ART FAIRS:LA Art Book Fair 2016

Printed Matter presents the 4th annual LA Art Book Fair (LAABF) at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, a former police car warehouse in L.A.’s Little Tokyo District, renovated by the architect Frank Gehry. The Fair is a unique event for artists’ books, art catalogues, monographs, periodicals, and zines presented by 300 international presses, antiquarians, artists, and independent publishers from 20 countries.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair Archive

This year’s LAABF includes a growing variety of exhibitors from zinesters (XE)ROX & PAPER + SCISSORS, who will once again take over the Geffen annex with more than 100 international artists and small presses, plus the veteran, Friendly Fire, focused on the intersection of art and activism, which includes the Guerrilla Girls, Visual Aids, Women’s Center for Creative Work, and Justseeds. This year’s the Fair features SPAIN FOCUS, curated by Libros Mutantes & La Casa Encendida. The Book Fair also hosts an array of programming and special projects. With two days of conversations on emerging practices and issues within art-book culture, with a keynote address by Experimental Jetset, the independent Amsterdam-based graphic design studio. The Classroom is back for its third trip to the West Coast. Organized by David Senior of the The Museum of Modern Art Library. The Fair hosts a variety of exhibitions. Harper’s Books will present new drawings by Harmony Korine. Gagosian Gallery presents: “Design Office” by Kim Gordon in collaboration with Feeding Tube Records. Feeding Tube Records, which once moved off the main drag in Florence, Massachusetts due to too many people knowing its location, is iconic in its resistance to the status quo, it is a petri dish for the inversion of pop culture pathology. Also lden Projects presents “The Bus Is Back: Mason Williams in Los Angeles”, a special exhibition exploring the far-flung legacy of artist, musician, writer, producer, and screenwriter Mason Williams during his years in Los Angeles in the ‘60s. Highlights include “Bus” (1967), the artist’s legendary but rarely seen icon of California Conceptualism: a 37 foot long screen print of a Greyhound bus, originally exhibited at the Pasadena Museum of Art in 1967. Accompanied by archival documentation, this exhibition also unpacks other off-the-beaten track vehicles by Mason Williams that were similarly destined for unconventional spaces, including billboards, advertisements, and an array of artist’s publications that were more numerous than the better known counterparts by his sometimes collaborator, sometimes roommate, and lifetime friend, Ed Ruscha.

Info: Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair 2016, 152 North Central Avenue, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA,Los Angeles, Duration 12-14/2/16, Hours: Fri 13:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-19:00, Sun: 11:00-18:00, http://laartbookfair.net