Graphic design by IN-FO.CO, 2025
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is pleased to present Reading Room, an exhibition that reinhabits R.M. Schindler’s Kings Road House with practices of reading, showcasing publications, artists’ books and printed matter from LA-based practitioners exploring the intersections of art and design. The exhibition features commissioned furniture for reading by Los Angeles artist and designer Ryan Preciado, which continues the artist’s ongoing dialogue with Schindler’s furniture and surfaces the stories of skilled artisans who contributed to shaping the built environment, revealing hidden narratives within traditional architectural archives.
Preciado’s work often operates through the collection and transformation of references—whether drawn from everyday life or design’s own archive. For Reading Room, Preciado continues an engagement with the work of Schindler that began with a commission to recreate the dining furniture for the Walker House in Silver Lake and led to sustained research and making around the story of Manuel Sandoval, a master carpenter and one of Schindler’s collaborators.
Preciado’s Table for Reading will be the site of three sequential Table Residencies with leaders in art and design publishing: Inventory Press, Mimi Zeiger, and Deem Journal. The residencies will showcase a rotating collection of zines, books, and other published works as well as designs for reading. Shelves by Preciado will house a library of works by LA-based art and design publishers, while archival presentations will feature a selection of artists’ books from the collection of Johanna Drucker and Brad Freeman as well as reflections on the history of books and reading at the Schindler House.
More than an exhibition, Reading Room also lays the foundation for a future study center at the MAK Center’s Fitzpatrick-Leland House, which will serve as an ongoing resource for research and dialogue at the intersections of architecture, art, and design.
FEATURING
FURNITURE FOR READING
Ryan Preciado
PUBLISHERS
All Night Menu
Apogee Graphics
Atelier Éditions
Deem Journal
The Fulcrum Press
Inventory Press
loud paper
Marta
Semiotext(e)
X Artists’ Books
ARTISTS’ BOOKS
From the Collection of Johanna Drucker & Brad Freeman
TABLE RESIDENCIES
Inventory Press
Mimi Zeiger
Deem Journal
FURNITURE
RYAN PRECIADO
Ryan Preciado (b. 1989, El Monte, California) makes works in conversation with his communities’ social and material histories. For Preciado, the process of designing and constructing a work is one of piecing together visual references, artistic influences, and lived experiences into a useful object rife with metaphor. His signature Chumash chair reinterprets Børge Mogensen’s iconic Spanish chair, itself inspired by American Shaker designs, in domestic white oak; its arms are based on the shape of the paddles used to pilot the tomol, a canoe traditional to his Indigenous ancestors. A longtime admirer of California car culture, he often favors brightly colored automotive paint as a surface treatment. With each sculpture, Preciado infuses the history of material culture into disarming designs that welcome daily, sustained participation. He lives in Los Angeles.
PUBLISHERS
All Night Menu begins with five booklets. Each booklet contains eight stories titled after addresses; each address reveals a different strand of L.A. culture. Those first five volumes contain 40 stories drawn from all time periods, subcultures, and sections of the city. The project is now a growing collection of publications, conversations, and archival materials. While it assumes different forms, its intent doesn't change. Each iteration offers a specific history of Los Angeles. Each addition fits within a whole. The works in All Night Menu are written, designed, assembled, edited, and/or published by Sam Sweet.
Apogee Graphics is a design and publishing company founded by artists Laura Owens and Asha Schechter. From their office in the yellow tower of the Bonaventure Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, they design material and virtual objects with writers, artists, chefs, organizers, and others.
Atelier Éditions is an independent publishing house established in Los Angeles in 2015. Fascinated by idiosyncratic narratives drawn from the fields of architecture and design, contemporary ethnography, material culture, and vernacular photography, Atelier Éditions authors archival monographs, artists’ books, exhibition catalogues, catalogues raisonnés, and exploratory printed matter, and provides curatorial and editorial consultation to practicing artists, artists’ estates, educational organizations, and cultural institutions.
