This past weekend the L.A. Art Book Fair, Printed Matter’s annual festival of art publications and printed ephemera, took over the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA’s 55,000 square feet of exhibition space. The gargantuan warehouse, a former police garage in Little Tokyo, was bursting with vendors from independent publishing houses to artist collectives peddling zines and handmade t-shirts.
DoPe Press had a table in the fair’s Focus: Photography section, where past copies of Paris, LA were for sale alongside Live: Oscar Tuazon and editions by Ligia Dias, Todd Cole, and Martin Laborde. Neighbors included Aperture, Hesse Press, Ponytale Mag, X Magazine, and Capricious.
The fair featured several special exhibitions, including a survey of paintings and drawings by the late Dorothy Iannone. Cali Thornhill Dewitt’s mural, “Crying at the Orgy”, became a favorite selfie backdrop–and expressed the overwhelming elation felt while navigating the seeminly endless stalls.
Other exhibitors included Ooga Booga, Otherwild, PINUPS, Semiotext(e), Valiz, Triple Canopy, Wax, Llano del Rio Collective, Dirty Looks, DDMMYY, Eve Fowler, Via Publication, and Informational Affairs.
Not to be outdone, the fair’s organizers–New York rare art bookshop Printed Matter–organized a series of events, including lectures, booksignings, concerts, and workshops. ForYourArt presented another installation of its popular Artist Books & Cookies event. REDCAT and K-HOLE teamed up to present a report on the state of communication in America in art, marketing, and politics. X-Tra brought together 50 speakers for the eighth iteration of its “1 Image 1 Minute” program, inspired by an 1983 Agnes Varda program on French television. Each speaker was invited to present and discuss one image for one minute. Outside on Central Avenue, where fairgoers took meal breaks at crowded taco trucks, a small stage hosted performances by No Age, Prince Rama, Lucky Dragons, Ho9909, and legendary Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore.
#LAABF15 was a spectacle, the Geffen’s halls teeming with people and frenzied activity from open to close. Yet the strongest exhibitors presented work with finely crafted, personal attention to detail. Friendly faces and eager explanations were found all around. The fair was a welcome reminder that in the digital age the printed page is far from obsolete. To the contrary, its weight is appreciated ever more.