Press Release
We must reaffirm the truism that architecture is a social art, and that its aesthetic power must be derived from a social ethos. – Gregory Ain
Exhibition House, a presentation featuring works by Carlos Agredano, Jono Coles, and Harrison Kinnane Smith, focuses on the legacy of Modernist architect Gregory Ain (1908-1988) and his Mar Vista housing tract that was built in 1948 for returning veterans of the Korean War and workers at the nearby Douglas Aircraft factory. Though commercially unsuccessful, the fifty-two homes in the development were immediately recognized for their innovative application of modern sensibilities to suburban subdivisions. In the context of ticky-tacky projects like Levittown, a community built only a year before the Mar Vista Tract, Ain’s vision was distinct, stylish, and practical. In 2003, the Los Angeles City Council designated Gregory Ain’s 1948 Mar Vista housing development as a protected Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ).
In 1950, the Museum of Modern Art would ask Ain to construct a suburban home in the museum courtyard for a presentation titled ‘Exhibition House’. Fully staged with affordable, modern furniture and decorated with artworks from the museum’s permanent collection, Ain’s full-scale ‘Exhibition House’ sought to establish an example of how art and the way we live are inextricably linked. Underwritten by business titans like the Rockefellers and curated by architectural superstar Philip Johnson, Ain’s ‘Exhibition House’ proposed a utopian hyperbole of middle-class consumer access to modern living in America’s atomic age.
Today’s iteration of Exhibition House reconsiders Ain’s career as a case study in how the mechanisms of surveillance, finance, real estate, and preservation shape the afterlife of socially engaged architecture. Located across two sites — Frankfurt Ordorica and Meier St., an arts space operating out of a Mar Vista Tract home — the works by Carlos Agredano, Jono Coles, and Harrison Kinnane Smith revive and reproduce Ain’s commitment to a political social art and illuminate how debates surrounding housing and development in the 1950s remain unresolved today.
Carlos Agredano (b. 1998 in Los Angeles, CA) lives and works between Los Angeles and New York City. He received his MFA from UCLA in 2023 and is currently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, a grant for artists to pursue independent projects. Agredano focuses on social inequality and urban planning, with particular emphasis on pollution as a force of perpetuating existing disparities. His work has been exhibited at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles Nomadic Division, Human Resources LA, Francois Ghebaly, and Sculpture Center, NY.
Jono Coles (b. 1997 in Pittsburgh, PA) lives and works between Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA. He received his M.Arch from UC Berkeley in 2024. Coles works between traditional architectural practice, art practice, teaching, and writing to critique the American architecture profession. His works have been published by the Guggenheim Foundation, AIA CA, and several architecture journals. Coles is the recipient of the Eisner Prize, the highest recognition of creativity given by UC Berkeley, and has received awards for housing design from organizations including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), The City of Los Angeles’ Housing Department, CityLAB-UCLA, and the California Homebuilding Foundation.
Harrison Kinnane Smith (b. 1997 in Pittsburgh, PA) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received his MFA from UCLA in 2025. Kinnane Smith’s work is collaborative and site-specific, often working through municipal bureaucracies, financial systems, and public institutions to critique systems of inequity and repression. His work has been exhibited at Emmelines, NY, Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Sculpture Center, NY, and Mattress Factory, PA. Kinnane Smith is the Co- Director of the Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery.
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