“ACID-FREE is pleased to announce the return of the Los Angeles Art Book Market & Bazaar, a three-day event produced by a programming committee of LA-based publishers, librarians, and curators, hosted by Blum & Poe Los Angeles.

Following the success of our inaugural Market in 2018 and our temporary installation at Frieze Los Angeles, join us November 1-3 for the 2019 Acid-Free Los Angeles Art Book Market. A-F ⅠⅠ provides a platform for 90+ West Coast and international exhibitors presenting new publications and projects alongside film programming by Now Instant Image Hall and La Collectionneuse, an archival exhibition curated by Guadalupe Rosales, music by Pacoima Techno, and a full schedule of ongoing discursive programming and signings.

This year will also premiere The Bazaar, a new outdoor book publishing-adjacent area including presentations by Artists 4 Democracy, High Desert Test Sites, Virgil Normal, and more.” – per website

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“40 for LA celebrates the forty-year history of MOCA. Offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse into MOCA’s past, this multimedia exhibition features archival materials from the museum’s vault, including rare photographs and lithographs, limited-edition objects, a detailed exhibition and programming timeline, excerpts from the museum’s YouTube video project MOCAtv, and a special homage to all of the artists to whom the museum is indebted. Visitors get an in-depth look at some of the key elements that define the institution: the Grand Avenue location designed by famed Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, a celebrated permanent collection, a groundbreaking history of temporary exhibitions, and the museum’s dedicated board members and patrons. Together, these elements tell the story of MOCA’s beginnings, explore the museum’s vital role in shaping the Southern California art community, and take stock of MOCA’s achievements as a pioneering contemporary art institution in Los Angeles. 

40 for LA is organized by Bryan Barcena, Assistant Curator and Manager of Publications, and Amanda Hunt, Director of Education and Curator of Programs, with Karlyn Olvido, Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. 

Lead underwriting for MOCA’s 40th anniversary exhibitions and programs is provided by Sean and Alexandra Parker. 

Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with lead annual support provided by Sydney Holland, founder of the Sydney D. Holland Foundation. Generous funding is also provided by Dr. Alexander and Judith Angerman, Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation, Nathalie Marciano and Julie Miyoshi, Steven and Jerri Nagelberg, and Jonathan M. Segal through the Rhonda S. Zinner Foundation.” – per website

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“Venice, CA — L.A. Louver is pleased to present a new series of iPhone and iPad drawings by David Hockney. Created by the artist between 2009-12, this is the first time these works will be on view in Los Angeles; they have been newly editioned and released by the Hockney Studio. “Anyone who likes drawing and mark-making will like to explore new media.” – David Hockney From photographic collage to facsimile drawings, copier-machine offset printing to computer generated images, David Hockney has nurtured a lifelong fascination with using new technology to make pictures. In 2008, Hockney acquired his first iPhone and quickly became consumed with the device’s drawing applications. Its portability afforded him the ability to create anywhere, at any time, and without restriction. With the stroke of his thumb, all color and markmaking effects imaginable were at his command. Early subjects included domestic settings, like the sunrise from his bedroom window, or the floral arrangements decorating his home. “I draw flowers every day on my iPhone and send them to my friends, so they get fresh flowers every morning,” said Hockney. “And my flowers last.” But what began as impromptu sketches shared with friends and family, soon became a vital means for Hockney to study and capture the world around him. As Hockney’s proficiency with the software app heightened, so did the complexity of his drawings. By transitioning to an iPad in 2010, the artist could employ a larger screen, and use all of his fingers as well as a stylus pen to make images. “I thought the iPhone was great, but this takes it to a new level – simply because it’s eight times the size of the iPhone, as big as a reasonably sized sketchbook,” Hockney said of the iPad. Working in situ with the touch screen as his blank canvas, Hockney layered stroke upon stroke of color to convey the texture, light and presence of his chosen subjects that range from a glass ashtray and a pair of bathroom robes, to playful self-portraits of varying expressions.”

Frieze is the world’s leading platform for modern and contemporary art for scholars,connoisseurs, collectors and the general public alike. Frieze comprises three magazines—frieze, Frieze Masters MagazineandFrieze Week—and four international art fairs—FriezeLondon, Frieze Masters, Frieze New York and Frieze Los Angeles.Frieze was founded in 1991 by Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, with the launch offrieze magazine,the leading international magazine of contemporary art and culture. In2003, Sharp and Slotover launched Frieze London art fair, which takes place each October inThe Regent’s Park, London. In 2012, they launched Frieze New York, which occurs each Mayin Randall’s Island Park, and Frieze Masters, which coincides with Frieze London in Octoberand is dedicated to art from ancient to modern. In 2018, Frieze launched Frieze Los Angeles,which opened February 14–17, 2019 at Paramount Pictures Studios, Los Angeles. In 2016, Frieze entered into a strategic partnership with Endeavor a global entertainment, sports and content company.

