The Pacific Design Center announced opening receptions for 15 galleries on Wednesday, September 19 on the Second Floor of the Blue Building, featuring an exhibition of works by the celebrated graphic designer and artist Paula Scher, an installation in the Blue Lobby by Will Ryman, marking his Los Angeles debut, and the launch of three new galleries: Wharton+Espinosa (formerly Annie Wharton Los Angeles), Hudson|Linc and LA Print Space. The reception will run from 5-9pm.

Paula Scher, Global Climate, acrylic on silkscreen, 40 x 60 inches

Graphic designer and artists Paula Scher will host a talk about her new publication, Maps, on September 20 at 2pm. Her show will remain on view through November 10 in Suite B231. Since the early 1990s, Scher has been re-imagining society’s approach to data and our visual representation of the world through mapmaking.

Scher’s maps are composed of typography and vibrating colors, looming large at an outrageous scale. The paintings are filled with a mind-boggling amount of information, including landmasses, neighborhoods, and oceans, swirling with trade routes, time zones, and flight paths. Scher has re-envisioned these geographical spaces as landscapes to reflect the complex intersection of the personal and the political, which structure our view of the world. By combining facts with fiction, each pseudo-scientific map is a commentary on the need to impose order on the world, and the impossibility of that quest.

Paula Scher’s hand-pulled screenprints are renditions of her massive maps paintings. Made in collaboration with Andy Warhol’s master printer Alexander Heinrici, each print is realized with the same hand-drawn elegance of her painted maps. Paula Scher is involved in every step of the printing process, redrawing new plates in the same style as the master printmakers of the 20th century.

Will Ryman, Signature, 2012 digitally photographed at Paul Kasmin Gallery by Mark Markin.

New work by New York-based artist Will Ryman will be on view in the Blue Lobby until February 1, 2013, marking the artist’s debut in Los Angeles. Ryman reinterprets Signature, a work exhibited recently in Sculpted Matter at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, which was created from nearly 50,000 paintbrushes stacked on top of each other towering up to 14 feet tall. Will Ryman’s sculpture alters scale and space by creating dreamlike environments and changing the meaning of everyday, mundane objects. Formerly a playwright whose work was largely influenced by Absurdist philosophy, Ryman's works incorporate autobiographical, spiritual, and art historical references.

Ryman’s most recent exhibitions include a solo show at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York (2012), “Will Ryman” at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens, Coral Gables, Florida (2011 – 2012), “The Roses” on Park Avenue, New York (2011), The Shape of Things to Come (2009) at The Saatchi Gallery, London; Sculpture: Selections from the collection of Martin Z. Margulies (2007), at Margulies Warehouse, Miami; and Greater New York 2005, at MoMA PS1, New York. In March 2013, Will Ryman will launch a solo exhibition of new works at Paul Kasmin Gallery, where he is represented.

Hironaka & Suib, at Young Projects

Here are other galleries not to miss at the PDC: 

•ANOTHER YEAR IN LA presents holes,voids, and other descriptive terms for blankness, Richard Haley (Suite B267).

•ART-MERGE (Suite B256)

•DEN CONTEMPORARY presents painting on Edge, Co-curated by Grant Vetter and Donna Enad Napper (Suite B261)

•HERE IS ELSEWHERE presents Bertil Petersson (Suite B222)

•HUDSON|LINC presents Neo-Americana Group Show (Suite B215)

•INDUSTRY GALLERY presents Borek Šípek (Suite B270)

•ISABEL O’NEIL (Suite B200)

•LA PRINT SPACE presents Sea of Exchange, Donal MacPolin (Suite B273)

•M I C U C C I   A R T E presents Landing in Los Angeles, Velasco Vitali (Suite B209)

•PAULA SCHER (Suite B231)

•THE PROSPECTUS presents Illumination, Group show (Suite B266)

•SEE LINE GALLERY presents Wild Thing, Group show (Suite B274)

•WHARTON+ESPINOSA presents Eli Langer (Suite B275)

•MARY YOUNAKOF (Suite B233 /B239)

•YOUNG PROJECTS presents Hironaka & Suib (Suite B230/B210)