La Cienega Area

The minute you see the amount of hardware involved in Aimee Rankin’s art, you know you’re in some kind of trouble. The New York artist makes big peep-show boxes cantilevered from the wall. Peep and push a button and they light up and play music.

The general style is bedizened Liberace Surrealism. Interiors look like refugees from Star Wars sets gooped with gilt and glitter. She uses everything from art reproductions to transformer toys, dildoes and joke shop schlock. One work just can’t resist the cliche of turning our own mirrored peepers into monster eyes. You get the feeling the devil made her do it.

Rankin looks like an artist who purposely sets out to make it so bad it turns good. A couple of times it almost works in emotional theme boxes called “Possession,” “Sex,” “Fear” and so forth. “Sadness” centers on a Pre-Raphaelite hero drowning to “Stormy Weather.” For a second, outrageous camp becomes touching myth. (Michael Kohn Gallery, 313 N. Robertson Blvd., to Aug. 27.)