LACMA

35 attention to medium, rather than formal and thematic concerns within a representational field. These artists entered art schools after the Chicano movement, but also after the emergence of both minimalism and "mixed media" art. Rubén Ortiz-Torres exemplifies this shift, as well as the convergence of high and low cultures, in his engagement of abstract painting through the use of urethane custom car paints on urethane foam in Urban Landscape (2006), on aluminum in his Assimilation & Resistance series, Transmutation I and II, and New Gold Dreams (all 2003), or on steel in his Impure Beauty series (1999). If, as John C. Welchman argues, "abstract painting… advocated for field and autonomy, surface, and self-reference," Ortiz- Torres's paintings at once mimic and challenge this history, attending to materials and form in a way that reintroduces depth and social context. 34 As a visual effect, the layering of urethane paints on metal produces both depth and multiple perspectives (with color variation). But the specificity of the medium itself—the particular type of paint and surface, as well as the technique required to apply one to the other— not only deviates from an implied norm of oil/acrylic on canvas/plywood but also references beyond the art world (and art supply stores) to the U.S. automotive industry and the Chicano car culture that "customizes" its products in order to move "low and slow" through a segregated urban space. Similarly, Juan Capistran's work engages minimalism and abstract painting in a way that cites the underlying racial politics or that resites the work within the urban environment of post-riot Los Angeles. In White Minority (2005), he both references and puns on Frank Stella's black paintings as well as on the insignia for L.A. punk band Black Flag. This latter reference is itself in contrast to one of Stella's most well- known black paintings, Die Fahne Hoch! (1959), a title taken from the first line of the Nazi anthem, "The Flag on High!" Furthermore, if Stella determined the width of the white stripes of blank or unpainted canvas based on the formal construction of the stretchers (the painting's hidden struc- turing), Capistran draws attention to the fact that white is a "minority" presence in a work that is otherwise covered with black paint (its surface appearance). While art historians have generally followed Carl Andre's lead in arguing that "there is nothing else in his painting" than painted stripes, 35 Stella's Frank Stella, Die Fahne Hoch! 1959, enamel on canvas, 121 1 /2 x 73 in., Whitney Museum of American Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene M. Schwartz

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