Although it has that kind of jeu d’esprit, “Malibu Sex Party” was no mindless frolic on the beach. Featuring thirty younger Los Angeles artists casually brought together by artist John Geary, the show escaped cliquishness by inclusivity and had no overarching principle other than exuberance. Everyone is by now aware of the hype about the LA art scene (articles have appeared in almost every magazine of note, from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar to Spin and Forbes),but there is no discernible “LA School,” thank God, and what keeps things exciting is the variety of the work being produced despite the

“Todo Cambia” (Everything changes), a show of work from 1997 by Kcho curated by Alma Ruiz and Paul Schimmel, is a message in a bottle from a Caribbean island. The first room is filled with nearly life-size sculptures made of clay over wire armatures that take the shapes of different objects related to flotation and navigation: a raft, a kayak, a sail, a surfboard, a boat, an oar. Precarious and deteriorating, thetr surfaces thickly patterned with cracks, the sculptures emphasized their nonfunctionality, their rough craft production and the non—waterproof material of which they are fashioned.