The Classroom
On the second floor of 950 S. Raymond AveOn Jaguar Group and Fair Use for Artists, with Isadora Reisner and Xiyin Tang
In this session, Isadora Reisner and Xiyin Tang will discuss the nuts and bolts of fair use, an often misunderstood doctrine of copyright law that permits the free and creative use of copyrighted materials without permission in certain circumstances. The conversation will address recent changes to copyright law and its application across appropriation art, collage, parody, documentary film, and more. Reisner will look to her recent artists' book Jaguar Group (Printed Matter, Inc., 2025), a project which offers an account of a 1940s wildlife diorama at the American Museum of Natural History, as a case study for exploring how artists might navigate the challenges of using archival materials and intellectual property in their work. Tang is a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and author of Art After Warhol, 71 UCLA L. Rev 870 (2024). Presented by Printed Matter, Inc.
Stencil.wiki, with George Wietor, Kathleen Sleboda, and Robert Baxter
Stencil.wiki is a community-built resource about risograph printing. It maps studios, shares technical knowledge, and archives the global riso community. Now, it is being relaunched on MediaWiki to make it more accessible and easier to use. One of its key features, the event database, has tracked print fairs, workshops, and exhibitions for over a decade. More than just a calendar, it is a growing record of the history and evolution of art book fairs. Join George Wietor (Issue press, founder of Stencil.wiki), Kathleen Sleboda (Draw Down Books), and Robert Baxter (independent risograph mechanic) for an introduction to the new platform and a brainstorming session on how to make this archive a more useful and accessible resource for the community. Presented by Issue Press.
David King Publications 1977–2019, with Luca Antonucci and Matt Borruso
Luca Antonucci (Colpa Press) and Matt Borruso (Visible Publications) present a short slideshow and discuss David King; the artist, graphic designer, and musician best known for designing the Crass symbol. This talk coincides with the release of David King Publications 1977–2019, which surveys King’s small press publications, zines, ephemera, and early design projects. Published by Colpa Press and San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB), the book accompanies an exhibition of the same name that was on view at SFCB in late 2024 which will travel to Printed Matter in June 2025. Presented by Colpa Press.
Alienation by Design: Language, Power, and the Politics of Typography, with Silas Munro, Tannaz Farsi, Jack Henrie Fisher, and Katherine Cooper
The fifth installment of Amalgam Journal explores how language and typography shape systems of power, encoding exclusion while offering sites of resistance. Through critical essays and visual interventions, this issue interrogates the politics of discourse, the material language of borders, and the ways in which language and design mediate belonging, control, and violence. This launch event will feature a discussion with Katherine Cooper, followed by readings from contributors Silas Munro and Tannaz Farsi. Presented by Amalgam Journal.
A Grammar Built with Rocks, with Shoghig Halajian, Suzy Halajian, Carolina Caycedo, Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, Sandra de la Loza, and more
Editors Shoghig Halajian and Suzy Halajian present A Grammar Built with Rocks, an expansive exhibition and publication newly released by Wendy's Subway, in conversation with exhibiting artists and contributors to the book including Carolina Caycedo, Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, Sandra de la Loza, and more. Featuring writing and artistic practices that trace the racialized and gendered relationship between bodies and land, A Grammar Built with Rocks explores artists’ engagement with sites of physical dispossession and socio-ecological crisis, highlighting how creative research methodologies can serve as radically new place-making practices. The publication brings together a range of feminist-decolonial texts and visual contributions that explore how movement, transience, and improvisation offer alternative ways of being-together while being-in-place. Presented by Wendy’s Subway.
City of Angels: A Book about L.A. Style, with Jasmine Benjamin and Alex 2Tone
California native Jasmine Benjamin—stylist, costume designer, and photographer—has always drawn inspiration from and her deep love for Los Angeles and its people throughout her career. In her debut book, City of Angels: A Book about L.A. Style (Damiani Books 2025), she highlights the city's vibrant local scenes where style, music, street, skate, and art collide. Through 120 striking portraits, she captures L.A.'s cultural significance and the luminaries who define its style. She sits down with Los Angeles cultural icon Alex 2Tone for an in-depth conversation about the book—why she created it, its historical impact, and the importance of recognizing real L.A. style on a global scale. Presented by D.A.P.