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We know what you’re thinking, “Been there, done that.” We’re happy to tell you that photo l.a. is an entirely different experience.

We’re bringing the best of the photography world to your doorstep with a collaborative platform that links dealers and collectors with a gamut of galleries from around the globe. Internationally recognized, yet abundantly accessible, photo l.a. cultivates connections between industry elite and up-and-coming talent alike. The longest running international photographic art fair on the West Coast, photo l.a. has been in operation for nearly three decades.

photo l.a. received a new home in the historic Barker Hangar this year. The airplane hangar’s soaring vaulted ceilings, arched steel trusses, and sweeping 35,000 square foot event space will host a roster of 65-75 local and international galleries and dealers, collectives, leading not-for-profits, art schools, and global booksellers.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO_kkECh-RM&feature=youtu.be

INTERSECTIONS:
DOSSHAUS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

“Turning the corner into Gallery 2 at Downtown LA’s Corey Helford Gallery, the viewer is immediately confronted with over-sized, monochromatic letters in a sketchy hand-drawn font. It appears to be a hotel vacancy sign, yet this one offers something else entirely… VAGRANCY. Entering the gallery proper, one is immediately transported into the lobby of a flophouse hotel. Everything is in place: the front desk, with guest book and small rotary fan; the row of resident mailboxes and rack of hanging room keys; the elevator doors, the ratty chairs; the television. One could half expect to bump into Kerouac or Bukowski, or perhaps a Warhol superstar, Patti Smith or Sam Shepard. Yet everything in view, from the walls to the furniture to the elevator doors to the room keys themselves, are painted in the same sketchy monochromatic style, giving the viewer the feeling that they have stepped out of their known reality and into a two-dimensional drawing come to life. It is only on the closest inspection does the break from reality become irreparable. Every object in this lobby, and in the rest of the hotel for that matter, is an individual sculpture, meticulously crafted out of cardboard and hand-painted in a palate which ranges from black to white and every shade of grey in between. Though there are touchstones marking the familiar, this is a completely fabricated alternate world. This is the world of Dosshaus.

Dosshaus is the creative collaboration of Zoey Taylor and David Connelly, artists whose work blends painting, sculpture, photography, fashion, video, and performance. From the outset, the pair has been interested in the intersection of high and low culture. Responding to a society saturated with social media-generated images in which reality itself seems more and more relative, Dosshaus explores the impact the emerging culture has on the way people view themselves and their place in society. They seek to create something out of that culture – a substitute reality that selectively accepts and rejects the conventions placed upon them individually as people and collectively as artists. They use recycled cardboard, paper, acrylic paint and glue as their primary mediums to fashion their own highly idealized universe. The works themselves invert the very idea of the readymade. These are highly manipulated, sculpted pieces that give the illusion of everyday objects from an alternate, animated dimension. This cardboard world is at once separate from and a comment on our modern culture.

Their 2016 show at Gregorio Escalante Gallery dealt with issues of fantasy and domesticity, eliciting a cockeyed dream house with a massive surreal banquet table spread, idealized garage band instruments, and a classic car. Increasingly, the artists have used their medium as their message. In their 2016 appearance at the Taos Arts Festival in Taos, New Mexico, Dosshaus installed a full-scale cardboard phone booth along a busy pedestrian street. The artists described their intent to disrupt the space by “drawing” the phone booth into reality as a “ghost of a time when there was such a thing as private space within a public place.” Their 2017 feature installation at the LA Art Show, entitled The Artist’s Room, hearkened a large fantasy creative space filled with tools that would inspire artists of all mediums. It was both a whimsical nod to the joys of

all forms of creativity and, by virtue of the fragility of their chosen medium, a comment on the lack of affordable creative space in that city. Perhaps this space was another “ghost from the past” drawn into the modern day.

This is not to suggest that the artwork is nostalgic. Dosshaus is an experiment in duality: past and present, female and male, humor and contemplation, childhood and adulthood, trash and beauty. The tension between these aspects is what gives their work its energy. Everything Dosshaus creates is about altering the concept of reality. Each individual sculpture, when placed into a real-world setting, gives the illusion of a two-dimensional drawing inexplicably sprung forth into the third dimension. When multiple sculptures are grouped into an installation, the sense of reality is completely subverted by giving a viewer the ability to step inside a drawing come to life. In their photography, Taylor and Connelly frequently appear within an installation, interacting with the objects in the cardboard world around them as a surrogate for the viewer. The message is clear. This isn’t simply a drawing or a photoshopped image. This is reality, at least a fractured and highly subjective form thereof.

