In
2008, ART2102 is collaborating with new generations of alternative
spaces in Los Angeles by providing a non-institutional structure
and framework to support their initiatives. ART2102 will
extend its status as a non-profit and beneficiary of grants
to several of these smaller experimental spaces, while generating
and increasing their exposure through ART2102's communication
networks and support systems. It is an effort which aims
to expand ART2102's activities beyond the more traditional
forms of exhibition and other curatorial projects. More
about the 2008 Program.
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Louisa Van Leer, artist/architect and Karla Diaz, writer/performer
travel through the city of Los Angeles to explore the ninth
largest metropolitan area in the world – a mega-city
covering 470 square miles with millions of inhabitants.
How do they make sense of a place like this? By taking
road trips. A road trip not only invokes the car culture
and sprawl of Los Angeles but the open-road state of mind:
enjoying the ride, giving oneself permission to pull over,
to talk to strangers and to get lost through the familiar
and unfamiliar alike.
Over the next several months, the artists will transform
a 1972 Dodge Camper (also known by it’s model name
‘The Establishment’) into an exhibition space,
artist studios, projecting device, recording studio, meeting
site and place of refuge as they navigate Los Angeles’
superlative terrain.
The first project in the Urban Road Trip series, “Reunion
of Strangers” uses the location of ART2102’s
former gallery space at 2102 East 1st Street, as a starting
point to explore neighborhoods in East Los Angeles. It centers
on the historic neighborhoods of Boyle Heights & Lincoln
Heights, which were some of the first suburbs of Los Angeles,
through interviews, photographs, videos and installation.
The artists visited other addresses with the same street
number of 2102 and found themselves in tamale shops, vacant
lots, apartment buildings, train tracks and pharmacies among
others. The results, exhibited in ‘The Establishment’,
are the artifacts culled from the artists’ act of
searching, remembering and their multiple personal exchanges
within the community, arriving at a uniquely comprehensive
view of one neighborhood located in the sprawl of Los Angeles.
“Reunion of Strangers” seeks to draw a virtual
line on the map of Los Angeles that is neither street, nor
freeway, nor district boundary, but a desire line that links
people and places and doesn’t presume to meld the
fragmented qualities of LA, but takes that as a given and
builds it into a mapping method. In the months to come,
the Reunion project which starts/reunites the old Art 2102’s
brick and mortar address in Boyle Heights with the current
itinerant, roaming Art2102, will inscribe a path around
Los Angeles connecting 2102 address and uniting strangers
and unknown places across the vastness of the city.
Artist Bios
Karla Diaz is a poet, performer, and art critic. She has
read her work and exhibited projects in venues throughout
Southern California including the Getty Art Museum, REDCAT,
Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, Center for Curatorial
Studies Bard College, Hunter College N.Y., Serpentine Gallery
in London, and at Zocalo in Mexico City. She writes for
several art magazines including Beautiful Decay and the
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. She is a founding member
of Slanguage, an artist collective in Wilmington, CA where
she instituted an education program for teens. She lives
and works in Los Angeles where she is associate director
for the New Chinatown Barbershop gallery.
Louisa Van Leer is an artist and architect who lives in
Los Angeles. She has exhibited her work throughout Southern
California and at Rhode Island School of Design, Virginia
Commonwealth University, White Flag Projects, St.Louis,
Schalter, Berlin. Her artist book of San Fernando Valley
photographs,“Fifteen Pornography Companies”
is featured at Printed Matter in NYC. She received her BFA
and B.Arch from Rhode Island School of Design, MFA from
CalArts and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
www.louisavanleer.com
This event is made possible in part by the generous
support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
and the Department of Cultural Affairs Los Angeles.
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