Contents Laid Bare (The Ins and Outs of Artist Self-Publishing)
Artists and ArtCenter alumni Devin Troy Strother and Kristofferson San Pablo share insights on balancing and integrating their self-publishing with their individual practices. Devin Troy Strother graduated from Art Center with a BFA and is represented by Broadway Contemporary, The Pit, Ruttkowski;68, and V1 Gallery, and is the co-founder of Coloured Publishing. Kristofferson San Pablo earned his MFA from Art Center and has exhibited at The Hole NYC, HVW8 Gallery, and Good Mother Gallery and in San Francisco, Shanghai, and Taipei City. He is the co-founder of Vacancy Projects. Presented by Coloured Publishing and Vacancy Projects.
Unpacking Matthew: A Panel on Collective Authorship
In celebration of the release of Matthew, Hesse Press' latest work of groundbreaking fiction, this panel discussion will offer an in-depth discussion of the book's unconventional development. Written collaboratively, Matthew eschews traditional modes of authorship, offering us a vision of what is possible when literature, like TV, is created by a committee, team, or focus group. This Q&A panel will include members of the book's "writers room," as well as ostensible author Matthew Goldin and editor Clare Kelly. Presented by Hesse Press.
The Stage
On the roof of 950 S. Raymond AvePresented in conversation with Altadena Seed Library & Living Earth, Saturday's solar powered stage performances amplify musicians in support of seed equity, education, and distribution (and tool sharing) in Altadena. Join us on the rooftop for views of the San Gabriel Mountains, sounds from our friends and beloved musicians, tattoos by Azize Ngo, and to talk about all things orbiting equitable access to shade and green spaces, food sovereignty, connecting with neighbors, and restoring local ecosystems. We'll be raising funds all day for conservation initiatives held down by the Altadena Seed Library!
Reading Room
The Reading Room is a new incarnation of the longstanding exhibitor section, Friendly Fire, which featured select politically-minded and social-justice oriented publishers. Friendly Fire made a commitment to highlighting the intersection of grassroots struggles and histories of print publishing, which this Reading Room also attempts to underscore.
For LAABF 2025, the Reading Room features a curated installation of multimedia artwork by artists from Los Angeles, China, Iran, and Mexico and a non-circulating collection of thematically relevant artists’ books drawn from an open call to all LAABF exhibitors. We invite visitors to slow down and spend time with the material you find here. On display are many different approaches to documenting the times we live in. In contrast to the rapid speed at which visitors move through the Fair, the Reading Room offers an alternative space to engage in close reading, critique, and reflection.
This years’ participants include:
Cráter Invertido / Taller XD (N15) presents an artwork drawing from their recent publication, Marx Esotérico. The work references the imaginary presence of the border—from the specters that inhabit our land to the social mourning of necropolitics in México. An altar accompanies this artwork and honors the possibility of migration, which connects all of our struggles and challenges neoliberal colonial processes. “We take this invitation to contribute to the LAABF Reading Room as an opportunity to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people... Palestine is near! ¡Palestina está cerca!”
Travel bans and restrictions on Iranians have been a longstanding issue, dating back to the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, which have persisted throughout periods of political tension, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. falgoush’s (K14) installation will serve as a visual and interactive exploration of the Iranian experience at U.S. borders, using artist Shirin Fahimi’s personal experience of being barred from attending her exhibition in 2020—an incident that led to the co-creation of the artist book O Lone Traveller. The installation encourages reflection on the invisible costs of border-crossing while prompting broader considerations of the societal implications of such practices. By incorporating the book as both a reflective guide and a tool for reclaiming personal agency, the installation aims to empower visitors to engage with themes of surveillance, censorship, and resistance, while underscoring the importance of independent publishing in these urgent times of self-awareness and collective action.
Los Angeles Contemporary Archive’s (B13) Fixing Papers Collection explores how people create, enforce, and contest immigration systems. These text-based artworks and ephemera use bureaucratic materials to visualize the shrouded decision-making process and fixed categories that governments impose. In doing so, Fixing Papers hopes to disorganize and unsettle the categories our lives are made to navigate.
The installation by Squeeze sour (K1) + öö (uh uh) (L15) consists of a single large structure, made of smudged Riso-printed pages that invite readers to move through the work by hand. The reverse side of the pages remain blank, gradually collecting visitors’ fingerprints as they flip backwards. The work explores the threshold of book distribution through the lens of visa redistribution—where access, meaning, and authority are mediated by touch, delay, and silence.
