This week, a pale-faced dandy seduces one cousin and murders another in an artist's film, and a precarious steel sculpture shows at LACMA for one day only.

5. The infant approach

In the mid-1960s, German artist Jörg Immendorff took on babies as a motif in his paintings. He also put them on signs that he made to protest the war in Vietnam — one of which said, “You are nice people” — and put paper versions of them in a cannon he used to shoot out peace-inspiring images. Some of his babies appear in the current, charming show of his vintage work at Hannah Hoffman gallery, like the large wall relief in which two chubby infants scrub each other in a bubble bath. 1010 N. Highland Ave., Hlywd.; through Dec. 7. (323) 450-9106, hannahhoffmangallery.com.

4. Actual weight

Artist Liz Glynn has been excavating the histories and exploring the look and feel of some of LACMA's iconic works since the summer. Part three of her five-part [de]-lusions of Grandeur series plays out this weekend. Richard Serra, maker of industrial-strength monuments, is her subject. Inverted House of Cards, a sculpture by Serra in which steel plates hold each other up through balance and gravity alone, will be on view for only the second time since the museum acquired it. Guests will be invited to move sand bags that collectively equal the weight of Serra's Band, his mazelike steel cylinders, from one place to another. 5905 Wilshire Blvd.; Sat., Oct. 19, 1-5 p.m.; free. (323) 857-6010, lacma.org.

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3. Dog race

Elaine Sturtevant, now in her 80s, goes by her last name — just Sturtevant. She has been interested in repetition since the 1960s, when, after she'd “repeated” some of his flower silkscreens, Andy Warhol apparently said that if anyone wanted to know what his work meant, they should “ask Sturtevant.” Nearly every press release about her includes that quote, maybe as a way to suggest she's still on to something. Her video Finite/Infinite, currently projected against the whole, warehouse-length wall of 356 Mission Road, shows a dog running across a field again and again. Its body elongates as it progresses from one end of the wall to the other, and because it's on a constant loop, it begins to seem like a lot of dogs chasing the same thing. 356 S. Mission Road, Boyle Heights; through Dec. 8. (323) 609-3162, 356mission.com.

2. Donuts in the machine

Revealing exactly what happens when you walk into the first room of David Snyder's exhibition at Michael Benevento gallery might ruin the effect, which is quite good and involves motors, uncovered lightbulbs with pull chains and whirring noises. The sculpture in the main space whirs, too, and dings and emits radio voices, coming to life as you get close. It's a funguslike, charred, ceiling-tall canopy draped over wood scaffolding and machinery, which you can see only through a slit on the wall-facing side — you also can see, inexplicably, a pile of donuts through that slit. All this, and the dilapidated, nonfunctional bleachers in front of the film playing in the gallery's second space, feels idiosyncratically apocalyptic, like the big one came and the backyard scientists survived. 7578 Sunset Blvd.; through Nov. 2. (323) 874-6400, beneventolosangeles.com.

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1. Faust meets Bill Nye

“I'm stunned, cousin,” says a well-dressed man who arrives at a countryside estate near the end of John Bock's film Dandy, not long before meeting his death. “You shouldn't be stunned,” says his cousin, who owns the manor and has been employing the well-dressed man's beautiful sister as a sort of muse and assistant. The film would resemble a period miniseries on the BBC if not for all the eccentric sculptures, green gels and contraptions in it. Bock's is one of five artist's films playing in Regen Projects' current show, each given its own room and each compelling — it's worth going back a few times to take it all in. 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd; through Oct. 26. (310) 276-5424, regenprojects.com.

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