'A Mind-Bending Head Trip (All Legal)'

article by MICHAEL KIMMELMAN here.

LOS ANGELES — "Ecstasy" is the trippy, messy, highly entertaining survey put together by Paul Schimmel of the Museum of Contemporary Art here. It sprawls through the Geffen Contemporary, the museum's cavernous warehouse in Little Tokyo, which too often begs for attention but is now jammed with blissed-out mobs.

The show's title derives from the eponymous recreational empathogen and popular underground mood-lightener officially called MDMA and sometimes prescribed by therapists for post-traumatic stress disorder, Mr. Schimmel informs us in the show's catalog. The cheeky pharmaceutical peg is a bit of Hollywood salesmanship of the sort he employed 13 years ago when he named a survey about dark, angst-ridden Los Angeles culture "Helter Skelter," after the Manson murders.