Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) is Los Angeles’s international art fair. The fair feature top established and emerging galleries from around the world, with a strong focus on Los Angeles galleries. Participants present some of the most dynamic recent works from their roster of represented artists, offering an informed view on contemporary art making.
Art Los Angeles Contemporary is produced by Fair Grounds Associates, which was founded in 2009 by ALAC director Tim Fleming. Participants present some of the most dynamic recent works from their rosters of represented artists, offering an informed cross section of what is happening now in contemporary art making. Special events are staged on site at the art fair as well as throughout the city in satellite locations. ALAC takes place annually in Los Angeles, CA.
ALAC content-forward, trusted but inventive, international and LA. Our work is really about putting together the best program of established and emerging galleries, to show off the best of LA and around the globe. Highlights of the fair included diverse presentations, and the VIP program solidified links between fair guests and artists, collectors, and local institutions. ALAC looks to create a global art world environment that affords any Angeleno a chance to get a sampling of what emerging art curators, institutions and collectors are paying attention to.
Los Angeles is knocking hard on the door of the elite club of art-world cities.Art Los Angeles Contemporary has come into its own. With more international spaces renting booths than in years past, an indication of L.A.’s growing importance in the art market. With deep roots in LA’s creative community and a global reach, ALAC has acted as a gateway to an international exchange.
ALAC has helped to solidify Los Angeles as an art epicenter, nurtured a generation of young collectors, and acted as a gateway to international exchange. ALAC’s unique combination of emerging and established galleries has been key to its longevity and success. ALAC maintains an unparalleled commitment to art-making, collection-building, and the galleries that are the bridge between the two. ALAC introduce the next generation of galleries, while continuing to partner with the most exciting established programs in the city.
There is a kind of younger, fun feel at this particular fair and special surprise always be found.The ambiance was ultra-cool, with tremendously spacious booths and hallways that looked dramatic against the pitch-black domed ceiling of the hangar. The fair kept the Barker Hangar buzzing. The fair has helped launch an art-focused weekend in Los Angeles at the end of January.
There was incredible diversity in the range of mediums and the curatorial directions taken by artists and galleries. The balance between emerging and more established galleries is what defines ALAC as an international platform for contemporary art in Los Angeles. It’s this spirit that carries forward in all ALAC do at the Hangar and throughout the city, from the performances and lectures to the VIP program that is built around the energy and enthusiasm that our galleries, collectors and institutional partners provide. ALAC built a very solid foundation to move forward and expand.
A strong mix of international exhibitors alongside local galleries, Art Los Angeles Contemporary has managed to turn an otherwise anti-art fair town into a place where both emerging and established galleries from around the world can connect with an important West Coast audience. The fair serves to showcase L.A.’s growing presence as an international hub.
ALAC 2016
Art Los Angeles Contemporary is pleased to announce Conversations With Myself, a series of talks, lectures, and performances curated for the fair’s upcoming seventh edition. Participants include filmmaker Kenneth Anger, curators Rita Gonzalez and Neville Wakefield, and artist Kathryn Andrews.
Bill Evans’ album, overdubbed, dissonant, interior—Conversations With Myself—a noir romance thriller. Simply, a zoetrope of windows opening onto a city and its art: vast, hidden, consumed by change. Anecdotally driven, developed by artists and writers living in Los Angeles, the program configures the city as picaresque, as a fibrous warren of narratives that together present the city’s art community as one eschewing being about any one thing, but process itself.
On the fair’s opening night, artist Alison O’Daniel presents Centennial Marching Band Forwards and Backwards, her collaboration with the marching band from Centennial High School, Compton. The band will perform a song that is constructed and deconstructed in real time, based on marching formations, speeds, and the space constraints of Barker Hangar. The performance is part of O’Daniel’s ongoing project The Tuba Thieves, a response to a rash of thefts from Los Angeles-area high schools, and is organized by not-for-profit art space JOAN.
