taught writing.  He currently lives in San Francisco. According to an ancestral inscription his birth was heralded by the spectral presence of the haiku poet Issa over the mountain’s caldera.

Jenny Donovan & Gabriela Torres Olivares | YO NO ESTOY AQUI | 14 July – 11 August
Jenny Donovan is an artist, writer and translator, whose work has appeared in numerous journals, including Revista Espiral, Papeles de la Mancuspia, Encyclopedia Volume 2 F-K, Abrazo, and Bulbo Press. She has presented work in various independent spaces and museums in the US and Mexico, including: Museo Carrillo Gil (México City, D.F.), The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Intersection for the Arts (San Francisco), El Museo Nacional de La Ciudad de México, (Mexico City, D.F.) and El Centro Cultural de Tijuana (CECUT). With Gaby Torres, Donovan co-directs La Derramadora Press, a binational and bilingual independent press that produces small editions of hand crafted books from recycled materials.

Gabriela Torres Olivares is the author of three collections of short stories, including Regiomonteses (enfermario) (ediciones La Derramadora press, 2008 and Tierra Adentro, 2010), Están Muertos, (Harakiri Plaquettes, 2004), and Incompletario (Ediciones Intempestivas, 2007). Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including: Caja de Viento (Ediciones El Árbol) and La Difícil Brevedad (2006), as well as in numerous periodicals. Torres currently lives in Tijuana, B.C., where she is the co-director and chief editor of La Derramadora Press.

Anima Cain and Jennifer Karmin | UNNATURAL ACTS | 21 July – 11 August
Amina Cain is the author of the short story collection I Go To Some Hollow (Les Figues Press, 2009), and a forthcoming chapbook, Tramps Everywhere (Insert Press/PARROT SERIES).  A recording of her story “Attached to a Self” was included in the group show A Diamond in the Mud at Literaturhaus Basel in Switzerland in 2008; other work has appeared in publications such as 3rd Bed, Action Yes, Denver Quarterly, onedit, Sidebrow, and Wreckage of Reason: Xxperimental Prose by Women Writers.  She lives in Los Angeles.http://aminacain.com/

Jennifer Karmin’s text-sound epic, Aaaaaaaaaaalice, was published by Flim Forum Press in 2010. She curates the Red Rover Series and is co-founder of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise.  Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented across the U.S., Japan, and Kenya. A proud member of the Dusie Kollektiv, she is the author of the Dusie chapbook Evacuated: Disembodying Katrina. Walking Poem, a collaborative street project, is featured online at How2. In Chicago, Jennifer teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the public schools.http://aaaaaaaaaaalice.blogspot.com/

Yedda Morrison | DARKNESS (chapter 1) | 5 August – 26 August
Writer and visual artist Yedda Morrison was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her books include Girl Scout Nation (Displaced Press, 2008) and Crop (Kelsey Street Press, 2003). Darkness (A Biocentric Reading of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness) is forthcoming from Make Now Press in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies and collections, most recently in The Book of Practical Pussies with artist Michelle Rollman, and Collective Task, edited by poet Robert Fitterman. Morrison has exhibited her visual work in the US and Canada, and is currently represented by Republic Gallery in Vancouver, BC. She lives in San Francisco. www.yeddamorrison.com

Mathew Timmons | CREDIT | 5 August – 26 August
Mathew Timmons is a writer, curator and critic in Los Angeles. He is the General Director of General Projects at various locations including Outpost for Contemporary Art and The Ups & Downs, an installation series, at workspace. He also is the editor of Insert Press and co-curator of Late Night Snack (w/ Harold Abramowitz). His works include CREDIT (Blanc Press) and LIP SERVICE, a chapbook published by Slack Buddha Press. Forthcoming works include: The New Poetics (Les Figues Press), his micro-book collaboration with Marcus Civin, a particular vocabulary (P S Books), and a chapbook, Lip Music (By the Skin of Me Teeth). His work may be found in various journals, including: P-Queue, Holy Beep!, Flim Forum, The Physical Poets, N?D, PRECIPICe, Or, Moonlit, aslongasittakes, eohippus labs, Area Sneaks, Artweek and The Encyclopedia Project.

Joanna Drucker | I AM WORDLE | 16 August – 2 September
Johanna Drucker is an artist and writer who is known for her experimental typographic books and her critical writings on visual poetry, typographic history, and digital aesthetics. She teaches in the Information Studies Department at UCLA.

Marco Antonio Huerta | SPAM | 27 August – 19 September
Marco Antonio Huerta is the author of three poetry collections: La semana milagrosa (Conarte, 2006), Golden Boy (Editorial Letras de Pasto Verde, 2009), and Hay un jardín (Tierra Adentro, 2009). His work has been published in several periodicals and anthologies both in  Mexico and Spain. Born in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico in 1978, where he currently teaches English, Literature, and Creative Writing. Bachelor of Communication, MA in Teaching. Member of Colectivo Perros de Agua, a group of writers and artists who promote reading among young people.

Sawako Nakayasu | INSECT COUNTRY C. | 27 August – 19 September
Sawako Nakayasu was born in Japan and has lived mostly in the US since the age of six. Her books include Texture Notes (Letter Machine Editions, 2010), Hurry Home Honey (Burning Deck, 2009), Nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she, (Quale Press, 2005), and So we have been given time  Or, (Verse Press, 2004). Books of translations include Time of Sky//Castles in the Air by Ayane Kawata (Litmus Press, 2010) and For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi Hiraide (New Directions, 2008) which won the 2009 Best Translated Book Award from Three Percent. She has received fellowships from the NEA and PEN, and her own work has been translated into Japanese, Swedish, Arabic, Chinese, and Vietnamese. More information can be found here: http://www.sawakonakayasu.net/

Christine Wertheim | NI UNA MAS | 3 September – 26 September
Christine Wertheim is MFA Writing Program Chair at Cal Arts. She is the author of +|’me’S-pace (Les Figues Press), a book of poetics, and a chapbook from Triage. She co-edited the anthologies Seancé, Noulipo, and Feminaissance. Recent critical work has appeared in X-tra, Cabinet , The Quick and the Dead, and Walker Art Centre. Recent poetry appears in Drunken Boat, Tarpaulin Sky and Veer. Her new book is a poetic suite on mothers.

LES FIGUES PRESS
Les Figues Press is an independent, nonprofit literary press that creates aesthetic conversations between writers, artists and readers, especially those interested in innovative/experimental/avant-garde work. Les Figues publishes new and forgotten works of poetry and prose, and curates literary events, including readings, panels, salons and other performances.  http://www.lesfigues.com