Given their interest in exploring duality, it seems only fitting that Dosshaus would one day set their sights on America itself, a place fraught with crossroads and contradictions. The result is the Paper-Thin Hotel at Corey Helford Gallery. Ostensibly a voyeuristic peak into the lives of the denizens of a low-rent residential hotel, it is also easy to see the installation as a treatise on the country in which this fictional hotel exists. Just past the lobby, viewers are able to wander through four hotel guest rooms. Each room is a completely different environment, and the sculptures collected within suggest a narrative about its inhabitant.

Room 101 is the honeymoon suite. Amongst many signifiers of carefree romantic love, the careful observer may find a stash of money and a gun. Are the two lovers also criminals on the run? The freewheeling fun of the counterculture films of the 1960s and 70s come to mind. Yet seen through a modern lens, one can’t help but wonder if we, as a society, have lost something in the erosion from that era’s “I’d do anything for you” romantic ideal to today’s decidedly less committal version, “swipe right.”

Room 103 implies the harried life of a travelling musician/writer, stretched out on the road in search of inspiration. This room has a direct lineage to Dosshaus’ “Artist’s Room” installation. This artist is forced to reside in this flophouse hotel because they can no longer support themself with their art, a fate that has befallen countless creatives in the social media age.

The final room, 105, is by far the most fantastic. The ornate hanging chandelier, birdcage, and numerous objets raffine?s indicate the inhabitant is both financially affluent and tastefully eclectic. At first glance, this room may seem out of sorts with the others on view. It is only on the closest inspection that the connection becomes more obvious. Prescription pill bottles and an exquisitely rendered cigar box containing heroin works

suggest the narrative of a wealthy debutante ensnared by the country’s ongoing opiate crisis.

Each of these rooms is separated by a thin, cardboard-covered wall. They are the literal representation of a flophouse hotel’s “paper-thin” walls, and ostensibly the objects from which the show takes its title. There is no illusion of privacy within this hotel. In that, the hotel can be seen as a metaphor for a modern world in which seemingly everyone is only a Facebook friend or Instagram follower away. Our walls are thinner than ever. Additionally, with the myriad cardboard variations on artifacts that once served as the foundation of American culture, one can’t help but wonder if the real things are anything more than a paper-thin illusion.

And yet this is by no means a dour exhibition. Quite the opposite. The Paper-Thin Hotel is a glorious celebration of stuff. There is joy in every meticulous detail on view, and one is free to lose themselves, albeit momentarily, in a fantasy land devoid of the real-world trappings of politics, judgment, and consequence. Dosshaus is clearly enamored with the hotel dwellers they’ve created. This could be because the characters, as signified by the objects that surround them, represent different aspects within the artists themselves. As such, Taylor and Connelly will appear at set times within the installation, performing the role of one or more of the characters. This is a departure for the duo, who previously appeared only as versions of themselves within their work. One gets the sense that the Dosshaus universe is ever expanding. And beyond this intersection, there’s an open road ahead.”

“Marnie Weber emerged in Los Angeles’s punk music and performance art scene of the 1980s, and has since become known for installations in which sculpture, film, music, costuming, and collage come together to form whole, fantastical worlds. Weber’s homespun, haunted-house aesthetic evokes the gothic side of American folkloric traditions, imparting a sense of old-time magic to narratives of lost innocence. Her dream-like films feature a cast of motley characters, including animals, monsters, trees, and clowns, with supernatural female protagonists at their centers. In the artist’s macabre fairy tales, these figures navigate uncanny landscapes on journeys of transformation.

In 2005, Weber debuted her filmic installation Songs That Never Die, which introduced the Spirit Girls, a fictitious all-female rock band whose members died tragically in the 1970s. Wearing white masks, long wigs, and Victorian attire, the Spirit Girls were inspired by the male theatrical rock bands of Weber’s youth. The band also reflects Weber’s interest in the American Spiritualist movement of the 19th century, in which young women were the central public actors, performing séances before audiences. Like the Spiritualists, who ushered in the nascent women’s rights movement, the Spirit Girls’ music delivers messages of liberation from the great beyond. With Weber performing as lead singer, the Spirit Girls appeared in three subsequent films and numerous live performances over the course of a decade. This focused exhibition of recent acquisitions from MCASD’s collection presents three Spirit Girls films—Songs That Never Die (2005), A Western Song (2007), and The Campfire Song (2008)—in conjunction with sculptures, photographs, and a related early film, The Forgotten (2001).

