PAPA

PAPA documents the first four years of PAPA Projects, an artist-run exhibition space founded by artists Jaysen Hohlen and Wyatt Lasky in St. Paul, Minnesota. Established during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, the space began as a simple intervention: transforming a room on their communal studio floor into a gallery. What began as a short-term response quickly developed into an ongoing exhibition program well beyond the pandemic.

This richly illustrated volume brings together essays and visual documentation tracing the development of the space between 2021 and 2024. Essays by Jaysen Hohlen, Taylor Jasper, Matthew Villar Miranda, and Laurel Rand-Lewis consider artist-run initiatives, the role of independent exhibition spaces, and the challenges of documenting the ephemeral nature of exhibitions.

The book includes artworks, installation views, and materials from seventeen exhibitions presented at PAPA Projects. These exhibitions feature artists working across painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and time-based media. The publication also reproduces exhibition statements and short written texts that accompanied select exhibitions, preserving the context that originally framed the works when they were exhibited.

Part record and part reflection, PAPA documents the work, ideas, and collaborations that emerged from PAPA’s fourth-floor gallery. The publication traces how small, artist-built exhibition spaces can become platforms for artists to organize, exhibit, and shape their own conditions for making and exhibiting work.