On Friday, January 29, Neville Wakefield, artistic director of the upcoming Desert X, leads a conversation about the California desert and how it relates to artistic practice, site-specific work and the upcoming Desert Exhibition of Art. Jonathan Griffin, contributing editor for Frieze, speaks with artists Carter Mull, Kathryn Andrews, and Rita Gonzalez, curator at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, about the perception of Los Angeles abroad, particularly in Europe and Asia, in the talk LA Exported. Travis Diehl, editor of arts journal Prism of Reality, leads a discussion of artist-run spaces with Brian Getnick of PAM, Jon Pylypchuk of Grice Bench, and Adam D. Miller and Devin Oder of The Pit in Built To Last: Artist-Run LA.
On Sunday, January 31, artist A.L. Steiner, writer Kevin McGarry (Artforum, Art Agenda, T: The New York Times Style Magazine), and Diehl discuss how speaking truth risks reprisal from the cultural, financial, and social institutions that make their work possible, in a conversation titled Love and Truth. Finally, Andrew Norman Wilson, artist and writer based in New York, appears on stage for a set of Lie Down Comedy.
Conversations With Myself is curated by Marc LeBlanc, Curator of Events & Programming for Art Los Angeles Contemporary, and held daily in the ALAC Theatre.
ALAC 2015
Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC), the international contemporary art fair of the West Coast, returns this January for its 6th edition with a curated roster of over 60 leading galleries from 11 countries across North America, and Europe with a signature emphasis on Los Angeles-based galleries. ALAC will take place from Thursday, January 29 to Sunday, February 1, 2015.
ALAC will host a roster of over 70 leading and emerging galleries from around the world who will present dynamic new works from their represented artists. The fair will feature a rigorous program of talks, curated video screenings and the release of the first edition of the Art Los Angeles Reader, a printed newspaper featuring art criticism, interviews, and work by esteemed curators, writers, and artists.
Attracting leading collectors, curators, museum directors, contemporary art enthusiasts and critics from across the globe, ALAC is the premier international contemporary art fair of the West Coast. ALAC 2015 will feature established and emerging galleries from around the world with new exhibitors from Europe and Australia.
First time exhibitors include AND NOW, CANADA, Carl Freedman Gallery, Grice Bench, i8 Gallery, Johann Koenig Gallery, and Rachel Uffner Gallery. They join longtime exhibitors including: 1301PE, Altman Siegel, American Contemporary, Jack Hanley Gallery, David Kordansky Gallery, Peres Projects, STANDARD (OSLO), and UNTITLED.
Reflecting ALAC’s long-term cultural impact on Los Angeles, local museums and organizations will again time their exhibitions and programming to coincide with Art Los Angeles Contemporary, including Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. ALAC is also proud to partner with the Hammer Museum, LACMA, MOCA, The Depart Foundation, and LA>
Los Angeles is the destination for contemporary art in January. ALAC push to define what it means to have an art fair in Los Angeles. , Inviting local and international galleries and audiences to engage on an intimate scale, ALAC gives its visitors unparalleled access to the cultural landscape of the city of Los Angeles For the past five years, we have been the destination for many of Los Angeles’s most prominent collectors. Each year we draw increased attention from the rest of the world by showing the best and most innovative contemporary art being made.
ALAC 2014
Art Los Angeles Contemporary, the International Contemporary Art Fair of the West Coast, returns to the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica on Thursday January 30 and continues through Sunday February 2. For its fifth edition, ALAC features a roster of international and Los Angeles galleries presenting new work from their represented artists. The fair will feature an extensive program of screenings, panel discussions and performances.
ALAC 2014, produced by Fair Grounds Associates and led by fair founder and director Tim Fleming, selected over 70 exhibitors from 12 countries. Works by some of the world’s most established artists, including Ryan McGinley, Sterling Ruby, Santiago Sierra and Diana Thater, were featured alongside works from emerging artists Alex Da Corte, Aaron Garber-Maikovksa and Chadwick Rantanen. The exhibitors included 23 Los Angeles galleries, 17 galleries from New York, and galleries from Berlin, London, Paris, Dubai, Seoul and Mexico City.