Deem is a multifaceted platform dedicated to exploring design as a social practice. Founded in 2019 by three Black creatives, Deem has evolved from a print journal into a dynamic platform for activism, placemaking, and design including digital content, podcasts, symposiums, and reference rooms. Deem’s mission is to amplify diverse voices and perspectives traditionally underrepresented in design media and practice. By fostering a community of designers, activists, and thought leaders, Deem aims to reshape the role of design in addressing societal challenges and creating more equitable, sustainable communities.
Founded in Los Angeles in 2014, The Fulcrum Press is a publisher exploring the interplay between photography and other media. They are committed to expanding the possibilities of the publication format through their approach to the photo book as a curatorial project that exists both on and off the printed page.
Inventory Press publishes books on topics in art, architecture, design, and music, with an emphasis on subcultures, minor histories, and the sociopolitical aspects of material culture.
loud paper is a zine dedicated to increasing the volume of architectural discourse. It is a slambamgetitoutthere way of linking architectural thoughts, musings, and new work with the culture at large. loud paper is open to all students, architects, educators, girls about town, dear Johns, and critics as a place for writing loud about architecture and culture. Founded in 1997, loud paper published 13 increasingly infrequent issues between the late nineties and 2008.
Marta is a Los Angeles-based, globally-engaged art gallery. Founded in 2019, the gallery makes space for artists to experiment with the utility of design, and for designers to explore the abandonment of function. Marta’s curatorial, publication, and podcast programs take interest in the process of a work’s creation as well the narrative of its creator(s). Marta embraces the intersection of and the transition between disciplines, advocates for diversity in design, and promotes broad access to the arts.
Best known for its introduction of French theory to American readers, Semiotext(e) has been one of America’s most influential independent presses since its inception more than three decades ago. Publishing works of theory, fiction, madness, economics, satire, sexuality, science fiction, activism and confession, Semiotext(e)’s highly curated list has famously melded high and low forms of cultural expression into a nuanced and polemical vision of the present. Semiotext(e) was founded by Sylvère Lotringer. Today, it is coedited by Chris Kraus and Hedi El Kholti.
X Artists’ Books (XAB) makes collaborative, interdisciplinary, and artist-driven publications and editions. Founded in Los Angeles in 2017, their projects range from artists’ books to institutional partnerships. As artists themselves, they center the artist’s work, voice and vision in each publication. XAB publishes across a range of formats, including hardback and paperback books, artists’ newspapers, and limited editions. Each project’s format and design is a discussion between the artist or artists, design team, institution (if applicable), and publisher that takes into account the subject matter of each project and how best to present it as a printed work.
ARTISTS’ BOOKS
FROM THE COLLECTION OF JOHANNA DRUCKER AND BRAD FREEMAN
JOHANNA DRUCKER
Johanna Drucker is Breslauer and Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of Information Studies, UCLA. She is internationally known for her work in the history of writing, experimental typography, visual poetry, and artists’ books as well as information visualization and digital humanities. Her own limited edition artist’s books are widely represented in special collections in libraries and universities in North America. Her most recent publications include Inventing the Alphabet (University of Chicago, 2022), Iliazd: Metabiography of a Modernist (Hopkins University, 2023) and Affluvia: The toxic off-gassing of affluent culture (Bridge Publications, 2025). She had a retrospective exhibit of her visual art, Graphic Animism, in Los Angeles in 2025.
BRAD FREEMAN
Brad Freeman is a photographer, offset printer, and book maker who has been making artist books since 1980. His book Wrong Size Fits All was a finalist for the MCBA Prize in 2011. He founded JAB – Journal of Artists’ Books in 1994 to provide a forum for critical inquiry into artists’ books. JAB was published until 2020 with a total of forty-eight issues. The JAB Archive was acquired by the Kohler Art Library of the University of Wisconsin in 2024. In 2023 the University of Iowa Press published The JAB Anthology: Selections from the Journal of Artists’ Books, 1994-2020. www.journalofartistsbooks.net
Reading Room is curated by Beth Stryker and Robert J. Kett.
Related Events
Opening Reception for Reading Room
Thursday, June 5, 2025
6:00 PM—8:00 PM
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
6:00 PM—7:30 PM
The exhibition is supported in part by an arts grant from the City of West Hollywood.
Printing support generously provided by Typecraft.
Furniture for Reading courtesy of Karma.
