LACE is proud to present Speculative, a group exhibition curated by Christopher O’Leary and Zach Blas. Speculative will focus on new modes of art making and of presentation with an emphasis on the experiential, subversive, and tactical potentials for art in the 21st century. The projects included in this exhibition engage wildly diverse mediums from critical software, art-science, social practices, experimental video, wearable architecture, performance works and much more.

Featuring work by Casey Alt, Zach Blas, Jeff Cain, Micha Cardenas & Elle Mehrmand, Xarene Eskandar, Michael Kontopoulos, Christopher O’Leary, Claudia Salamanca, and Pinar Yoldas, the exhibition takes a multiplicity of forms and makes use of a variety of technologies including digital video projection, sound devices, specific lighting and other digital media to address notions of design, science, business, sex, gender, death, politics, environmentalism and, most of all -- the future.

Christopher O’Leary speculates about an increasingly dystopic vision of our future, as expressed through popular film, comics and literature. His work, Blocking the Exits, is a dynamically-edited, single-channel video project comprised entirely of still photographs that have been animated through morphing algorithms. Jeff Cain uses historical, botanical, and geographical research on the invasive mustard plant spread throughout California by Franciscan Monks to mark the El Camino Real to propose a 600 mile native biome restoration of the historic royal road. His installation will use documentation of original research and visualization of an imagined intervention to reveal both an optimistic and fatalistic representation of colonialism and the difficulties of undoing history. Xarene Eskandar investigates the idea of ‘the fold’ in origami-based clothing designs that relate the body to an unspoiled landscape. The forms themselves will be installed in conjunction with media documentation depicting their use.

LACE is proud to announce this year’s Wall Work commission by Seattle based artist Margie Livingston entitled Twenty Gallons to debut 16 June 2011 and designed to activate LACE’s monumental archway and greet our visitors for the coming year. Using acrylic paint as both a surface and structural material, Livingston will cover the 15-foot tall archway in LACE’s front gallery with a series of panels constructed entirely from, as her title suggests, twenty gallons of acrylic paint. 

Originally trained as an abstract painter, Livingston’s early work approached the subject of landscape through the lens of geometric abstraction, exploring the intersection of the architectural grid and organic forms within the conventions of the two-dimensional picture plane. In her recent work, she has inverted the relationship between content and material, with the canvas having been abandoned entirely in favor of exploiting paint for its sculptural properties, yet still maintaining a reference to abstract expressionism that is both witty and sincere.

Livingston deliberately conflates an expressionist, processed based approach of abstract painting and the structured, reductive approach of minimalism to create self-described “paint-objects.” The artist states, “As I work, my goal is to keep the process open so that accident and discovery can combine with invention to make works that surprise me. In hopes of making work that is not merely personal but also cognizant of history and relevant to our time.”

Each year, LACE commissions a new Wall Work for its front gallery.  Past projects have featured artists Nick Lowe, Ami Tallman and Jason Yates.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Margie Livingston was born in Vancouver, Washington. She received her M.F.A. in painting from the University of Washington in 1999. Her awards include a residency at the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute in Shenzhen, China, in 2008; a Fulbright Scholarship in 2001; the Arts Innovator Award in 2010, the Neddy Fellowship in Painting in 2009, and the Betty Bowen Memorial Award in 2006. In January, she had her first solo show at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. She is represented by Luis De Jesus in Santa Monica and Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle. Livingston’s work resides in the permanent collections of the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the City of Seattle, King County, the Whatcom Museum, and the Henry Art Gallery. She lives and works in Seattle.

LACE is located in the heart of Hollywood, an ideal place to observe and contemplate the collision of Los Angeles -- its intricate networks hum with activity as resources are transferred and spaces are reconstructed through use or development. ASAP’s 2011 Re-Visions of LA drawing workshops will build conversations around how our urban environments are constructed and what that means to our every day lives.??Each month a new group of artists will spend an afternoon at LACE providing free drawing classes.

All levels and ages are welcome as we talk about Hollywood while drawing our surroundings.

