ASAP, Emma Gray, Les Figues Press, Heather Roberge, Portable City Projects, Kim Schoenstadt, Robert Ransick

For PUBLIC INTEREST: The Summer Cycle, LACE’s galleries will feature HollywoodmerchmART! a LACE store intervention organized by curator Emma Gray and three new installations: State of the Union by Robert Ransick, Ultra Marine by Heather Roberge, and
Painted Over/Under: Parts 1 - 4 by Kim Schoenstadt.

These environments will set the stage for a robust calendar of summer programs, including participatory projects organized by ASAP, Les Figues Press and Portable City Projects.

This 31-print installation by New York-based artist Robert Ransick focuses on the thirty-one U.S. states whose voters have amended their constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Using the official voter results and ballot measure text copyedited by hand, Ransick creates an emotionally and politically charged installation in response to this hot button issue. Using material that is simultaneously of public record and highly personal, State of the Union is a poetic call to action and a necessary record of this shifting and contentious moment in history. Robert Ransick is LACE’s second Visual Artists Network artist-in-residence and will be in Los Angeles for the week leading up to the Public Interest kick-off. For images of his artwork, visit www.robertransick.com/sou.htm

State of the Union has been made possible with the support of Bennington College and the Visual Artist's Network Exhibition Residency, a program of the National Performance Network, whose major contributors are the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. For more information, www.npn.web.org. State of the Union Artists and Activists pamphlets have been generously provided by Printed Matter, NY.

PAINTED OVER/UNDER: PARTS 1-4
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 retaining walls and other open walls in the city. Parts 1-3 will incorporate guest curators Les Figues Press, Jens Hoffman and Erin Cullerton who will invite 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.  Prior to each "painting out," Schoenstadt will apply tape on the large wall drawing to preserve portions of the work below. Part 4 will reveal the complete drawing, which will be constructed out of fragments of the project's history. www.kimschoenstadt.com.

Click here to visit the Painted Over/Under blog.

PART 1: NOT CONTENT
Les Figues Press starts Painted Over/Under: Part 1 with Not Content, a series of text projects that investigate the ways in which language functions within public and private spheres and within the tenuous and transitory space between these real and imagined realms.  How does public discourse construct narrative selves, and how are internal voices manifest as public discourse? What is unsaid beneath the saying and said within a silence?  What is covered or uncovered via the incessant text around us, and when is a wall a law, a border, a protective shield, a frame, a taboo?

Not Content will take place as a series of writers-in-residence.  Most residencies will last for three weeks, during which time the writer will engage in a project ...

HOLLYWOODMERCHMART! 
Transforming LACE's store into an artist-created souvenir shop, HollywoodMerchmART! aims to engage, confuse and delight summer tourists on Hollywood Boulevard with works by both local and international artists. Ranging from postcards and maps to t-shirts and mini-sculptures, the store inventory draws inspiration from social-media and internet trends, as well as local objects found in nearby souvenir shops, thus speaking the language that is Hollywood. Prices will range from $1 to $200! Emma Gray, curator.

Shop online or shop at LACE!

Participating artists: Emily Joyce, Ashley McPeek, Collective Field, Richard Lidinsky, Brian Bress, Carolina Caycedo, Matthieu Laurette, Anthony James, Max Maslansky, Micol Hebron PLUS Sydney Snyder and the LA Vajazzlers, Kathryn Garcia, Kirsten Stoltman, John Kilduff, John Knuth, Steve Lambert, John Bucklin, Zoe Crosher, and Brian Bress.

ULTRA MARINE
LACE commissioned murmur's Heather Roberge, a Los Angeles architect and educator, to create an immersive environment of iridescent color. Suspended layers of shimmering fabric will bathe visitors in color rendered as luminous vapor. Ultra Marine will serve as LACE’s public plaza for performances and workshops throughout the summer, and act as an attractor to draw people through the space and encourage various forms of gathering and relaxation.
http://murmur-la.com