Pippa Garner

In the 1960's Pippa (then Phil) Garner was studying as a member of the highly regarded Transportation Design department at Art Center, California, with plans to become a car stylist. It was the era of Muscle Cars and automobiles were pushing the limits of absurdity. Vehicles were being designed to appeal to our most basic desires for sex and safety and as such overcompensated with weight and size. Garner replied with a sculpture portraying the inevitable result of this car romance: half-human half-car.

Over the subsequent four decades Garner has pushed back against systems of consumerism, marketing, and waste, creating a rich body of work including drawing, performance, sculpture, video and installation. Her uncompromising approach to life and practice has allowed her to interact with the worlds of illustration, editorial, television and art without ever quite becoming beholden to them.

Pippa Garner’s first exhibition at Redling Fine Art will include a suite of early invention drawings, as well as Garner’s original art from her monthly editorial page in Car & Driver (1995 - 2010) as well as in the pages of L.A. Magazine. All in pencil, these works show the breadth of Garner’s dry humor and political thinking. Also on view is Garner’s 2007 work, the "World's Most Fuel-Efficient Car,” a 1972 Honda 600 retrofitted to be human-powered, and Garner’s “last” sculpture the "Sedan Chair”. Through these sculptures Garner toys with concepts of class and waste, pointing to the invisible labor that makes our culture possible, and more specifically the inefficiency inherent in using 3,000 pounds of metal to move 150 pound bodies. These works point to the invisible labor that makes this possible. Alongside these works is a mandala of handmade t-shirts. These graphic collages are part performance part mode-of-production, as Garner has constructed and worn these works daily for over 10 years. Finally a selection of Garner’s video work dated 2013 is included. In these campy videos Garner portrays both a pre- and post- transition version of herself tackling topics such as procreation, drones, marriage, art, invention and therapy.