LACMA

83 (1949) to Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Blade Runner (1982) and Alfonso Cuarón's nightmarish movie Children of Men (2006). A typical installation, such as Critical Mass (2004) or Vertigo (2005), features a swooping tidal wave of urban rubble careening around the gallery walls, diving across the ceiling, spilling onto the floor. It is an alarming vision of civic space turned lethal. Other artists stage interventions, whether sanctioned or not, into real urban spaces, calling attention to undetected history or unexpected activity there, thus transforming the viewer's perception of those spaces. Sandra de la Loza, for example, places unauthorized monuments, plaques, and other markers on otherwise un- commemorated historic sites of relevance to the Los Angeles Chicano community. Surreptitiously and without permission, she placed a commemorative metal plaque mounted on a stelelike support in the rail yards surrounding Union Station in Los Angeles. The plaque was inscribed with a text extolling an invisible army of taggers with spray cans, "transforming bland concrete walls into canvases filled with an explosive language of hard-edged urban forms, radiating color, and an abstract, coded lexicon" throughout the area. This commemoration, Triumph of the Tagger, was "Declared Monument #4," erected and placed by de la Loza, working under the name of the Pocho Research Society of Erased and Invisible History. Alejandro Diaz, looking like the perfect dandy dressed in a white seersucker suit, stood by the front door of Tiffany & Co., the jewelry and luxury goods purveyor on Fifth Avenue in New York. There he sold hand-scrawled cardboard signs bearing such textual dichos (sayings) as "Mexican wallpaper" or "Looking for Upper East Side Lady with nice clean apt. Must have cable"; the signs themselves, as well as documentation of the performance, are the art form for this project. Fittingly, Diaz describes his art as "social interventions" into American culture at large. San Antonio- based Cruz Ortiz likewise engages the larger culture in an artistic practice that he describes, in an unpublished statement, as the manifestation of his "transient punk character or altered ego named 'Spaztek.'" His art takes the form of "intrusive posters, out-of-context sign art, and bootleg videos," all probing "a love-hate rela- tionship with 'the American dream'. . . as if it were a romance gone wrong." Soy un boring lover ("I am a boring lover") declares one of his editioned Spanglish posters that mysteriously appear on telephone poles, fences, and walls around town, only to weather away—or to be taken to local frame shops by Ortiz's devoted admirers who collect his work in what can be described as a phantom distribution system that functions outside of (and beside the point of) the gallery-driven art market. His crudely made videos, cardboard sculptures, and printed signs are sometimes shown in local bars, makeshift exhibition spaces, and sometimes even dedicated art venues, including nonprofit spaces, museums, and the occasional commercial art gallery. Almost as if channeling his creative energy through others, Arturo Ernesto Romo often operates through the artistic persona of Dr. Eufencio Rojas, a curious sort who is part philosopher, part pseudoscientist, part quack physician, and part dada Arturo Ernesto Romo, Dr. Eufencio Rojas, master chemist, indian shaman, spiritual healer, 2004, photocopy on paper, 8 1 /2 x 11 in.

• Cover