Julia Stoschek Foundation's Spooky Video Art Takeover at Variety Arts Theater

The Julia Stoschek Foundation presented "What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem" at the Variety Arts Theater in Los Angeles from February 6 to March 20, 2026. Curated by Udo Kittelmann, the exhibition featured 45 time-based works by 45 artists across all five floors of the Renaissance Revival building, originally a women's arts and social club from the 1920s. The show repurposed unconventional spaces: a custodial closet screened Max and Emil Skladanowsky's 1895 boxing kangaroo film; a darkened ballroom hosted Doug Aitken's "Blow Debris" (2000); Klara Lidén's "Untitled (Trashcan)" (2011) played behind a mezzanine bar; and a red velvet-draped room showed Travers Vale and George Cowl's 1917 silent film "Betsy Ross." The main auditorium featured Arthur Jafa's "Apex" (2013), Jon Rafman's "Oh, the humanity!" (2015), Walt Disney works, and Marina Abramović. Other highlights included Precious Okoyomon's "It's dissociating season" (2019) on a Disney-themed TV, Jesper Just's "Something to Love" (2005) in a maintenance room, Thomas Demand's "Balloons" (2018), and Robert Boyd's "Xanadu" (2006) in the basement. The exhibition explored film's eerie, phantasmal nature, emphasizing horror and the tension between form and content, with works addressing race, violence, and spectacle.