Los Angeles–based artist Marnie Weber emerged on the California art scene in the 1980s as a member of the art-rock band Party Boys before launching a solo career as a performer in clubs and art venues in the U.S. and abroad. Also in the '80s, she started creating collages using appropriated imagery of women cut from magazines, often making them hybird human-animal creatures, and this practice morphed into more complex multi-media work in the ’90s featuring video, sculpture, and more intricate collage techniques. A colleague and friend of Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, Weber is sometimes thought to represent the feminine side of the L.A. movement that rose to prominence after the “Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s” exhibition at LA MOCA, although she was not part of that show. Since 1992 she has racked up 23 solo exhibitions at such galleries as Fredericks & Freiser in New York, Emily Tsingou in London, Marella Arte Contemporanea in Milan, and Patrick Painter in Santa Monica.

In 2004, Weber formed another art-rock band, the Spirit Girls. She performed live with them and was soon working them into her exhibitions, for instance, in her film A Western Song (2004), the central work in her new solo exhibition “The Melancholy Circus” at Praz-Delavallade in Paris. In the film, the Spirit Girls are cast as members of the 19th-century Spiritualist movement, whose adherents claimed to be able to communicate with the dead. Weber plays the lead in this dreamy, hallucinogenic 24-minute film set in a ramshackle Western town inhabited by wayward circus performers and other bizarre characters wearing animal masks.

For the Paris show, Weber has supplemented the film with intricate photo collages and beautifully rendered sculptures that complement and contextualize her surreal narrative. But rather than depict scenes or replicate characters from the film, these works use it as a starting point. For the collages, Weber photographs miniature sets and integrates these images with cutout photos of the Spirit Girls and hand-painted backgrounds. The work’s handcrafted quality is a throwback in the age of digital manipulation, but a welcome one that suits its mood and the subject matter. Take, for example, The Arrival of the Circus Clowns (2008). The piece may evoke the era of steam locomotives and traveling sideshow spectacles, but much more than some quaint nostalgic image, it has a distinctly sinister quality that speaks to contemporary unease.

With the sculptures, Weber introduces new characters reminiscent of the film’s trippy cast. One of the most striking, The Chimp (2008), with its humanoid mannequin body, hand-sewn tutu, and primate visage, alludes to the film’s transformational themes while more than holding its own as an object of intrigue.

Below are Marnie’s picks for Paris:

1. Permanent Collection at the Maison de la Chasse & de la Nature Foundation (Hunting & Nature Museum), ongoing

“This space has historically been a hunting museum with taxidermy animals, antique guns, and figurines. But now, the museum has added to its permanent collection a substantial number of contemporary works that are displayed among the original artifacts. The update is extremely successful. I’ve been told the director, Claude d’Anthenaise, is responsible for this as well as a number of future contemporary exhibitions. Works by artists such as Jeff Koons, Mark Dion, and Johan Creten are shown throughout the space. I can’t tell you what a delight it is. Check out Nicolas Darrot’s talking boar in the animal head trophy room. It’s inspiring.”

2. Jeff Koons Versailles at Château de Versailles, through January 4, 2008

“Koons has placed 17 sculptures in and around Versailles for a temporary exhibition. Check out the Web site if you can’t make it in person: www.jeffkoonsversailles.com/fr. If Koons’s work never made sense to you before, it will now in this context. I was riding back to the airport in a van with some right-wing tourists from middle America who were deeply offended that their once-in-a-lifetime trip to Versailles was spoiled by the sculptures. I got a chuckle thinking this temporary installation will be forever burned in their memory banks as a vision of Versailles.”

3. Guy de Cointet [1934-1983]: A Few [mirror] Drawings at Air de Paris, through November 8

“De Cointet’s modest but beautifully composed 'mirror' drawings are definitely worth a visit. The gallery provides a mirror to read the delicate pieces; each is inscribed with a backward text that feels like an excerpt from a diary or personal conversation. This looking-glass experience is both intimate and meditative.”

4. The Rick Owens Store, Palais Royal

“Rick Owens is a celebrated fashion designer, but in my book he is an artist extraordinaire, and his store can be viewed as a work of installation art. His line of clothing is like costumery designed to elevate the wearer and make him feel powerful. Owens has designed the store and all the furniture to be a highly theatrical display. There's even a Madame Tussauds wax figure of Owens himself; with its long black hair and sculpted body, it creates an eerie, powerful presence when the master isn’t in.”

5. Tom Sachs: Bronze Collection / Gold And Plywood at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, through November 22

“I love the way that Tom Sachs playfully uses various materials and different styles of art production in order to address many of the pressing issues of our times. His latest works are no exception, and should be seen while they are in Paris.”