David Kordansky Gallery of Los Angeles presents a body of avant-garde ceramics from Ruby Neri that were highlighted in the Hammer Museum’s inaugural biennial. Born in the ‘70s into the collegial environment of artists in San Francisco, Neri’s initial influences were the painters and ceramicists closely associated with her father, the Bay Area Figurative sculptor Manuel Neri. Her studio practice, which includes works executed in ceramic, plaster and paint, has come to embrace a variety of techniques and visual sources. Neri, who lives and works in Los Angeles, has also shown painting and sculpture in the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; and the High Line, New York.
First-time exhibitor Monitor from Rome presents a body of work by Nathaniel Mellors from The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview, a new 35mm/HD transfer film made by the artist in collaboration with Commonwealth Projects and the Hammer Museum. At the fair Mellors will debut sculpture, photograms and painting that are developed from props and ideas in the film, but have gone through various stages of material transformation grounded in the film’s themes and narrative. Mellors, who lives and works between Amsterdam and Los Angeles, will premiere the film at the Hammer Museum as part of a Hammer Project concurrent with the fair.
Venice gallery Various Small Fires presents a new sculpture from Sean Shim-Boyle, a Canadian-born artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Following sitespecific installations at Project Row Houses in Houston and LAXART, Shim-Boyle’s new sculpture sexualizes the traditional wave of the lucky cat into a more topical gesture. Shim-Boyle, who holds a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from the California Institute of the Arts and an MFA in sculpture from UCLA in 2012, serves as Eileen Harris Norton’s collection manager and sits on the National Advisory Board for United States Artists’ Project. Various Small Fires relocates to their new Hollywood location in the spring.
Los Angeles artist Mark Hagen debuts Ramada Santa Monica, a new iteration of an ongoing space frame sculpture, as part of a presentation for bookseller and publisher Artbook | D.A.P. In its fourth iteration, the space frame sculpture, an immense, rectangular work that cleverly twins aesthetics and eras of technology, becomes both an expressive sculpture and utilitarian display device for an extensive catalog of works. Born in Black Swamp, Virginia, Hagen has recently exhibited at the Hammer Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara; the Bass Museum of Art; and in a solo exhibition at China Art Objects Galleries.
Dave Hickey has once again assembled a collection of searing essays that challenge the cultural status quo. Hickey recently announced his retirement from the field of criticism due to the new popularity, oversimplification and commoditization of art: “I miss being an elitist and not having to talk to idiots.” Author of popular books such as Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy (1997) and The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (1993), Pirates & Farmers: Essays on Taste focuses on cultural phenomena such as the super collector, the trope of the biennale, the loss of looking and much, much more. Hickey discusses these essays with Los Angeles Times art critic and curator David Pagel.
LAXART presents a new performance by EJ Hill. Invoking the image of the female R&B singer, Hill will fuse song with feminist texts and provide pop culture entertainment in a high art context. An emerging Los Angeles-based artist known for his durational, at times physically demanding performances, Hill’s pieces possess an element of institutional critique or are direct in their address of politics surrounding constructed identity and the body, in gendered, racial, sexualized terms.
GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS is a video program presented by Vanity Projects and curated by Rita de Alencar Pinto that explores the many facets of the female persona portrayed by ten female video artists. It features work by Sophie Lisa Beresford, Claire Hooper, Jen Denike, Keren Cytter, Marta Dell’Angelo, Jeesu Kim, Kristin Lucas, Tala Madani, Shana Moulton, Shannon Plumb and Eve Sussman – each exploring the humourous, intellectual, sardonic, passionate, complex, shy, serious, spiritual, neurotic, paranoid and conceited, through the many characters and vignettes that these artists employ, and revealing glimpses into the female psyche. Vanity Projects is a luxury concept that merges a high-end nail art atelier with video art programming with the vision to re-shape the way patrons perceive and experience video art by placing it in an engaging environment.
