Life-sized John Lautner sculpture hangs out at his Sheats-Goldstein House in Beverly Crest

By Adrian Glick Kudler May 2, 2013, 6:28pm PDT

French artist Xavier Veilhan, with curator/architect Francois Perrin, has delightfully messed with yet another classic piece of modern Los Angeles architecture (see the Neutra VDL Research House adorned with silhouettes and sculptures and Case Study House #21 filled with smoke): Last week, Veilhan made a few additions to the sexy/dangerous Sheats-Goldstein House in Beverly Crest, designed by the magnificent John Lautner. He installed a site-specific version of one of his "Rays" structures around the house's distinctive swimming pool and placed a green sculpture of Lautner looking out from the cantilevered master bedroom (the walls open to exactly nothing right there, as you can see in the photos; it's unbelievable that it ever got built); it echoes "a famous shot taken during construction of the house." He also created assorted other small sculptures and models to "refer to the house and its specific structure, such as its triangular roof beams, as well as to the new owner, James Goldstein, who has been living in the house for more than forty years."

The house was originally built for the Sheats family, but Goldstein (who you might recognize from his constant courtside presence at Lakers games) tweaked and added to the house over the decades with the help of Lautner and later Duncan Nicholson, who worked in Lautner's office. Most recently he's been putting in a huge event space topped with a tennis court--intrepid Curbed photog Elizabeth Daniels also got a few shots inside that under-construction space, and at the Rudolph Schindler-designed Fitzpatrick-Leland house, where Veilhan was staying while he was in town.