There is irony in donning a mass-produced item that ostensibly projects one’s individuality via a saucy slogan coined by somebody else. Pippa Garner uses her art like a knife to cut straight to the revelatory heart of such prosaic absurdities. Under her satiric lens, commonplace cultural phenomena range from charmingly comical to deeply disturbing. Her current show, “Autonomy n’ Stuff (Garnerrhea),” is a grab bag of transactional curiosities beginning with a corridor of statement-emblazoned T-shirts tacked to walls as though Redling Fine Art were not a gallery but a tacky gift shop. Garner’s bespoke shirts bear sayings of a different sort than one would likely find at a mainstream retail establishment: “I Received a DEATH THREAT from my birthday party CLOWN;” “I was on LIFE SUPPORT but I got away!” So blatantly do her parodies broadcast the ridiculousness of “statement” T-shirts that they fall into a similar category of heavy-handedly ironic quotation, underscoring the fact that, like T-shirts, artworks serve as commodities while emblematizing components of culture. Even more engaging are Garner’s new sculptures emulating souped up gadgets, which cynically satirize the useless ingenuity of “as seen on TV” products. One is liable to snicker aloud at Super Shuffle (2018, detail above), a walker outfitted with everything a crankily mobile aged person could possibly want, including twin jars of Pepto-Bismol and Jack Daniels. Garner, who transitioned from Phil to Pippa after undergoing surgery in 1993, has concocted a singular brand of wackily cynical inventions for navigating modern life’s limitations on individual autonomy.

Redling Fine Art
6757 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90038
Show runs through June 30