All workshops are free, and all materials will be supplied.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
So On and So Forth was the creation of a group of young artists with the intent of making an impact in the Los Angeles art community. The members of the collective are diverse in their individual practices but are brought together by a shared passion for art and a sense of community awareness. So On and So Forth weaves its own path in an art world riddled with rules and preconceptions.

Established in 2010 by Manny Guardado, the collective has been a grassroots operation, growing naturally and spontaneously. So On and So Forth has had a series of phantom galleries throughout Los Angeles and continues its mission of bringing art to the community. Find out more on www.SoForthSoOn.wordpress.com

Representing the collective and leading the workshop are artists Nate Geare and Jenna Westra.

Nate Geare is a UCLA graduate whose practice includes painting, collage, and mixed media. He currently manages and operates Renegade Gallery located in Palm Springs CA. www.therenegadeartgallery.com

Jenna Westra is a Los Angeles-based artist with her credentials from CSUN. Using photography she explores human interaction on an intimate level.

Join LACE in unveiling the final chapter of Kim Schoenstadt's year-long interactive project, Painted Over/Under. Once revealed, Schoenstadt's complete line-drawing snakes across five gallery walls, constructed out of fragments of the project's history.

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 have incorporated guest curators Les Figues Press, Jens Hoffman and Erin Cullerton, who invited writers, artists and architects to create drawings in shifts on the walls in LACE’s rear gallery. With each part of the project, works have been 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 has applied tape on the large wall-works to preserve portions of the work below.

The inspiration for Painted Over/Under stems from the unlikely combination of Rauschenberg’s drawing “Erased DeKooning,” and a frequently graffiti-ed and re-painted truck which regularly parked in the artist’s neighborhood. “Somehow these two concepts came together, these two moments of erasure - both creating something new by what is left behind but in utterly different contexts,” states Schoenstadt. “I was thinking about how easily street art is painted out and how for his erasure drawing Rauschenberg had to find a well known artists work that would be ‘indisputably considered art.’ I'm not sure where the ‘indisputably art’ line is anymore.”

The project has been documented each step of the way on :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paintedoverunder/
http://paintedoverunder.tumblr.com/

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kim Schoenstadt was born in Chicago, Il. Lives and works in Venice, CA. Received her BFA from Pitzer College, Ca. Solo and two person exhibitions and projects have been featured at: Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL; Santa Monica, Museum of Art, Santa Monica, Ca.; Wadsworth Atheneum Musem of Art, Hartford, Ct,; University of Laverne, La Verne, Ca.; 4-F gallery, Los Angeles, Ca.; Lemon Sky Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca.; Susan Inglet Gallery, New York, NY. Group exhibitions: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Sprueth/Magers Gallery, Munich, Germany; Sabine Knust Gallery, Munich, Germany; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, Ca.; Prague Biennale, Prague, CR; Poland Biennale, Lodz, PL; Anderson Gallery, Richmond, Va. International Print Center, NY, Gavin Brown, NY, Getty Center, LA, Pitzer College, MOCA LA, CA. and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, GB. Also writes for “We Are The Artists” Switzerland artist run newspaper. Major collections include MOCA, LA and Creative Artists Agency, LA. www.kimschoenstadt.com

Other participating artists in the Painted Over/Under project include Zarouhie Abdalian, Amina Cain, Johanna Calle, Arabella Campbell, Chee Salette Architecture Office (csao), Jenny Donovan, Johanna Drucker, Marco Antonio Huerta, Jennifer Karmin, Douglas Kearney, Maxi Kim, Adriana Lara, Jazmín López, Florencia Pita mod, Yedda Morrison, Sawako Nakayasu, Gabriela Torres Olivares, Anna Parkina, Vanessa Place, Predock_Frane Architects, Gitte Schäfer, Maaike Schoorel, Mathew Timmons, Divya Victor, and Christine Wertheim.

Painted Over/Under is a part of LACE’s Public Interest Initiative, which has been made possible through the generous support of the Pasadena Art Alliance.

LACE is thrilled to announce On the Line, a group show curated by emerging artist and curator Cody Trepte. On the Line features work from Meg Cranston, Larry Johnson, Sarah Seager, and Mitchell Syrop.

