State of Mind, the lavishly illustrated companion book to the exhibition of the same name, investigates California’s vital contributions to Conceptual art—in particular, work that emerged in the late 1960s among scattered groups of young artists. The essays reveal connections between the northern and southern California Conceptual art scenes and argue that Conceptualism’s experimental practices and an array of then-new media—performance, site-specific installations, film and video, mail art, and artists’ publications—continue to exert an enormous influence on the artists working today.