Marnie Weber: Songs That Never Die and Other Stories is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and made possible by lead underwriting support from Sandra and Arthur Levinson with additional support from Karen Fox. Institutional support of MCASD is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund.” – per website

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

LOS ANGELES, CA- (January 18, 2019)- LA’s international contemporary art fair will celebrate its 10th anniversary with new visual branding, a reimagined floor design, as well as new “Salon” and Publishing sections. ALAC will bring together international contemporary galleries, collectors, curators, artists, and art enthusiasts for an extended five-day cultural event from Wednesday, February 13-Sunday, February 17. Over ten years, ALAC has helped to solidify Los Angeles as an art epicenter, nurtured a generation of young collectors, and acted as a gateway to international exchange. ALAC’s unique combination of emerging and established galleries has been key to its longevity and success. ALAC maintains an unparalleled commitment to art-making, collection-building, and the galleries that are the bridge between the two. ALAC’s 10th Edition will introduce the next generation of galleries, while continuing to partner with the most exciting established programs in the city. PRESS ACCREDITATION All requests for credentials must be made before Friday, February 8, 2019 to [email protected] Members of the media are invited to preview the fair on Wednesday, February 13 from 2pm. Advance press tours can be arranged by appointment. Tim Fleming, ALAC’s Founder and Fair Director said, “After ten years, I recognize the impact we have made locally and internationally. To walk into a collector’s home and see a work from a past edition of our fair is such a pleasure, because it solidifies for me how we’ve achieved our mission by supporting galleries and informing collections. Our 10th anniversary is a chance for us to recommit to who we are: content-forward, trusted but inventive, international and LA. Our work is really about putting together the best program of established and emerging galleries, to show off the best of LA and around the globe. We feel spoiled by the number of visionaries we get to collaborate with, from new galleries with audacious programming to respected partners we’ve worked with from ALAC’s beginning a decade ago.” For the new visual identity of the fair, ALAC has teamed with award-winning graphic designer and artist Brian Roettinger (WP&A), whose roster of clients includes music visionaries Mark Ronson, Florence + the Machine, Drake, and Jay-Z. Inspired by the fair’s physical venue at the Santa Monica Airport, the experience of navigating an art fair on foot, and the civic architecture of LA’s freeways, ALAC’s new branding explores the language of way-finding. Roettinger comments, “The new bold black and white identity is a modular typographic system. It allows for a strict but playful mix, which is part airport way-finding and part motor transportation. The look focuses on the fair’s better-known name ‘ALAC,’ instead of its official full name, which the team felt was a natural decision after ten years of existence.” For its tenth anniversary edition, ALAC will be housed within a new architectural design by principal architect at Seattle-based firm Olson Kundig Jerry Garcia, who has collaborated with world-renowned artists such as Anish Kapoor, Jaume Plensa, Oscar Tuazon, and Doug Aitken. Claudia Rech, Berlin-based art historian, curator, and former gallerist of Gillmeier Rech, will curate a “Salon” section called “The Academy,” offering a new way for galleries and the public to participate in the fair through a curated exhibition. Frances Horn, Brussels-based curator and initiator of the art book fair PA/PER VIEW at WIELS, has been selected to lead the ALAC publishing section, “Movable Types.” More details on the architectural design as well as the Salon and Publishing sections to come.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

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“Ginny Casey’s new paintings feature decrepit interiors full of objects like chisels, woodcutters, pulleys and in-process sculptures. In Casey’s theatre of the absurd, these objects are distorted, engorged and disproportioned where the restrictions of logic and time are abandoned to the surreal.

For Casey, the concept of space is subjective, each painting challenges the notion of linear space as a way to provoke preconceived perceptions. Multiple trap doors, staircases that lead to nowhere, and ladders that extend to windows into the abyss all contribute to a spatial disorientation.

The paintings encourage open interpretation. For Casey, “It’s like trying to see in the dark… it’s all intuitive.” Starting from drawings of individual objects, Casey redraws and collages these together, building relationships, narratives, and tension into what becomes the finished composition. Her paintings do not begin with preconceived notions of a finished product; rather, a story develops, emerging from her subconscious. Casey draws upon psychoanalysis, free-association, dreams and the unconscious to make her paintings.

Casey, a new mother, has found imagery that evokes fertility and motherhood recurring in her work. Vessels of varying shapes and use recur often. In Stunted Developments one such vessel is stuck in a wooden table, half birthed, a cracked egg rests in a spoon atop an adjacent table, while a blue vessel and sculpting materials are additional actors in this drama. Allusions to motherhood are omnipresent.”

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson