//

Even for those of us who didn't register that the six-foot frozen bicycle is a dig at Marcel Duchamp (whom the LA Times bodly calls a “Dada imp”), Adrián Villar Rojas’ “Theater of Disappearance” is still derisive in all the right ways.

I saw the Argentinian artist's  much-anticipated show—which takes up most of the Geffen Contemporary's warehouse space in Little Tokyo—as part of Quiet Mornings: Art x Mindfulness, Flavorpill’s new L.A. trial of the now-monthly New York City staple. Meditating warm-up aside, the museum experience has been transformed from whitewall brightness into a cavernous womb.

Large stone boulders and tall monuments of layered amber, candy-colored concrete, and if you look closely fossilized fish heads, are the backdrop for diorama-style freezer cases displaying a cornucopia of symbols of (future-lost) humanity: feathery bird bodies, rib cages adorned with clay, funereal dried flowers, crab skeletons, human skeletons, wires, sneakers, plastic. It had the feel of Westworld in reverse: the past on display in sterile, cold cases; a mid-decay snapshot of what man had once been, in all the non-glory of discard.

“Human skeletons in chalky white resin lay frozen in time, a curiously artistic warning of things to come.”

The critical reception has been, as it were, a bit chilly. Yes, commentary on art itself is not revolutionary. Nor collections of our waste; after all, circa 200 B.C. pottery shards are simply prehistoric trash. But I found the exhibit thought-provoking in a visceral way, and Rojas' use of pieces of his own previous works—petrified wood from a Turin exhibit, layered columns from Sharjah—were a nice addition to this alternate-slash-future reality, with the underlying posited question: What happens at the end of art (and man)?

And yet somehow I didn't find it depressing. Perhaps there’s something about people snapping selfies with a human skeleton in Elmer’s-esque glue that can’t help but bring in a bit of comedy. Of the Shakespearean, divinely tragic variety, yes, but a bit humorous nonetheless. And, strangely, pretty: Neon pink-accented Nikes were picturesque next to a bleached cow skull and tangled fruits.

There was also something both intimate and inappropriately voyeuristic about it, like looking into your mother-in-law’s trash bin and finding a dark-web sex doll. The uncommon adage 'You are what you throw away' comes to mind: so we’re wasteful, carnivorous, self-important, strange, and sometimes beautiful, Oh, and extinct. 

But for now, at least, we still have killer ramen. 

On view at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 N Central Ave, Los Angeles.