Since its inception in the late ‘60s, Conceptualism has shaken the art world, giving rise to a new type of art that prioritized ideas over form. As it developed, Conceptual Art began to spill over into other facets of art making, but its heavy reliance on language fueled criticism that it was inaccessible and insider.

A new generation of artists gaining prominence in Los Angeles during the ‘80s sought to tackle this problem head on. On The Line looks to four artists -- Meg Cranston, Larry Johnson, Sarah Seager, and Mitchell Syrop -- whose use of language can be seen as an evolution of Conceptualism. They parsed the discipline, and introduced a content that was more emotive while still maintaining the rigorous investment in ideas that artists like Sol Lewitt and Joseph Kosuth set forth.

With a casual commitment to systems, a heavy injection of reclaimed subjectivity, and the reintroduction of formal concerns, the artists in this exhibition continue to morph the use of text-in-art from its early rigid applications to a more humorous and pathos filled practice. The result is a simultaneous questioning and affirmation of Conceptualism which allows the discourse to continually reinvent itself.

It is understood by this time that everything is the same except explanation and time, explanation and the time of the explanation and the time in the explanation.

Explanation as Composition* explores the ways in which texts—as narratives—operate within and around a gallery space.  How does the narrative of an experience affect that experience, and how are narratives “curated”—publicly and privately. Explanation as Composition begins with a social writing event in which invited writer-participants will collaboratively create six narrative experiences of the gallery: story, geography, ekphrasis, provenance, nature, and confession. These narratives will be turned into audio tours of the current exhibition space; gallery visitors can choose which audio tour they would like to experience, complete with an accompanying brochure.  The narratives will continue beyond the space of the gallery through a series of online texts, curated by U.N.F.O.: Unauthorized Narrative Freedom Organization, and published on the Les Figues Press blog.

*An inversion of Stein’s “Composition as Explanation.”  Or as Stein says, “This makes the thing we are looking at very different and this makes what those who describe it make of it, it makes a composition, it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen.” 

Using a combination of collaboratively written texts, appropriated stories and just plain writing, U.N.F.O. will create six audio tours for the gallery.  Each tour will be on its own i-pod shuffle, and will be orchestrated, along with ambulatory directions, with the current exhibitions.  Each audio tour will also have an accompanying brochure. The narrative strands will continue online as UNFO writers invite other writers to continue building these narratives.  The online writing will be published on the Not Content and Les Figues blogs.

You can check out one of the LACE iPod Shuffles, but it's always nice to be prepared! Download each audio tour for on your own mobile device or iPod via the links here:

Introduction (to all six tours)

[a tour in] STORY

[a tour in] GEOGRAPHY

[a tour in] EKPHRASIS

[a tour in] PROVENANCE

[a tour in] NATURE

[a tour in] CONFESSION

Join us on Sunday, 2 April at LACE for a discussion and listening party! More information, click here.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Harold Abramowitz is a writer and editor from Los Angeles. His recent publications include Not Blessed (Les Figues Press), House on a Hill, Part 3 (Slash Pine Press), and House on a Hill, Part 1 (Insert Press, Parrot Series #2).  Harold co-edits the short-form literary press eohippus labs (www.eohippuslabs.com).  He also writes and edits as part of the collaborative projects SAM OR SAMANTHA YAMS and UNFO.

Amanda Ackerman lives in Los Angeles where she writes and teaches.  She is co-editor of the press eohippus labs.  She is also a member of UNFO (The Unauthorized Narrative Freedom Organization) and writes as part of SAM OR SAMANTHA YAMS.  Her publications include three chapbooks: Sin is to Celebration (co-author, House Press), the recently-released The Seasons Cemented (Hex Presse), and the forthcoming I Fell in Love with a Monster Truck (Insert Press).  Her work can also be found in the current edition of Little Red Leaves and The Encyclopedia Project: Volume F-K.

