A Chinatown warehouse is about to become a real, functioning chocolate factory, and the man behind it is one of Los Angeles art's most provocative figures. Paul McCarthy is bringing his Chocolate Factory installation to the city for the first time, transforming the Performance Art Museum's industrial space into a working production line where costumed staff will cast chocolate sculptures by the hundreds, every single day, from Nov. 20 through Dec. 26.
McCarthy is a contemporary L.A. artist known for working across mediums, and he's also an early supporter and board member of the Performance Art Museum, according to Los Angeles Magazine. The installation transforms PAM's industrial Chinatown warehouse into a functional chocolate factory, with museum workers casting hundreds of McCarthy's chocolate sculptures — including pieces titled “Santa with Tree Plug” and “Tree Plug” — each day. The project is being staged as a special benefit for the museum, which, as LA Weekly reports, is working toward a planned January 2027 opening.
A Factory With a Message About Labor and Value
This isn't just spectacle for its own sake. The piece explores production, consumption, labor and value, per the same LA Weekly report, continuing themes McCarthy has returned to across multiple cities and over nearly two decades. For the Chinatown run, the museum is partnering with Beverly Hills chocolatier andSons to help bring the factory floor to life, Los Angeles Magazine notes.
According to Time Out, the installation takes place at the Performance Art Museum in Chinatown, with workers casting roughly 400 chocolate sculptures each day as part of a limited-edition run created in partnership with andSons. Proceeds from the chocolate sculptures are set to fund the museum's grand opening and future programming, Time Out reports, and the museum is encouraging reservations through its website ahead of the run.
Following Factories in New York and Paris
McCarthy's chocolate factory concept didn't start in Los Angeles. The installation was first staged in New York in 2007, a six-week takeover of Maccarone Gallery that transformed the gallery into a working chocolate factory producing figurines based on McCarthy's “Santa With Butt Plug,” according to W Magazine. That original New York run was reported to produce about 1,000 figurines daily, far outpacing the hundreds expected at the Los Angeles version.
The concept later traveled to the historic Monnaie de Paris in 2014, where, as the Los Angeles Times described it, the Paris show amounted to a quasi-remounting of the original New York installation. Visitors there were able to watch workers produce the chocolate figurines in real time and purchase them at the front desk and bookstore, the Times reported. The Paris chocolatier Chocolaterie Damiens handled the technical side of that run, installing the machines and training the chocolatiers who produced the Santa and Tree sculptures for sale throughout the exhibition, according to Monnaie de Paris.
What Comes Next for the Chocolate Line
McCarthy has floated the idea of expanding the factory's seasonal output well beyond Christmas figurines, telling W Magazine that in the future it could produce figurines for Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving as well. Whether that expansion makes its way to the Chinatown warehouse remains to be seen, but for now the focus is on the holiday run and the museum's push toward its 2027 opening.
For Angelenos curious enough to watch chocolate get made on an assembly line inside a contemporary art installation, the Performance Art Museum's Chinatown warehouse will be the place to do it this holiday season, continuing a strange and oddly industrious lineage that stretches back to a Manhattan gallery nearly twenty years ago.
