Hold on tight! Pipilotti Rist: Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor is (a bit belatedly but so what) arriving in LA. Perfect timing I’d say. Not your much more chaste MoMA show of a few years back. This MOCA/Geffen Contemporary joyride is the non-Van Gogh immersive experience a/k/a the real show-stopping funkadelic- psychedelic deal. Also not quite the Mr Rogers hood. The Geffen couldn’t be better, the installs of videos, supersized furniture, domesticity-gone-wild in an ideal setting. Here’s Pippi herself at the check in to her version of home- the very space we need right now to get out of our own cocoon to hers -a dizzying dissolution of boundaries. She’s seeking “the semi private semi public spaces, the weeds and cracks” according to curator Anna Katz. MOCA has been in a very tough place with its directors and curators coming and going but let’s give them a cheer for bringing Pipilotti and a grin.
Lari Pittman
It's with particular pride that Angelenos who have known of Lari Pittman both as a painter of consummate skill and intelligence as well as a professor at UCLA who has launched so many other careers can now point to the Hammer Museum's coming retrospective of his work. Pittman's work was social media clickbait long before social media even existed and in this and many other ways he presaged so many different strands of the current artistic climate. MoCA's coming Pattern and Decoration show will complement this one, so it's a good time to visit.