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of two novels, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker, Tin House, the Georgia Review, and the Best American Short Stories 2004 and 2009. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and an NEA Fellowship, she directs the MFA program in writing at the University of California, San Diego. She lives in Los Angeles and was recently named one of “20 Under 40” fiction writers by the New Yorker.

Teresa Carmody is a writer and co-founding director of Les Figues Press.  Her works include Requiem (Les Figues), Eye Hole Adore (PS Books) and Your Spiritual Suit of Armor by Katherine Anne (Woodland Editions). The chapbook I Can Feel is forthcoming (Insert Press). Her work appeared in the 2009 &Now Awards: Best of Innovative Writing, and in several literary journals, including: Mandorla, Bombay Gin, Druken Boat, Luvina, emohippus greeting cards 1-4 and more.  She was one of the organizers of the original Ladyfest in Olympia, Washington, and co-organizer of Feminaissance, a colloquium on women, experiments and writing at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. 

Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer and performance artist. She is the author of the poetry collections The Ravenous Audience (Akashic Books) and, with Amaranth Borsuk, Excess Exhibit, forthcoming from ZG Press. She has written several chapbooks including Fragments Found in a 1937 Aviator's Boot (Dancing Girl Press), FASHIONWHORE (Legacy Pictures), The Polished You, as part of Vanessa Place's Factory Series (oodpress, 2010), and Kept Women, forthcoming from Insert Press. She is founding editor of the journal Gaga Stigmata: Critical Writings and Art About Lady Gaga (www.gagajournal.blogspot.com). Her fashion / text project, Prices Upon Request, can be viewed at ZG Press 's website. She writes about celebrity style for Hollywood.com.

In addition to recognizing Hollywood as a site for the adoration of film celebrities, Margo Victor’s sound and image instillation, Black Flower, identifies Hollywood Boulevard as regional headquarters for rock n’ roll music schools, rehearsal space and overall dreams of rock stardom. The exhibition portrays the artists’ conceptual band Black Flower including staged album cover photography featuring images by JWPictures, with drummer Laura Conway of London’s current pop sensation Night Bus, and former Calvin Klein model and personality Jenny Shimizu.

For Black Flower, audiences will experience the LACE Microlounge exhibition space reconfigured as an ad-hoc recording/rehearsal studio, where Victor will inaugurate the project with a public performance of the most current incarnation of this concept band on 6 January starting at 9pm. The performance documentation will then be included in the Black Flower exhibition, further blurring the lines between the staged and the real, revealing the constructed nature of both performer and observer.  

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Margo Victor is a Los Angeles based artist and filmmaker. Her work has been exhibited nationally as well as internationally including ACME, Jancar Gallery, and The Company (Los Angeles), The Wexner Center (Ohio), Venetia Kapernekas Gallery (New York), and Open Space 2007, Art Cologne (Germany).

LACE is proud to present Painted Over/Under Part 3: Making Place curated by Erin Cullerton of Design Agency Co. Making Place is the third installment of Kim Schoenstadt’s Painted Over/Under Parts 1-4.

Embracing the theme Making Place, Painted Over/Under: Part 3 showcases 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 team 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. See how the work has progressed over the past several months  at paintedoverunder.tumblr.com

Join us for Conversations on Making Place: Panel Discussion and Closing Party on 17 March, 2011, 6:30 PM at LACE.

Making Place includes the work of Los Angeles-based architecture firms Predock_Frane Architects, Chee Salette Architecture Office (csao), and Florencia Pita mod. 

Erin Cullerton is the founder of Design Agency Co., a boutique consulting firm 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 Wired 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. See their work at csaoarchitects.com

Founded by Hadrian Predock and John Frane, Predock_Frane Architects is 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. Find out more about Predock_Frane at predockfrane.com

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. See her work at cargocollective.com/florenciapita

ABOUT PAINTED OVER/UNDER

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 embankments and other open walls in the city. Parts 1-3 incorporated guest curators Les Figues Press, Jens Hoffmann and Erin Cullerton who have invited twenty five 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. Before each "painting out" Schoenstadt will apply panels of wall vinyl to preserve portions of the work below, which will ultimately contribute to Part 4, a large-scale wall drawing.