Pippa Garner, a conceptual art provocateur whose radically modified consumer goods — like a midriff-baring men’s “Half Suit” and a ’59 Chevy with its chassis reversed — offered witty commentary on gender, body modification, American car culture and the boundaries of fine art, died on Dec. 30 in Los Angeles. She was 82.
Her death, at a convalescent hospital, was confirmed by Christopher Schwartz of Stars Gallery in Los Angeles, which represented her. She had a number of health problems, most notably chronic lymphocytic leukemia, he said. She had gone through gender transitioning in the mid-1980s.
Though Ms. Garner’s drawings, sculptures and inventions typically had a satirical bite, they were driven not by any political agenda so much as by her sheer curiosity about herself and the world she lived in. As a result, they were, typically, very entertaining.
Before 2015, when she began an explosive run of exhibitions accompanied by the publication of two monographs — “Act Like You Know Me” and “Pippa Garner: $ell Your $elf” — Ms. Garner was best known for “Philip Garner’s Better Living Catalog,” a compilation of her fantastical, flagrantly unnecessary gadgets and accessories. It was published in 1982, under her birth name, before she transitioned.