ALAC 2013
Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC), the International Contemporary Art Fair of the West Coast, now in its fourth year, returns to the Barker Hangar January 24 – 27. ALAC, which launched in 2010, champions Los Angeles as a major arts destination while attracting strong international galleries and collectors to the city of LA. The 2013 edition of the fair features 70 established and emerging galleries from across the globe, with an accompanying series of lectures, panels, performances and screenings.
ALAC 2013, produced by Fair Grounds Associates and led by founder and director Tim Fleming, selected a carefully curated list of 70 exhibitors from 14 countries and featured some of the world’s most established and emerging artists. Over 10,000 collectors, curators, artists and contemporary art lovers from Los Angeles, New York and around the globe attended the fair. The 70 exhibitors included 18 Los Angeles-based galleries, 15 galleries from New York 7 galleries from Paris along with dealers from London, Oslo, Malmö, Vienna, and Frankfurt, Cologne, Portland and Milwaukee.
Art Los Angeles Contemporary has changed the landscape of the art calendar in Los Angele. ALAC is an international contemporary art fair with an independent sensibility. You can buy never-seen-before works from established artists and you can also discover works by emerging artists, which is a draw to collectors from all over the world. Our decision to include more international galleries this year speaks to a shift in the way collectors are discovering new artists and buying.
At the fair entrance, artist Jon Pylypchuk will exhibit an installation of new work titled It’s not you, it’s me, I will always love you dear. The installation will feature a disgruntled cast of characters with bodies constructed and painted to resemble discarded cigarettes endowed with human attributes of wooden arms and legs. With the sculptures standing between six and nine feet tall and arranged into small groups, the space becomes the site of a cartoonish political rally. Jon Pylypchuk is represented by participating galleries International Art Object Galleries, Fredric Snitzer Gallery and Galerie Hussenot.
As a part of ALAC 2013 programming, Ry Rocklen will be sharing a series of images that have inspired his new line of furniture Trophy Modern. This presentation will include both Rocklen’s past work as well as examples of other artists whose practice includes the making of furniture. Rocklen will show examples of biomorphic furniture and design that illuminate the performative relationship between furniture and its user. Through these images Rocklen will look to the outskirts of furniture design in search of the uncomfortable and absurd. Rocklen’s Trophy Modern will be exhibited in a booth co-presented by UNTITLED and Thomas Solomon Gallery.
Ben Jones will screen two episodes of Ben Jones’s Cartoon Network Animated Series “The Problem Solverz.” The Problem Solverz is a series centered on the titular Problem Solverz trio of Alfe, Roba, and Horace, as they solve and sometimes create the various problems that plague their town, Farboro.
Art Los Angeles Contemporary will host a discussion concentrating on the Ceci N’est Pas…festival, a five-month arts and culture exchange program between France and Los Angeles. The panel discussion will be moderated by curator Martha Kirszenbaum, currently the guest curator for contemporary art at the Belvedere Museum / 21er Haus in Vienna (Austria), where she will organize two interventions in 2012. She regularly contributes for “Kaleidoscope”, “L’Officiel”, and “Voxpop”. Ceci n’est pas… is a project initiated by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States in collaboration with the Institut Français, with the support of the Alliance Française of Los Angeles, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and the participation of many local institutions.
Presented by Paris, LA magazine, director Jodi Wille screens scenes from and discusses her documentary The Source. The film explores Source Family, a radical experiment in ’70s utopian living. The Source provides an intimate, insiders’ view at this incredible group of people through their own archival photos, home movies, audio recordings, and contemporary interviews with members of the family. Jodi Wille is a filmmaker, book editor, and photographer known for collaborating with individuals who have amassed personal archives that document American subcultures.
Venue
Santa Monica Airport is a general aviation airport largely in Santa Monica, California, United States. One of the airport’s former hangars, the Barker Hangar, is in use as a public events venue, and is commonly used for a number of televised awards ceremonies and concerts. Barker Hangar, a 35,000 foot entertainment venue. The hangar hosts a variety of events, including boxing matches, art presentations, movies, concerts, wine and food festivals, and trade shows. It is also currently being used as a small-scale supermarket set for the current version of Supermarket Sweep.