Metro Art

Andrew Leicester's "Foothills Basket Bridge" above I-210 in Arcadia

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This week, artists contemplate the end of the Mayan calendar, Metro debuts its strange new Gold Line bridge and a group exhibition experiments in portraiture.

5. Live-streaming the end times
The supposed upcoming apocalypse triggered by the end of the Mayan calendar has become a fixation. This weekend, there are end-of-the-world dance parties, dinner parties and one-night-only operas. Artist Jonas Becker, who is interested in end-days myths in general, is taking her camera to Mexico and spending the evening of Dec. 21 driving among Mayan ruins, filming and interviewing spiritual leaders, conspiracy theorists, tourists and others. Her footage will stream live during the concurrent Apocalypse Now? party in a Highland Park storefront. In addition to Becker's live stream, there will be beer by Dry River Brewing, karaoke and drawing supplies for people who want to express their end-of-world sentiments through art. 5118 York Blvd.; Fri., Dec. 21, 8 p.m. (951) 522 - 8573, beckerprojects.com.

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Courtesy Jancar Gallery

Lena Nyman in a still from I Am Curious (Yellow)

This weekend, a dinner pays homage to Jonathan Swift, a virus dances to Beyonce and the politically minded star of a soft-core film crosses paths with a pair of kings.

5. Imaginary island dinner
In Jonathan Swift's satirical Gulliver's Travels, Lilliput is an island inhabited by tiny people involved in a dispute over eggs. Traditionally, all islanders had broken hardboiled eggs starting on the wider end. But the Emperor, who cut himself doing this as a child, decrees that all hardboiled eggs be broken on the smaller side, prompting some enraged Lilliputians to flee to the neighboring island. Concord Space will not serve eggs at when it hosts a Lilliputian holiday dinner this weekend, but it will serve various more colorful dishes -- pork chops, carrot sauces, candied pumpkin. There will be menu options for omnivores and herbivores.1010 N. San Fernando Road, Glassell Park. $15, RSVP required. (818) 649-0189, concordspace.com.

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Courtesy FLAX

Jim Shaw's Didactic Art installation in the show "Lost (in L.A.)"

See also:
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.
*Our Latest Theater Reviews

This week, artist Jim Shaw pops up in two places, a TV phenomenon loosely inspires an exhibition and a playwright known for breaking the fourth wall breaks it before finishing his new play.

5. Be like an ant
"Just be like an ant carry something this way, carry something back," says filmmaker Mike Plante's uncle Paul in the film Be Like an Ant. Plante made the film for and about his uncle, who bought a trailer to live in with his family after moving back from Vietnam and then began building it out, and kept building for 20 years, until it turned into a free-form house with more than 100 windows and a shape entirely its own. This film and others by Plante screen at the Armory Center for the Arts this weekend. 145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena; Sat., Dec. 8, 7:30 p.m.; (626) 792-5101, armoryarts.org.

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Courtesy of the artist and Wharton + Espinosa

Still from Shana Moulton's video Restless Leg Saga (2012)

This week, the ghost of a long-defunct society hosts a concert in Culver City, a video artist channels allergy-drug commercials and a sculptor pumps water through a maze of PVC pipes.

5. Renaissance meets RoboCop
Peter Weller starred in the 1987 film RoboCop, about a robotic police officer ("part man, part machine, all cop") in dystopic Detroit. He's also hosted on the History Channel and guested on Fringe, Psych and Dexter. But this week, he'll be at the Getty Center talking about Italian art and the Renaissance, a subject he's spent years' worth of off-screen time thinking about and studying. The actor will speak with Christine Sciacca, who curated the Getty's current show, "Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance." 1200 Getty Center Drive; Thurs., Nov. 29, 7 p.m.; free. (310) 440-7300, getty.edu.

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Courtesy the artist

A still from Ofri Cnaani's The Sota Project (2011)

This week, a composer recounts his residency aboard a cruise ship, two video projects re-create haunting religious rituals and an artist-turned-wedding planner promotes her new book.

5. Performance art wedding revisited
In preparation for her 2011 project Get Hubbied, artist Bettina Hubby posted a classified ad, asking soon-to-marry couples to apply. She turned their wedding into performance art, with the help of nearly 30 other L.A. artists. "I wanted to do something that wasn't traditional," said Ruben, the groom who agreed to give Hubby free rein. Artist Joe Sola, who once made a video of himself riding a roller coaster with porn stars, officiated. Sola and Hubby have promised to perform in some way or another and talk about marriage, art and other things at LACMA, when both release new books. 5905 Wilshire Blvd.; Sun., Nov. 25, 4 p.m. (323) 857-6010, lacma.org.

