LACMA

he documents such oddities as replicas of Maya temples in far- flung locales as the Bahamas, Seville, and the Swiss village of Interlaken. Not content merely to cite or depict a world in flux, Ortiz- Torres actually induces it. For example, he has made paintings that at first glance appear to be monochromatic but, as the viewer shifts position, dramatically shift to different colors, thanks to a line of commercially manufactured specialty paints for cars marketed under the brand name Kameleon Kolors. Related are a group of wall-mounted reliefs that appear to be abstract but—again, as the viewer changes position—"snap" like anamorphic images into recognizable graffiti tags. The works not only are about shift and change, they literally embody these phenomena. Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, writing on Ortiz-Torres for the Los Angeles Times, invoked the title of the 1951 sci-fi film When Worlds Collide. But in his art, worlds do not collide (at least not with apocalyptic, destructive consequence) so much as they entwine, as if mating, to superimpose, interpenetrate, and extravagate—that is, to wander beyond boundaries that are known and obeyed. Ortiz-Torres's art transgresses and indeed transcends the separations that typically maintain the mutually exclusive identities of whatever he interfuses and merges, leading to a new and viable mestizo—a hybrid entity whose beguiling emergence might be questioned with "Why?" and answered with "Why not?" —HOWARD N. FOX Rubén Ortiz-Torres, born in Mexico, educated in the United States, and living and working in both countries, is binational and bicultural. His ongoing interest in cultural merger and transmutation might seem to be an idiosyncratic preoccupation; yet as the futures of the two nations become ever more entwined—indeed, as many nations and cultures continue to become more globally linked and interdependent— his concerns may suggest paradigms of social, cultural, and artistic evolution for the future. The world revealed in his art is in constant flux. Indeed, flux—as a cultural force—is the central abiding reality in his protean art forms. Ortiz-Torres is equally at home in such disparate mediums as photography, sculpture, painting, installa- tion, performance (particularly his performing machines and automobiles), artist books, and digital art. In all of these forms, Ortiz-Torres examines both fictional and real instances of identity and physical form morphing into other, less recog- nizable hybrids. Uncanny and witty graftings populate his world, such as a figurine of a gold Chinese dragon sprouting eight "bobble heads" of baseball star Fernando Valenzuela; a velvet yarmulke embroidered with the insignia of the Los Angeles Dodgers (in homage to Jewish pitcher Sandy Koufax); and a deluxe, battery-powered leaf blower (similar to gasoline-powered ones favored by gardeners in Los Angeles, but silent and fumeless) painted and ornamented in the manner of a customized lowrider car. Using computer programs and state-of-the-art digital editing techniques, he has created a collection of video transmogrifications featuring such spectacles as Tweety Bird morphing into the Incredible Hulk, a statuette of the Virgin of Guadalupe morphing into the form of a surfboarding monkey, and a ceramic Buddha undergoing a succession of reincarnations that include a football-playing bulldog and E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial. Ortiz-Torres satirizes the culture of economic power in a digitally rendered video of a huge force field—formally abstract yet faintly resembling Godzilla— engaged with the NASDAQ MarketSite broadcast studio in New York's Times Square in a patently conjugal embrace that climaxes in a spas- modic burst of energy and light, a kind of capitalist Big Bang. In addition to these invented fictions, Ortiz-Torres is fascinated by improbable yet real "translocations" of art, artifact, and icons from one culture or site to another. In an ongoing project, RUBÉN ORTIZ-TORRES 189

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