Extracurricular Activities
In 950 S. Raymond Ave:Archetype Press
Open throughout the fair, Archetype Press invites visitors to experience one of the country’s largest educational letterpress studios. Stop by to explore the space, learn about letterpress printing, and create a print to take home.
On the second floor of 870 S. Raymond Ave
Riso Studio Arts, LAABF partner and the official North American risograph sales and service team based in Los Angeles, will offer demonstrations of their risographs and screenprinting machines. The group is offering three workshops throughout the day in the Maker’s Lab.
Throughout the day, this free workshop offers participants the ability to choose from a flash sheet of artwork and screenprint onto fabric patches using the portable silkscreen machine, MiScreen A4.
Walk-ins welcome, no registration required.
Using the MiScreen, participants can also bring their own merch and print a custom design (for a modest fee of $5–$10).
Create your own limited edition of 15 risograph printed 2-color prints or a mini 8-page folded zine! Plus press up to 2 of your own 1.25” inch RISO pin back buttons! Choose your riso color combos: either bubblegum + mint or green + flo orange.
8 spots available per hour. Walk-ins subject to availability.
Office Hours
In the Library & Archives on the second floor of 950 S. Raymond AveThe Doctor Is In!
Sign up to get a full evaluation of your book dummy's health—and a prescription for how to improve on and strengthen your publishing proposal. Nicholas Muellner, artist and co-founder of the Image Text Ithaca program at Cornell University, will meet with those who sign-up for a one-on-one, fifteen minute session with you and your book dummy. Full book dummies only, please. Proposals that highlight text and images of all kinds are welcome! Presented by Image Text Ithaca.
Exhibitor Projects
Dent-De-Leone presents (PR 5) a space to sit, read, and meet with Martino Gamper’s Arnold Circus Stool. In the porous outdoor space of the Hixon Courtyard, visitors to the Fair will find light, versatile, and stackable stools intended for use both indoor and outdoor. In 2006, the original design functioned as community seating for a regeneration project of the historic East London landmark, Arnold Circus. Gamper’s responsive and flexible design animates spaces to encourage connection and conversation; a seat, a table, and–turned upside down–storage. Selected titles from Dent-De-Leone and more of Gamper’s objects will be on display.
FKA CA53776V2.gallery (PR 6) is a new iteration of Alex Lukas’s dashboard exhibition space, CA53776V2.gallery. The original project was an experimental curatorial platform housed in a 2007 Ford Ranger; programming focused on the intersection of intimacy, touch, and craft on, in, and around the American road. The "space" closed when four of the Ranger's six engine cylinders began perpetually misfiring. For LAABF 2025, Lukas has reprised the project on the roof of a 2023 Subaru Outback. FKA CA53776V2.gallery brings together a curated selection of oversized bumper stickers displayed in the dubious lineage of "World's Largest" roadside attractions. Participating artists include Will Brown, Christopher DeLoach, Mike Devine, Sky Fusco, Brendan Hanna, Jesse Malmed, and Zach Ozma. Lukas publishes under the imprint Written Names Fanzine.
Radio Frequency (PR 7) is a collaborative project by Dalé Zine and Orange Radio & Homebody. An extension of the two publishers’ broadcasting practice, Radio Frequency will pop up in a 9x9 office space in room K and feature music, reading, talks, and more. The broadcast will stream online and into the courtyard.
Three Star Books (PR 2) returns to the 2025 LA Art Book Fair with a series of new projects: STOD by John Armleder, a book of illusions and mirrors; RUG by Gerard & Kelly, a score for a musician and a dancer inspired by their film E for Eileen, composed in eleven tableaux; an intricate collaboration between BlackMass Publishing and Three Star Books— a box of printed poetic elements designed to be manipulated, reimagining the very notion of the book; and a selection of Raffaella della Olga’s latest delicate typewriter books and typed paintings.
Werkplaats Typografie (PR 1) is an alternative educational programme in graphic design. It functions as a research environment wherein participants define the content, aims, and conditions of their design practices. For the 2025 LA Art Book Fair, the Werkplaats Typografie cohort will represent the personal collection of Holly van Houten. Located in the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography (HMCT), the project will take place in a slow auction format, addressing topics like value creation and provenance.