MOCA Sampler Is a Mixed Treat

The show “L.A. on My Mind: Recent Acquisitions From MOCA’s Collection” presents 10% of the paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs and videos the Museum of Contemporary Art acquired in 2001, by either gift or purchase.

Straightforwardly installed in an inhospitable gallery at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, the 14-work exhibition features works by 11 artists. Most are young. All live in Los Angeles. And other than a consistently high level of ambition and accomplishment that runs through the majority of their works, not much unites them in terms of genre, style or materials.

The centerpiece of the show is Liz Craft’s “The Living Edge,” a fantastic diorama in which a gigantic snake made of colorful fabric circles around on itself; two love-struck, nearly life-size Styrofoam deer rub noses; and three plastic hummingbirds press the tips of their beaks together, forming an impossible ornament. Artificial hyacinths, carnations and ivy as well as smaller-than-life-size pine, palm and cypress trees fill out the magical landscape.

Craft has composed its mix-and-match components in the shape of a figure-eight roller-coaster ride or a topsy-turvy version of the infinity symbol. Either way, your eye speeds along a loopy circuit, which includes a pond, miniature golf course, flimsy stairway, wooden freeway, box kite, papier-mache cave and five backyard fences, all higher than they are wide. Devoid of people, it’s an Edenic dreamscape crisscrossed by scale shifts that make your head spin with seemingly endless narrative possibilities.

Other works are less theatrical but, equally indebted to Pop art, play out similar dramas. One of Andrea Bowers’ meticulous drawings depicts a football fan with a grocery bag over his head. Another isolates Madonna and drummer Palmolive (from the Slits) against a messy silver background. Both works on paper use the power of mass entertainment to draw viewers into a spirited argument about art’s place in life and our place in art.

Likewise, Dave Muller’s “Substitute (Celebrity)” is a poster-size watercolor of a nude figure with a realistic portrait drawing of Mike Kelley pasted over its head. A tongue-in-cheek hommage to the influential artist (who has also donated art to the museum), Muller’s picture picks up where Kelley’s last hometown solo show left off, suggesting that it’s high time Kelley dealt with his own status as an art superstar.

Images of movie stars and models, cartoon characters and consumer products form the basis of works by Jason Rhoades and Richard Hawkins. Rhoades’ collage of pictures clipped from magazines resembles a small rug, complete with cut-paper fringes. Made in 1992, it functions as a symbolic doormat for the young artist’s career, which was just beginning.

Hawkins’ “City Underground” is an ordinary card table to whose underside are glued empty cereal boxes, paper cups, a cigarette pack and ads from fashion magazines. Recalling wads of gum, these throwaway items form artificial stalactites that tell upside-down stories. Another Hawkins work, a small abstract painting, brings the casual elegance of his collage sensibility to oil on canvas. It makes you wonder why the museum acquired so few paintings when so many artists are working in that medium today.

Two short DVD projections by Hirsch Perlman delight in the mystery of simple things. Set to a melancholic work by Samuel Barber and a jaunty instrumental piece by Thelonious Monk, Perlman’s simple films turn cigarette smoke, rubber bands and a tape measure into low-budget actors whose performances evoke bittersweet sentiments.

Unfortunately, Jorge Pardo’s lovely wool rug and streamlined glass lamp would look a lot better in a home, where they could be used. Stuck to the wall (like a painting) and plopped on the floor (like a sculpture), they make the museum look like it doesn’t understand the artist’s desire to integrate art into life. That’s probably Pardo’s point, but his works aren’t serious about competing in the retail design market. They’re priced too high to be anything but art.

A dopey drawing by Mark Grotjahn and four bland photographs by Dean Sameshima are the show’s only real missteps. In contrast, 12 abstract landscape drawings by Adam Ross (from a series of 24) and 24 photographic portraits by Amy Adler are worth contemplating. Both bodies of work entice viewers to pay attention to the way they pay attention, to watch themselves watching, as seemingly slight differences ripple through the mind’s eye.

Of the 14 works here, five were purchased and nine were donated by Los Angeles collectors. In the old days, museums weren’t so open about where the art they displayed came from. Today, after decades of increased operating costs have left many museums of contemporary art with disproportionately low acquisition budgets, their courtship of collectors has grown increasingly open.

In part an advertisement to attract more gifts this year, “L.A. on My Mind” also recalls what most of us do when we return from successful shopping trips: lay out the goods and invite friends and family to see what we got. That’s where viewers come in, as discerning observers whose judgments, positive and negative, lead to discussions of taste and meaning.

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Museum of Contemporary Art at the Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, (213) 626-6222, through May 12. Closed Mondays. Admission: $3.