As a non-profit, our goal is to provide visitors with new experiences and art forms so that they can find new ways to engage with the community and the world. Here you will find all of LACE’s publications. They are free to read, and we encourage you to search the archive for more information on the exhibitions that accompanied the publications.
SOUND OFF: Silence + Resistance
SOUND OFF: Silence + Resistance, curated by Abigail Raphael Collins, features works by artists and activists who engage silence as a way to honor the inarticulable, defy demands of production, prioritize deep listening, and refuse to incriminate. Rather than negating the importance of speaking up, speaking truth to power, or raising our voices, this exhibition treats silence as a powerful tool of resistance alongside acts of speech. Works by artists Nikita Gale, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Sharon Hayes, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Aliza Shvartz, among others, are included, along with historical documentation of silent protests.
El Teatro Campesino (1965-1975)
El Teatro Campesino (1965-1975) is new digital publication for the 2017 exhibition, El Teatro Campesino (1965-1975), curated by Daniela Lieja Quintanar and Samantha Gregg. This bilingual publication celebrates El Teatro Campesino as an important cultural contributor within contemporary art and social practice, and features a curatorial statement, a walkthrough of El Teatro’s first decade, documentation of the exhibition, and a special interview with the late artist and producer Diane Rodriguez recounting her experiences during El Teatro’s early years.
See more about the 2017 exhibition, El Teatro Campesino (1965-1975).
A Catalogue of Visual and Performance Art, Los Angeles 2001 – 2019
LACE and Deborah Oliver, Founder and Curator of the multi-year project Irrational Exhibits, are thrilled to present this new publication featuring an introductory essay by Jacki Apple and images from all the IE presentations from 2001 to 2019.
Click here to purchase a hardcover edition of IRRATIONAL EXHIBITS
Click here to purchase a softcover edition of IRRATIONAL EXHIBITS
19 performance works took place throughout LACE’s gallery in artist-constructed
Click here to read about the 2016 Irrational Exhibits 9: Reports from the Field presentation at LACE
Ser Todo Es Ser Parte/To Be Whole Is To Be Part
Using speculative fiction as a way to decolonize theory, this exhibition proposes a non-linear interpretation of time and place through narrative. Departing from an impetus of reclaiming this current moment and our presence in it, the title and framework of this exhibition are inspired by the concept of “the return,” not as nostalgia for an alleged better past, nor to an ancestral home, but the return as a continuous voyage of the collective self; a voyage which is cyclical, an ourboros. To have traveled and continue to travel from utopia to dystopia and back, but with a sense of evolved consciousness, that informs our present and our territories.
LACE, along with guest curator Selene Preciado, have thought deeply about what it would mean for artworks to mirror our existing life in lockup: interacting mostly digitally and/or at a safe distance. Together, we’ve embraced the challenge COVID-19 has posed to our in-person programming by seeing it as a window to virtually translate the essence of our exhibitions through rich visual documentation.
The publication features Preciado’s beautifully written curatorial statement, digital documentation of the artworks displayed in the exhibition, and highlights the voices of it’s artists and collaborators; Demián Flores, Rurru Mipanochia, J.Chavez, and Celia Herrera Rodríguez.
See more about Ser Todo Es Ser Parte/To Be Whole Is To Be Part (EN/ES)
Solidarity Offerings: Three Curatorial Approaches to Ecocritical Art
In 2019, LACE presented unraveling collective forms, A NonHuman Horizon, and Paroxysm of Sublime, three successive exhibitions that gravitated towards similar themes and considerations: new conceptions of nature and culture, resistance and oppression, finding new paradigms for our current ecological, sociological and political situation. At the invitation of FRANCE LOS ANGELES EXCHANGE (FLAX), partner of the last exhibition, the respective curators Daniela Lieja Quintanar, Andrew McNeely, and Anna Milone and Ana Iwataki explore the parallels and divergences in their approaches.
LACE is invested in artist and curator voices- Solidarity Offerings is an invitation to evoke the deep experiences we had through the works gathered in each exhibition. The publication highlights the importance of remembering as well as establishing a dialogue between curatorial perspectives to build solidarity and to reject individual work and unstoppable art production.
See more about unraveling collective forms.
See more about A NonHuman Horizon.
See more about Paroxysm of Sublime.
Against Nature
A Group Show of Work by Homosexual Men
January 6 – February 12, 1988
A publication from Against Nature (LACE, 1988)
This seminal exhibition, curated by Dennis Cooper and Richard Hawkins, examined decadent seclusion and syphilitic deterioration as modes of social rebellion and was informed by J.K. Huysmans’ novel À Rebours. This exhibition exposed the margins of the already marginalized world of gay men. The curators translated Huysmans through the lens of AIDS in a politically and socially conservative era, and displayed rich, decadent and inherently morbid work. They reacted against aesthetics that seemed polemically overwrought, privileging activism over the individual.
This catalog was published in 1988 and made possible in part by a grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles.
See more about “Against Nature” from the LACE Archive.
