Since the 1990s, Los Angeles–based artist Frances Stark has created a vast body of work that examines systems of communication and the nature of intimacy. She is the second participant in the Artist Selects series, which invites artists to create an exhibition with works from LACMA’s Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Guided by formal and thematic rhymes, Stark’s visual essay brings together works by Karl Blossfeldt, Otto Dix, Wassily Kandinsky, Käthe Kollwitz, and others. In a world that is out of joint, Stark grapples with questions about the role of the artist amid the cycles of passion, creation, and violent destruction that characterize the human experience.