<div>&nbsp; In 2015 the Renaissance Society presented an exhibition of newly commissioned works by Los Angeles-based artist Mathias Poledna. Coinciding with the museum's centennial, it marked the final show in the institution's first hundred years. For this project Poledna used the notion of iconoclasm and its various historical contexts as a conceptual backdrop for two new works: a 35-mm film installation, co-produced with and premiering at the Renaissance Society, and a substantial alteration to the gallery space: the demolition, dismantling and removal of the gallery's ceiling structure, a steel truss grid that had horizontally bisected the double-height gallery since 1967. This catalog--featuring a cover designed by artist Peter Downsbrough--documents the exhibition and its installation, and in doing so celebrates a century of the Renaissance Society.</div>

Mathias Poledna: Substance

Arts & Photography

Weiner, Andrew

Powell, Amy Knight

Simpson, Bennett

History & Criticism

Renaissance Society

Widely regarded as one of the leading exponents of postminimalist art in the late 1970s, Charles Gaines (born 1944) is known primarily for his photographs, drawings and works on paper that investigate systems, cognition and language. Considered against the backdrop of the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s and the rise of multiculturalism in the 1980s, the works in Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989 are radical gestures. Eschewing overt discussions of race, they take a detached approach to identity that exemplifies Gaines' determination to transcend the conversations of his time and create new paths. Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989 gathers significant examples from several of the artist's most important series, including 75 key works from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s. It features drawings and photographs from public and private collections--some of which were previously considered lost--and essays by leading scholars and curators.

Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989

Martin, Courtney

Singerman, Howard

Gaines, Malik

Ellegood, Anne

Tani, Ellen

Schriber, Abbe

James, Jamillah

The Studio Museum in Harlem

In 2007, Thomas Ruff completed his monumental Jpegs series, which explores the distribution and reception of images in the digital age. First gathered in a deluxe, oversized 2008 trade edition, the series is now available in this limited edition, signed and numbered by the artist.

Thomas Ruff: Jpegs

Photography & Video

Aperture

A onetime philosophy student who's willing to get her hands dirty, Lisa Lapinski makes elaborate sculptures that embody a kind of cognitive dissonance. "Nightstand" (2005), a room-size construction that debuted at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, reconfigures traditional Shaker furniture to suggest the frenzied psychedelia of religious ecstasy found in Shaker gift drawings. The piece, her most ambitious to date, took more than a year to complete; to acquire the skills necessary to build it out of walnut, Lapinski entered a woodworking program at a junior college outside of Los Angeles. "The retired engineers felt sorry for me, because it took me so long to catch on," she recalled, "but I can build my own kitchen cabinets now." Critic Bruce Hainley has credited Lapinsky, who received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2004, with "providing new thought about what sculpture might be."

Lisa Lapinski: MOCA Focus

Individual Artists

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

A pioneer of Conceptual art in Los Angeles during the late 1960s and 1970s, the painter, installation artist and theater director William Leavitt (born 1941) is above all an artist of narrative devices. Since 1969, his works in all the above media have employed abrupt fragments of popular and vernacular culture and depictions of modernist architecture to construct elusive narratives of cityscapes and environments. The culture and atmosphere of Los Angeles has played a significant role in Leavitt's handling of these themes; classic southern Californian motifs of ever-present artifice and almost washed-out brightness recur throughout his work. Surveying the artist's 40-year career, this volume includes sculptural tableaux, paintings, works on paper, photographs and performances from the late 1960s to the present. Leavitt has created a remarkable oeuvre that has influenced generations of artists, and this volume is both long overdue and highly anticipated.

William Leavitt: Theater Objects

Lawson, Thomas

Goldstein, Ann

Leddy, Annette

This richly illustrated book accompanies the first major museum survey of R. H. Quaytman’s paintings. R. H. Quaytman’s paintings are celebrated for their sumptuous beauty, complexity, and rigor. This book, the first museum publication to provide a critical overview of Quaytman’s work to date, includes new essays that contextualize her practice and examine the evolution of her chosen themes. Illustrated with the artist's extensive archive of Polaroids, on which her work is based, the book focuses on the artist’s process of formatting her paintings onto wood panels, organizing them into exhibitions that she refers to as “chapters,” and her work’s site-specific nature, created in dialogue with each exhibition venue’s historical, architectural, or social aspects. This book presents a remarkable oeuvre that simultaneously provides opportunities for visual pleasure and scholarly inquiry.

R. H. Quaytman: Morning#Chapter 30

Prestel

Accompanying a major museum survey of the work of Zoe Leonard, this gorgeous book offers an in-depth look at one of the most influential artists of her generation. From aerial landscapes to the Alaskan wilderness, American cities to natural history museums, there are few subjects that Zoe Leonard has not tackled in her 30-year career. Working primarily in photography and sculpture, Leonard consistently confronts the realities of change, love, and loss. This book brings audiences up to date on Leonard's impressive body of work and accompanies a long-awaited retrospective exhibition. It features images and examinations from every one of Leonard's major series, including her early aerial and museum photographs, her landmark works--Strange Fruit and Analogue--and her most recent works, "In the Wake." Essays in the book range from the critical to the personal, including explorations of sexual politics, immigration, and family. Breathtaking in scope and bringing together every facet of Leonard's oeuvre, this volume celebrates Leonard's unflinching eye and her intimate art. Published in association with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Zoe Leonard: Survey

Philip-Lorca diCorcia is among the most innovative and influential photographers working today. For nearly 30 years he has explored the intersection of documentary style with cinematic production, making contemporary work that perches uncannily between the fictional and the real. This survey of diCorcia's career, from the late-1970s to the present, draws from the artist's most acclaimed series, including Hustlers, Streetworks, Heads, A Storybook Life, and Lucky 13. In work from the 1980s, diCorcia shows friends and family in domestic tableaux tinged with an air of mystery, working from the subject matter of his life but eschewing romantic intimacy for studied detachment and pitch-perfect detail. In the 1990s, he turns to the great American tradition of street photography. That swiftly-changing environment might have seemed unlikely for diCorcia's meticulous style, but it provided some of his best-known images, including those of male prostitutes and anonymous crowds of urban pedestrians. In more recent work, he has photographed erotic pole dancers, their bodies caught in contorted and seductive free-fall. The accompanying texts here include a piece by the New York writer and critic, Lynne Tillman, author of the acclaimed 2006 novel, American Genius, A Comedy.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Steidl/Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

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