Evidence of a manic, multitasking mind quietly pervaded the assembly of otherwise contemplative objects and larger architectonic maneuvers that constituted Claude Collins-Stracensky’s solo show at the Hammer. Before entering the square, glass-walled gallery located in the museum’s main lobby, one was directed to look through large circular apertures inserted in the drywall barriers separating the lobby from the gallery and the gallery from the street. Unlike the infamous portals Gordon Matta-Clark once chainsawed into condemned buildings, a gesture inevitably recalled here, Collins-Stracensky’s

For eight weeks last summer, Heather Cantrell’s “A Study in Portraiture: Act I” transformed part of Kinkead Contemporary into a functioning portrait studio equipped with a stockpile of costumes and props: painted backdrops, animal skins, cardboard cutouts of wolves and snakes, silk flowers, hats, masks, and household objects. And during the exhibition’s run, Cantrell held a series of public photo shoots, to which she invited a subsection of the Los Angeles art community. With her input, participants could choose accoutrements and a backdrop. (For some special individuals, the artist made her

Los Angeles–based artist Olga Koumoundouros converts two-dimensional graphics and typography into sculptural, at times quasi-architectural, forms. A recent example is her 2003 work Town Meeting: After Acconci—a wood-framed and sheathed buttelike structure. Only after climbing atop the plateau could one see that it comprised massive, three-dimensional letters spelling out the word terror, with the hollow of the o providing a makeshift safe room.

The artist employed a similar method at REDCAT for her installation Demand Management, 2009. Within the conventionally cubic gallery stood a high, curving