LACMA

edgy indeed, covertly bearing an unsettling message about the uses and abuses of globalization—a faintly sardonic reminder of who benefits, and who does not, from global capitalism. Another group of soft sculptures is even more sly, in both appear- ance and meaning: at first glance they seem to be potted cacti and succulents, until on closer inspection they reveal themselves to be effigies of plants, made of sewn patches of cloth—specifically fabric recycled and repurposed by Cabrera from the actual uniforms of United States Border Patrol agents. Los Angeles artist Juan Capistran takes art history seriously enough to kidnap it. One of his most widely exhibited pieces, The Breaks (2000), is a series of photographs documenting him break dancing on what appears to be a Carl Andre minimalist floor sculpture. In his witty act of piracy, Capistran subsumes the object's "high art" pedigree to his own engagement of a patently vernacular art form. He returned to this tactic of commandeering minimalist art for decidedly nonminimalist intent in a series of paintings and sculptures that simultaneously pay their respects to and utterly sabotage minimalist art precedents. White Minority (2005), with its black surface inscribed with neat white zigzagging pinstripes, openly quotes the elegant geometries of Frank Stella's black paintings from the late 1950s and early 1960s; Capistran filters Stella, however, through an arrangement of four panels that many members of Capistran's generation will recognize as the insignia of the pioneering hardcore punk rock band Black Flag. This strategy of appropriating an idiom that has a widely perceived cultural meaning or identity and imposing another set of values upon it is shared by others. Adrian Esparza exhibits a traditional Southwestern striped serape whose woven thread he unravels and "deranges" into a totally different geometric composition that strikingly resembles Stella's colorful series of concentric squares. Eduardo Sarabia, who lives and works in both Guadalajara, Mexico, and Berlin, repurposes his own family history, interweaving it with contemporary events and creating a body of work that has elements of a fictional autobiography. As a boy, Sarabia often heard old family legends about his grandfather and a rumored—but never found—buried treasure. As an artist, Sarabia set out on a personal picaresque to examine the family legend and to learn the truth, or untruth, of the mystery. Sarabia's quest brought him to areas of Mexico and the American Southwest that are centers of narcotrafficking, which has its own rich lore in word-of-mouth legend, song, television, movies, and even religion, namely in the figure of Jesús Malverde, the so-called patron saint of drug dealers. All of this merged in Sarabia's imagination and several quasifantastical bodies of work—including sculptures, videos, drawings, and installations—that inspired it. His art is a cryptic, idiosyncratic mythology based equally in real history, rumor, and make-believe. The art of Gary Garay follows a parallel road. Born in Mexico, Garay was brought by his parents to California, where he grew up in a small town in the Mojave Desert. The family later moved back to Mexico, and Garay, then a student 86 Eduardo Sarabia, still from Lo Quiero Todo (I Want It All), 2003, digital video • Carolyn Castaño, Tropical Baby (Violetta), 2006

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