This week, an artist introduces a new “neuroscientifically driven” car, and 120 children exhibit their artwork in 10-by-15-foot museum.

Goddess ghosts
A face painted on plastic hangs at the top of the carpeted stairs leading up to Abode Gallery. You have to push past it or duck under it to enter the rest of the space, where Hayley Barker has installed her exhibition “New Paintings” (nomadic exhibition program BozoMag is presenting the show while Abode’s founder, Katie Bode, takes a break until fall). In an elegant handout placed on the mantel, Barker describes these paintings as spirits, guides and goddesses. The faces she depicts appear vaguely feminine and vague in general. It’s hard to tell where the speckles and marks end and the face begins in a painting hanging inside the defunct fireplace. The figure in BAT TIME (hands cover face), hanging above a kitchen table, is ghostly and obscured by flowerlike shapes, as if she’s haunting a garden on a rainy day. 840 N. Wilton Place, Hollywood; through Aug. 27. bozomag.com. 

Objects divorced from purpose
As part of her installation at Hannah Hoffman, Rey Akdogan has repainted one of the gallery's matte white walls in a high-gloss white paint. In it you can see vague outlines of the lights and of the pure black, powder-coated aluminum bars installed on opposite walls. These bars are crash rails, used in corporate or medical environments. They'd be installed horizontally along walls to keep, say, medical carts or rolling beds from crashing into or damaging the paint job, or to keep leaning bodies from leaving too much bacteria behind. Akdogan’s rails, which vary in length and are hung at different heights, have none of the functionality but all of the cool, hygienic energy. Advanced, elegant and efficient with no clear purpose, the gallery feels futuristic in the most clinically ominous way. 1010 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood; through Aug. 26. (323) 450-9106, hannahhoffmangallery.com.

Children's forest
Artist Guan Rong started OneHouse ArtExperience Museum to exhibit art by children — she has been teaching the very young artists in L.A. for the past decade. On Sunday, as part of the nomadic alt biennial “Maiden L.A.” (meant to sound sort of like Hammer Biennial “Made in L.A.”), Rong’s museum will present the show “Forest.” About 120 artists ranging in age from 2 to 14 will present paintings, drawings, sculpture and an installation that turns the small exhibition space into a forest. 5342 McCulloch Ave., Temple City; Sat., Aug. 26, 10 a.m.-midnight. maiden.la/calendar2017/2017/8/26/onehouse-artexperience-museum.

Mind control on the road
Jonathon Keats’ projects have, in the past, been both conceptually complicated and comically absurd. He tried to mutate generations of fruit flies into God, or a relative of God, in order to understand where God fits in the biological classification system. He also built a gourmet restaurant for plants — different light combinations were on the menu. As one of LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab grantees, he has been working on, among other things, a “neuroscientifically driven concept car” called the Roadable Synapse. He and Hyundai Ventures engineer Ryan Ayler will explain exactly how it works at LACMA this weekend. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire; Sat., Aug. 19, 1 p.m. (323) 857-6010, lacma.org.

Dazed traveling
In Basma Alsharif’s short film Deep Sleep, the viewer travels through Malta and Athens, seeing oceans and ruins, but dreamily, as if hypnotized. We often see the artist’s shoes — or the shoes of whomever is holding the camera — moving across a rocky or sandy terrain. Sometimes, the images become hyper-saturated and surreal, and sometimes the soundscape switches from natural — birds chirping — to an aggressive static. The film, which has no distinct beginning or end, plays on MOCA’s website for two more weeks, as part of the museum’s screen program. Every month, the museum introduces a new film by a young or lesser-known artist, watchable anywhere at anytime. Through Aug. 25. moca.org/screen.

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