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Photo by Joshua White

Mike Kelley's Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites

This week, an army of minimalist sculptures emits the sent of Pine Sol, a composer uses dry ice to make music and MOCA PDC becomes an arcade.

5. Climate controlled concert
The Quartz Cantabile is an instrument powered by heat. Flames send hot air through tubes of various lengths and sizes, which come out the other end as loud, clear sounds. Another instrument, the dry ice chimes, is played by touching cubes of dry ice to suspended brass chimes, then letting the carbon dioxide from the ice turn to gas and put the brass in motion. Composers Todd Lerew and Liam Mooney will play these two strange instruments at Machine Project this weekend. 1200-D N. Alvarado; Sun., Nov. 18, 8 p.m. (213) 483-8761, machineproject.org.

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Courtesy 1301 PE

Still from Kerry Tribe's film There Will Be ________ (2012)

This week, an artist deconstructs the pom-pom, two holes get cut in gallery walls and an exhibition suggests the wrong man took the blame for murder 83 years ago.

5. Wallflower whirlpool
Jen Stark cut a hole the shape of a water lily into the northernmost wall of Martha Otero gallery, then built up layer upon layer of carefully colored paper, each cut in the same plantlike shape but each smaller than the last. The result is a twisting vortex of color that gets narrower and narrower and finally disappears. The best works in Stark's current show are similar: powerful, precise, dimensional and mostly made of paper. 820 N. Fairfax Ave.; through Nov. 10. (323) 951-1068, marthaotero.com.

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Courtesy Night Vision

A still from Feast of Burden, the first web series to launch on MOCA TV

In Luis Bunuel's 1962 film Exterminating Angel, neurotic, rich guests get stuck at a fancy dinner party in a big, fancy house. They can't leave the house's conservatory for reasons that seem to be psychological, not physical. One blond woman aggressively, randomly breaks things. One man suggests they make a human sacrifice. Finally, an hour and a half into the film, they tumble out of the house to find cops inexplicably waiting for them outside.

Eugene Kotlyarenko, who made the film 0s and 1s in 2011, had been going to a lot of dinner parties. So he thought of Exterminating Angel when Mieke Marple, the co-director of the Eastside Night Gallery who's been producing artists' films under the name Night Vision, asked him to make a web series with her.

Their series, called Feast of Burden, is a loose remake of Bunuel's film -- loose because Kotlyarenko hasn't actually seen Exterminating Angel in 14 years, and also because his series is more John Waters-meets-telenovela-made-by-hipsters than '60s surrealism. Feast of Burden premiered at MOCA last night and will debut on MOCA's new YouTube channel, MOCAtv, on Nov. 19.

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Photo by Michael Underwood. Courtesy the artist and LAXART.

Mary Weatherford's Bakersfield-inspired painting, Ruby II (Thrifty Mart)

This week, a painter takes on the weirdness of Bakersfield, an artist sends pictures made to last billions of years into orbit and an artist's biographer talks about why her subject is still being censored two decades after his death.

5. Whited-out activism
The prints from Juan Capistran's new show at Thomas Solomon Gallery are so white that, if you look at them online, you can't even tell what they depict. See them in person and you'll know one shows a white bottle in front of a white background, another a whited-out protest sign, and a third a chalky white clenched fist. The show, called "White Riot...be the beacon, be the light. KO'd by love" -- KO'd as in "knocked out," in boxing lingo -- feels static and militant at the same time. It's like a rebel about to carry out some plan got caught in one of those quarantine zones they have on sci-fi shows like Fringe and frozen in space and time. 27 Bernard St., Chinatown; through Nov. 2. (323) 275-1687, thomassolomongallery.com.

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Kerry Tribe's There Will Be ________.

Kerry Tribe's new work There Will Be ________. is centered around her 30 minute film Greystone, which walks viewers through the famously mysterious suicide deaths (or was it murder?) at Greystone mansion on the night of February 16, 1929. On that night, at the Beverly Hills abode of oil-baron heir Ned Doheny Jr., he and his assistant and longtime friend (and possibly lover?) Hugh Plunkett were both found shot dead.

Tribe's piece was shot on location at Greystone and wanders through five possible narratives that re-construct what might have occurred that fateful evening. The only words spoken in the piece are appropriated from the scripted lines of films actually shot in the mansion (62 feature films have used the mansion as a set, including There Will Be Blood, loosely based on the life of tycoon Edward Doheny, Ned's father, who had the mansion built). After completion of filming in January, only rough cuts of the piece have been screened so far.

L.A. Weekly spoke with Tribe about the fully-edited version, which makes its Los Angeles premiere this Saturday at 1301PE in Miracle Mile, along with collages, photographs, an annotated script, and other research materials. The exhibit runs until Nov. 10.

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