In conversations about materials, its easy to get lost in questions about formal qualities, and overlook the supply chains, logistics, and human labor that goes into producing and transporting said items. An exhibitionon view in Los Angeles, Material Acts: Experimentation in Architecture and Design, seeks to subvert this paradigm. The group show staged at Craft Contemporary was curated by Kate Yeh Chiu and Jia Yi Gu, two local architects and educators. Material Acts features works from more than 20 contemporary designers, architects, and artists each united by their shared approach towards materials as research, processes, and systems, and not just as forms.The show challenges visitors to think critically about material flows. (Marc Walker/Courtesy Craft Contemporary)Traversing Craft Contemporary, what first stands out at Material Acts is the soft green that lacquers the walls, suggesting a sort of biophilic comfort the curators would like to impress upon visitors.Material Acts is meditation on material reuse, among other musings. (Marc Walker/Courtesy Craft Contemporary)Materials are typically described as raw resources, fixed products, or inert objects to be sourced from a shelf in the storea function of commodity more than of making, Kate Yeh Chiu and Jia Yi Gu said in a joint statement. The curators continued: Yet, such understandings of materials belie the complex logistical, economic, ecological, and technological actions that transform matter into the material substrate for our lives. Instead, Material Acts considers materials as participants in and outputs of cultural practices and techniques.One installation explored dyes and textiles. (Marc Walker/Courtesy Craft Contemporary)Rather than focusing on raw resources and finished products, the ephemera on view at Craft Contemporary recenters human actors and systems in the event of the transformation of material, reminding us that materials are not inert objects, but active, the curators continued.Others explored weaving techniques. (Marc Walker/Courtesy Craft Contemporary)The show was organized around five themes: Animating, Disassembling, Feeding, Re-fusing, and Stitching. In response to this brief set by curators, artist Maru Garca experimented with SCOBY skins, a leather-like material noted for its wound healing properties. Other participants created meditations on jammed gravel, bioregional materials, and 3D printed adobe. A flow chart at Material Acts (Marc Walker/Courtesy Craft Contemporary)Designers are making not only new materials but building new systems in response to climate precarity, curators added. A community-sourced library gathers material samples by contemporary design and adjacent practices, including experiments in chemical reactions, design with living organisms, environment-reactive metals, biocalcified foam, woven earth fibers, and other mobilizations of matters and the material accidents that happen along the way.Material Acts is on view through January 5, 2025.