Step and Repeat

The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs’ (DCA) Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG) proudly presents Step & Repeat, a group exhibition curated by Nancy Meyer and John Weston. 

Inspired by the historical Pattern and Decoration movement of the mid-1970s and its impact across our region, Step & Repeat highlights 46 Southern California artists who engage with themes of pattern and decoration. The exhibition seeks to create a dialogue around those concepts, encompassing both direct explorations of the subject and works that approach it peripherally. The exhibition’s title, Step & Repeat, is a term used for publicity backdrops at special events, particularly red-carpet premieres. While this slightly tongue in cheek reference to Hollywood hints at LAMAG’s physical proximity, it also reflects the repetitive and systematic qualities inherent in patterns within the works on view. 

Step & Repeat delves into the exploration of patterns as both physical and psychological occurrences, emphasizing their repetitive and systematic qualities. The works on view explore how patterns manifest in tangible forms while also reflecting the physical and internal, mental processes they evoke. Exploring these concepts stems from a desire to explore how decoration, often dismissed as mere embellishment, serves deeper purposes of valorization and humanization. Decoration can be a meaningful act that elevates and adds value to objects, spaces, or experiences, reflecting human creativity and the need to connect with the world. By examining these dual aspects, the exhibition reveals the ways in which pattern and decoration may lead to understanding the human impulse to “pattern” and “decorate” as tools for mapping expression, identity, and the interplay between aesthetics and function. 

Other themes explored in the exhibition include issues around feminism and domesticity, implications of altered states of consciousness such as meditation and flow states, and psychedelic aesthetics. By situating these themes within the broader context of pattern and decoration, Step & Repeat offers a multidimensional exploration of the ways in which artistic practices intersect with personal, cultural and historical narratives.