Faces to Watch in ’92 : These are the people Calendar’s critics and writers think you’ll be hearing about in 1992. In some cases, they’re familiar people who will experience a transitional year. Some are newcomers who could have a breakthrough year. : PAUL SCHIMMEL

Curator Paul Schimmel has been a player in Southern California’s art scene for more than a decade--first at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, then, since early 1990, as chief curator at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. But 1992 marks his big-city debut. “Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s,” the first major exhibition that Schimmel has organized for MOCA, is scheduled for Jan. 26-April 26. Advance publicity suggests that Schimmel will come on strong, provocative title and all. The Temporary Contemporary’s entire 45,000-square-foot exhibition space will be filled with works by 16 visual artists who have “a common interest in exploring universal human experiences--including fear, anxiety, obsession--and in portraying the dark, macabre or bitterly comic aspects of life,” Schimmel says. Ten Los Angeles-based writers who share this nasty vision will contribute poetry and fiction to “Helter-Skelter’s” catalogue.