Summer group show season starts, and an artist mines her teenage mind.

5. Coming out
CalArts grads nearly always stage a post-graduation show somewhere in the city. It’s like a coming-out party, and it’s sometimes pretty chaotic — lots of work to squeeze in. But this year’s show is tight and worth seeing. Curated by artist William Kaminski, it’s at Cirrus Gallery downtown and spills over into the company Hyper Hyper’s spare headquarters just above the gallery. Yi Zhang projects a post-human face and other morphing imagery on sand, which anyone can reshape with a trowel. Luis Flores’ life-size crocheted man looks very real, and Meghan Gordon, who's running a stocked, mostly staffed bar, wants visitors to linger. 542 S. Alameda St., dwntwn.; through July 12. (213) 680-3473, cirrusgallery.com.
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4. Save my baby
Artist Joel Kyack is crying desperately in a plaza in Bologna in his Crossing the Line video. He’s sitting, leaning against a fountain, holding the kind of urinate-when-bottle-fed baby doll that was so popular in the 1990s. He’s crying because the baby won’t stop peeing, but it’s peeing because he’s also holding a funnel underneath the fountain’s stream. It’s attached to a feeding tube that leads to the doll’s mouth. A crowd grows around him. Obnoxious yet compelling, the video is part of the “Square(s)” show, about artists' relationship to protest, which Yann Perreau and François Ghebaly curated at Ghebaly’s gallery. 2245 E. Washington Blvd., dwntwn.; through July 12. (310) 280-0777, ghebaly.com.

3. Good season for that sign
Jack Pierson’s neon “L.A.” sign has been looming over Santa Monica Boulevard, installed high on the exterior of Regen Projects’ building, for more than a year now. But there’s something great about driving by its glowing, roadside-diner-meets-nightclub campiness around sunset in summer.  6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd; ongoing. (310) 276-5424, regenprojects.com.

2. Down-to-earth debut
Sarah Gavlak, who has run a gallery out of Palm Beach, Florida, since 2005, just opened a new space  on Highland Avenue. The debut show is promisingly diverse and friendly. In a smaller side gallery, probably the show’s best room, is a 1959 self-portrait of pin-up photographer Bunny Yeager sitting among her own photographs of nude women, Judie Bamber’s tender painting of her mother sitting in front of a painting by her father, and T.J. Wilcox’s fiery, lit-from-behind cityscapes. 1034 N. Highland Ave., Hlywd.; through August. (323) 467-5700, gavlakgallery.com.

1. Begin again and again
ENDE (Like a New Beginning) Again, Emily Mast’s 45-minute performance based on writing she's done at all stages of her life, will take over Night Gallery this weekend. Various actions will be performed, some of them probably pretty absurd, others more familiar. Mast will be directing live, the lighting will be manipulated live and a live video feed of the performance will be projected onto a gallery wall to make the audience feel, as they wander through, as if they’re in an all-encompassing loop that has no clear beginning or end. 2276 E. 16th St., dwntwn.; Saturday, July 5, 8 p.m. (650) 384-5448, nightgallery.ca.

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