Free Ecstasy: Thursday Night MOCA

Looking for some budget culture, I decided to check out MOCA's Ecstasy: In & About Altered States Exhibit at the downtown Geffen last night. MOCA allows patrons to feel intellectual for free every Thursday--the musuem offers free admission after 5pm and stays open late until 8pm.

Apparently the entire Silverlake/Los Feliz population also had the same idea as myself to enjoy some thrifty culture; 90% of the MOCA demographic consisted of stylishly scruffy Eastside couples enjoying a freebie date night.

This latest exhibit is a collection of positively trippy paintings, installations, film, photography and sculptures designed to give viewers the perception of riding the wavering line between reality and hallucination. Keeping in theme, many of the mind-bending works were created while the artists were all drugged up.

For those who feel it's only fitting and respectful towards the mind-altering art pieces to also alter own their states: yes, experiencing the mesmerizing 70's groove room consisting of colored lights pulsating through hazy fog and ambient beats (artist Pierre Huyghe's "L'expediton Scintillante: A Musical" installation) and the Alice in Wonderlandesque "Upside Mushroom Room" by Carsten Holler--a winding dark corridor leading to a white room decked out with upsidedown larger-than-life mushrooms twirling from the low ceiling--would most definitely be enhanced with um, enhancements of the chemical persuasion.

However, those flying high should stay clear of Glenn Brown's seemlingly melting, swirly-brushed portraits or Ann Veronica Janssens' vertigo-inducing flash-light installations. The dripping, acid-like paintings and rapid strobe light display tripped me out, and my hardest vice yesterday was a vanilla latte.

This Ecstasy exhibit is the closest I've felt to being in a playground while in a museum; check out a fountain trickling with board-certified LSD, channel your inner-Neo as your step into the Matrix Room's glowing 3D green grid or enter a gold-speckled pod reminiscent of Mork's spaceship to be enveloped by a Swarovski crystal encrusted interior for a disco-flavored cosmic galaxy.

I highly recommend Ecstasy, this exhibit will appeal even to you self-described 'non-museum types' (for the record, I also self-describe myself into that category).

MOCA comes down from the ecstasy on February 20th--which means you only have 6 more Thursdays to check it out for zero dollars.