NOT CONTENT is a series of text projects curated by Les Figues Press at Los
Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). As part of LACE‘s year-long initiative Public Interest, Les Figues brought together an international group of writers who investigated the ways in which language functions within public and private spheres and within the tenuous 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?
In planning their projects, participants were encouraged to consider the physical and temporal space of the gallery/residency. Over the summer of 2010, 14 writers (working individually or in collaboration) installed text projects on the walls of LACE’s rear gallery as part of artist Kim Schoenstadt’s Painted Over/Under. Each installation lasted for 3 weeks, at which point the installation was painted over using a color pallette provided by Schoenstadt.
In autumn of 2010, NOT CONTENT moved into the “lost” spaces of the gallery, looking at many of the same questions, but through the lens of liminality.
In the winter/spring of 2011, the project explored the ways in which texts—as narratives—operate within and around a gallery space. Participating writers created audio tours of the LACE exhibition space and gallery visitors chose which narrative they would experience.
About Painted Over/Under: Parts 1-4
Based on the mismatched color patterning created by “graffiti maintenance” on freeway retaining walls and other open walls in the city, parts 1-3 of Painted Over/Under 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.
About Public Interest
Designed to animate Hollywood with a series of public projects, Public Interest is a year-long initiative that showcases contemporary art, architecture and design practices that challenge standard notions of public space and demonstrate the role creative actions can play in bringing out the vibrancy of a place and its people.
NOT CONTENT would not be possible without the generous collaboration of our friends at LACE.
