Promiscuous Patterns: The Pleasure Overload Effect @MOCA
Promiscuous Patterns: The Pleasure Overload Effect  @MOCA
Uploaded December 2019 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Inspired by the exhibition With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985, this program presents films, videos, and hybrid forms of computer and net art that embrace of what curator Anna Katz refers to as “promiscuous patterns.” Spanning the late 1960s to present, the works selected by Los Angeles–based artist Jennifer West—including Lis Rhodes’s seminal Dresden Dynamo (1971) emphasize visual pleasure and take an inventive approach to materiality, from painting, drawing, sewing, stenciling, and collaging directly on filmstrips to creating animation and computer-generated patterns. Sharing impulses with the Pattern and Decoration movement, they draw on techniques and motifs used in crafts, textiles, ornamentation, and other forms of “low art,” translating these to film or technology. West, an associate professor of the Practice of Fine Art at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, will introduce the program.
Promiscuous Patterns: The Pleasure Overload EffectVirtual Studio Visits: Klaus Biesenbach in Conversation with Mark GrotjahnMOCA Artist Film Series: Albert OehlenKinlaw, Crux: A Panel on Communication and Process, 2023Artists on Artists: Meet Nevine MahmoudCollecting the Contemporary: Christine Sun KimRare Wood Blocks, 1967, Judy Chicago.Uncommon Commons PanelCathy Opies Dyke DeckArt for Earth’s Sake: Staying Cool: Designers Green Art BuildingsArt for Earth’s Sake: Dirty Topic: Environmental Justice in L.A. Art.Art for Earth’s Sake: The Medium is the Message: Clean Artmaking from Earth to Outer Space
The Museum of Contemporary Art |

Promiscuous Patterns: The Pleasure Overload Effect

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