13Things LA: January 8

Visitations for your art calendar

Pippa Garner, Kar-mann, 1969-2024 (Stars Gallery)

This week we remember the late, great Pippa Garner and highlight her work currently on view at both Stars Gallery and at the Central Library. Plus exhibitions of photography, painting, sculpture, and some intriguing in-betweens at Sean Kelly Gallery, Gagosian, The Middle Room, These Days, Megan Mulrooney Gallery, Karma Los Angeles, David Kordansky Gallery, Parrasch Heijnen, OCHI, and Matter Studio; and some richly-hued song stylings at LA Phil. And guess what? More PST!

UPDATE: Many galleries have announced being closed for a few days, which in most cases includes postponing any events this weekend. Some galleries like OCHI, Megan Mulrooney, and David Kordansky are open on Saturday during regular daytime hours to offer a bit of respite and a gathering place (and filtered air!). Please confirm your plans accordingly—and most importantly, stay safe and take care of each other.

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Feature

Pippa Garner, Un(tit)led Self-Portrait in Hospital, 1997-2024 (Stars Gallery)

Pippa Garner: Misc. is on view at Stars Gallery through January 18; and Garner’s work is featured in No Prior Art: Illustrations of Invention, a PST:Art exhibition, at the Central Library through May 11. Last week the world lost a provocative, vulnerable, eccentric, endlessly inventive talent with the passing of artist Pippa Garner. Her conceptual and material obsession with essential transformation as a means of revelation—and with the power of a good verbal/visual pun to generate profoundly true insight—inspired her to create images and objects of transgressive wit, cheeky functionality, and biting social critique. Along the way, musings on her own journey of gender identity became her most intimate and enduringly mighty works of art. From shoes built to carry your (emotional) baggage with you, to chairs built for more, um, intimate forms of relaxation, clothing ideal for maintaining one’s personal space, lamps of blush-inducing fancy, domestic objects of hilarious lunacy, and self-portraits of disarming vulnerability—there is a lot to consider in her decades-long career. But for now, there are currently two exhibitions of Garner’s work on view in Los Angeles. A solo presentation at Stars Gallery revolving around her appropriation of interior design language, and her inclusion in the Library’s PST:Art show, which centers her in a conversation about the intersecting roles of artist and inventor. More information: stars-gallery.com; lapl.org. —SND

Pippa Garner, installation view at LA Central Library (Photo by Shana Nys Dambrot)