Exhausted Autumn
A Collection of Fiction, Criticism and Testimony with Plates from Paintings by Tony Greene
June 21 – August 4, 1991
Catalogue of the exhibition Sweet Oleander (LACE, 1991)
A retrospective of Tony Greene’s work spanning the years from 1984 to 1990. The exhibit was comprised of over 100 paintings as well as sculptures and installations. Exhausted Autumn was a collection of poetry and prose edited by Richard Hawkins and featured works by Brian Baltin, Dodie Bellamy, Tom Christie, Dennis Cooper, Fred Fehlau, Lawrence Gipe, Robert Glick, Tony Greene, John Greyson, Richard Hawkins, Hudson Doug Ischar, Liz Kotz, Matias Viegener and Millie Wilson.
See more about “Sweet Oleander” from the LACE Archive.
High Performance
The First Five Years
February 1 – March 30, 2003
Brochure produced for the exhibition High Performance (LACE, 2003)
Utilizing material from the High Performance archive, housed in Santa Monica, CA, as well as from the artists themselves, the exhibition examines the first five years of the magazine’s history through correspondence, layouts, photographs, videos, artists’ books, and other objects. With its radical, non-commercial status, performance art was, for much of the 1970s, an unrecognized discipline flourishing in both New York and Los Angeles, and Western Europe.
Assembling performance documentation from a wide range of established and emerging artists, High Performance offered coverage to artists whose practices often challenged the boundaries, conventions, and silences of the established art world. Through live, body-based works, artists engaged experiences of autobiography, catharsis, and social injustice, challenging the ideological separations between art and life.
See more about High Performance from the LACE Archive.
Home Away From
Jimena Sarno
July 1- August 13, 2017
Curated by Daniela Lieja Quintanar
home away from addresses experiences of borders, displacement, and immigration procedures as they manifest in the everyday lives of immigrants. The space is defined with architectural elements, video, sound and scent. In the space, a wall forms a loop, an architectural operation walls usually don’t do. The installation creates an opening leading through a narrow corridor back into and out of itself. The project is inspired by Hollywood flats, used as backdrops in film and scenic design; lath and plaster (wooden strips that were traditionally used to construct interior walls in domestic architecture) and borders’ checkpoint areas. The 2 channel videos are composed of the scanning process of remnants of self-portraits of the artist’s middle school students.
In Search of Paradise
Or, Anywhere But Here
January 18 – February 24, 1990
Program produced for the video exhibition In Search of Paradise (LACE, 1990).
Exhibition organized by Steve Fagin and Bill Horrigan. Bicoastal presentation with Artists Space, New York. Features work by Leslie Thornton, Alexander Kluge, Mike Anderson, and Annette Barbier.
See more about In Search of Paradise from the LACE Archive.
Surveillance
An Exhibition of Video, Photography, and Installations
February 27 – April 12, 1987
Catalog produced for Surveillance (LACE, 1987)
This exhibition featuring video, photography, and installations, brings to our attention to the technology and policies that currently affect our constitutional rights, and how such technology impacts and reconfigures the concept of the artist as an active observer that gathers information, processes it, and ultimately presents it. Curated by Branda Miller-video, installations; Deborah Irmas-photography.
See more about Surveillance from the LACE Archive.
TV Generations
February 21 – April 12, 1986
Catalog produced for the exhibition TV Generations (LACE, 1986)
Curated by John Baldessari and Bruce Yonemoto, the show showcased the work of artists who grew up with television and have translated that vision to their work.
Artists include: Max Almy, Dennis Balk, Dede Bazyk, Ericka Beckman, Gretchen Bender, Cindy Bernard, Barbara Bloom, Kathe Burkhart, Jim Casebere, Meg Cranston, Peter D Agostino, Connie Hatch, Perry Hoberman, Douglas Huebler, Alan Irikura, Jim Isermann, Julia Kidd, Ed Kienholz, John Maggiotto, Ann Magnuson, MANUAL (Ed Hill and Suzanne Bloom), Bruce Nauman, Ed Paschke, Luciano Perna, Stephen Prina, Richard Prince, Jim Shaw, Mark Stahl, Mitchell Syrop, Nick Taggart, Jeffrey Vallance, Lisa Weger, Lawrence Weiner and Christopher Williams.
Writers and poets included: Frederick Barthelme, Robert Cumming, Guy de Cointet, Lydia Davis, Tim Dlugos, Kenward Elmslie, Elaine Equi, Amy Gerstler, Ron Koertge, Ilene Segalove, Jack Skelly, Ed Smith, Benjamin Weissman
Border Art Workshop
or, Destination L.A.
December 20, 1991 – February 9, 1992
An interdisciplinary installation, performance, and video about Los Angeles as a destination for migrating people and undocumented workers. Artists featured: Narcisco Arguelles, Kirsten Aaboe, Carmela Castrejon, Stephanie Heyl, Jorge Pena Cabrera, Edgardo Reynoso, Michael Schnorr, Juan Carlos Toth, Susan Yamagata and Zopilot (Manuel Mancillas).
See more about Border Art Workshop from the LACE Archive.
Customizing Language
January 7 – February 14, 2015
Curated by Selene Preciado and Idurre Alonso
Customizing Language critically examines how language reflects geopolitical realities. The project approaches language as a tool to reflect power relations, hierarchies, social differences, and historical problems, as well as a cultural system of belonging that can indicate the loss or reconfiguration of certain kinds of identities. The participating artists engage local and historical issues by using experimental language to create a dialogue with the audience, exploring issues of “custom” as cultural tradition, U.S. Customs as an immigration agency, and lowrider customization in popular culture.
