Pippa Garner’s world is one in constant flux. From automobiles to raw flesh, few things escape her restless imagination. Her practice inhabits a space of continual transformation, blurring the boundaries between the gender binary, past and present, human and machine. For decades, Garner existed on the fringes of the art world, but at 81, she’s finally stepping into the spotlight.
STARS and Matthew Brown Gallery have teamed up to present a bi-coastal solo exhibition celebrating the radical ingenuity of not Mr. or Mrs., but Misc. Pippa. Across drawing, photography and sculpture, the exhibition traces over half a century of Garner’s satirical creations, as she transforms the mundane into the extraordinary, finding a surreal joy in the mechanics of mass production.
The show begins in Los Angeles with Garner’s 1969 human-car hybrid sculpture “Kar-mann,” foreshadowing Garner’s most ambitious project, “gender hacking,” where, with the help of hormones and surgery, her own body took the likes of her modified appliances. In New York, Garner’s work shifts into overdrive. With her radio bra, chain grill and Porsche-Harley “trike,” she becomes the inventor, the hustler, or as Fiona Alison Duncan notes, the Garner that "can’t stop making and making and making things.”
Taking cues from the tradition of absurdism, Garner’s work transforms industrial fatigue into a captivating and cheeky pleasure. Together, Misc. Pippa frames embraces both a product and critique of American consumer culture – sharp, subversive and unapologetically inventive.
The exhibition is now on view at STARS in Los Angeles through January 18, 2025 and Matthew Brown New York through January 25, 2025.
STARS
3116 North El Centro Avenue,
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Matthew Brown Gallery New York
390 Broadway,
New York, NY 10013
Click here to view full gallery at Hypebeast
