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You are here: Home / LACE / 2000-2004 / The Corner’s Corner

The Corner’s Corner

May 20 – July 22, 2000

Matt Mullican’s The Corner’s Corner was an installation consisting of a schematic recreation of the house in Santa Monica, California in which the artist was raised. Performances executed by Mullican, within this symbolically loaded architecture, while under the influence of hypnosis, provided the content for a video accompanying the sculptural elements of the exhibition. As a result of Mullican’s performative interventions, which implied multiple contexts for considering the model, the viewer’s understanding of the installation slips from stage/site to object/sculpture. By recreating an architectonic mapping of this familiar yet distanced location, the installation was meant to address childhood dramas that underline adult behavior, idealized architecture, memory, and experience.

The project is based on the artist’s long-standing interest in architecture and design, as well as in notions affecting what has come to be called his “cosmology.” The title of Mullican’s upcoming European retrospective, More Details from an Imaginary Universe, alludes to the extent and nature of his ever-expanding exploration into subjectivity and language. Similarly, the title of this project, The Corner’s Corner, is meant to refer to the idea of something possessing itself. In particular, Mullican describes the corner as “ground zero” of a room or a building, “where the floor meets the wall.” One of his first performances was while in graduate school at CalArts, in which he destroyed a building’s corner, which would leave one wondering if he has spent the last 25 years rebuilding from “ground zero” on his own terms.

Matt Mullican’s early work, in the mid-late 1970s, addressed his interest in the difference between reflected light and illuminated light, which had to do with the splitting up of optical perception into its visual elements and with the assumption that color, light, and indeed what we view are variable phenomena. With his interest in observation and subjectivity, and the notion that objectivity is itself an illusion, Mullican’s work emerged in New York in the 1980s with his well-known vocabulary of signs. These images, both abstract and symbolic, were rendered on canvas, in printed media, and in large-scale public installations and were meant to function as a way to communicate the basis of our orientation to reality — a universal visual language. This project led to Mullican’s creating, through the use of computer technology, three-dimensional models of imaginary cities. Rather than diagram a utopic locale, Mullican was interested in both rendering and participating in an interpretative and interpreted space. Mullican has turned often these investigations inward, creating a series of events in which he continues to investigate subjectivity and interpreted space by presenting performances (both public and private) while under the influence of hypnosis. Recent projects continue to integrate architecture, performance, and design.

A Los Angeles native who attended graduate school at CalArts (MA ‘74) and a current resident of New York, Mullican rarely shows his work in this country. He exhibits extensively in Europe and Asia with recent solo shows at the Stedelijk Museum (The Netherlands), Marian Goodman Gallery (Paris), and Mai 36 Galerie (Zurich). He has received numerous public and corporate commissions throughout Europe and Asia from such cities as Tokyo, Eindhoven, Lyon, and Amsterdam, where he is currently developing a project for the Schiphol International Airport. Despite Mullican’s scant presence in Los Angeles, his work can be seen in a public art project at the Convention Center, which consists of a series of etched granite reliefs used to form the floor and wall surfaces of the pedestrian bridge over the main highway through the Center. The reliefs show the specific characteristics of the site and the city, past and present, and incorporate, along with Mullican’s own signs and cosmology, images derived from universally coded pictographs encountered in daily life and events that have taken place at the Convention Center, in Los Angeles, and southern California.

Filed Under: 2000-2004, Exhibition, Installation, LACE, Performance, Video Tagged With: 2000, architecture, Exhibition, installation, Matt Mullican, performance, Sculpture, The Corner's Corner, Video

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LACE’s Lightning Fund Opens August 15, 2025!

PRESS RELEASE: Announcing LACE’s Next Emerging Curators

Announcing the 2025 Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple Awards

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LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)

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If you missed “This Home, Forever,” you can no If you missed “This Home, Forever,” you can now view all the performances on the LACE website as part of our digital archive!

“This Home, Forever,” curated by 2025 LACE Emerging Curator Nahui Garcia (@_nahui) is a two-day performance series which sparked thoughts about the potential erosion of LA’s diverse and vibrant urban ecosystem against the backdrop of gentrification. This program featured performances by: 011668 (@0ll668), Perras Bravas (@perras.bravas), Los Angeles Poverty Department (@lapovertydepartment), Michele Lorusso (@michelelorusso), Pacoima Techno (@pacoimatechno), and Jaklin Romine (@jakioeoeo), held at Heidi Duckler Dance (@heididucklerla) on the rooftop of the historic Bendix Building on June 7 and 8, 2025.

“This Home, Forever” is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Pasadena Art Alliance. Video documentation by Miguel Loza, Daniela Apodaca Hernandez, and Alexis Luna.
⚡️LACE is launching our next round of applicat ⚡️LACE is launching our next round of applications for the 2026 Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple Award on August 15, 2025.⚡️

This year, LACE will award 10 artist project grants $6,000 each and one $10,000 grant to a mid- or advance-career artist.

To support applicants, LACE is offering a virtual information session on July 31 at 1PM PDT, on Zoom. This session will include an overview of the Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple Award eligibility guidelines, application platform tips, as well as an opportunity to ask questions. This session is open to anyone interested in applying to this year’s Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple Award, and will be recorded and posted on our website. 

Learn more and RSVP at the link in our bio!
This Saturday, the LACE Screening Room presents, “Obsidian Reflections” from 2–5 PM at the Philosophical Research Society (@philosophical_research_society).

This film program is followed by a musical performance with multimedia NeoCumbia artist El Keamo (@el_keamo). El Keamo is the alias of Alfredo González-Martínez, a first-generation Mexican-American multimedia artist from Reseda, California. With an innovative blend of cumbia sonidera, tribal, house, and acid genres, El Keamo’s Neocumbia project is a modern interpretation of traditional Latin rhythms fused with electronic synthesis, creating a unique sound that is both familiar and boldly avant-garde.

This event is FREE and you can RSVP at the link in our bio!

Video courtesy El Keamo.
You can now watch all the performances from "ENDUR You can now watch all the performances from "ENDURANCE" on the LACE website as part of our digital archive! 

"ENDURANCE" presented performance art and interdisciplinary work by elder artists. These artists use their practices to share wisdom, knowledge, and experiences that they have gained throughout their lives. This series is a companion program to LACE’s 2024 performance series, "ABUNDANCE," both featuring often invisibilized bodies.

This program was held at L.A. Dance Project from May 16–17, 2025.

The online presentation of "ENDURANCE" is supported by the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles (@culture_la).

Photos by Angel Origgi (@angeloriggi)

Image Captions in order:
Sheree Rose, "The Most Dangerous Woman in America!" (2025)
Sharon Kagan, "...and then this happened..." (2025)
Anna Homler, Jeff Schwartz, and David Javelosa, "VOE Variations" (2025)
Awilda Sterling-Duprey, "Makandal es la consigna / Makandal Is the Call to Action" (2025)
Juanita and Juan (Alice Bag and Kid Congo Powers) (2025)
Oguri, "Dance Emerges, Out of Time, with unforgettable ancestors and friends" (2025)
Gloria Enedina Álvarez accompanied by Greg Hernandez (2025)
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