LACMA

48 We might also be pulled in a more ludic direction with the paintings of Carolyn Castaño. Her Tropical Baby series nods to what I would call the aesthetics of glam- our on a budget. Driving or walking around the cities populated by the artists in the show, from Los Angeles to Queens, one can see the influence of vivid, hand- painted signs and the traces of modern design and typography trickling in from art and high fashion onto the facades and walls of small urban businesses. But the matter of influence is never simple, and Castaño reminds us in her glittered and appliquéd surfaces that working- and middle-class chic is an unacknowledged cata- lyst for the fashion industry, especially in the current day and age as first- and second-generation American designers are more likely to have Latin American or Asian roots. 9 The connecting thread in the exhibition is a shared interest in the urban and what Harry Gamboa Jr. has called the "conceptually political." The artists I discuss attempt to address spatial concerns through the destabilization of the monument and architecture; they also betray an interest in how urban identities and untold historical narratives blend in both public and gallery-bound works. They engage sites through various means, from perceptual studies (utilizing minimalist and conceptual art idioms in an urban context) to institutional critiques. They look broadly at street-level tactics, finding inspiration in vernacular signage, industrial landscapes, graffiti, and street art, and devise interventions in both sanctioned and unsanctioned arenas. Harry Gamboa's creative output—from his early collaborations with the collective Asco to his more recent guided improvisations in video and experimental theater that involve an array of culture producers—took as its starting point the proposition that art done on the fringes, in zones of low visibility, has the potential to destabi- lize stereotypical views of ethnic communities in urban spaces. 10 "We were trying to reflect the violence around us…and we were breaking people's preconceptions of what Chicano artists should do." 11 Gamboa labeled both Asco and Chicano painter John Valadez as "urban existentialists" for their depictions of the absurd and the cruel that suffused the everyday reality of the barrio. 12 Rather than using the culturally affirmative symbols of most Chicano art, Asco's ephemeral performances and their corollary documentation exposed the extremes of urban life. Asco and the urban existentialists' spatial metaphors were not grounded in Aztlán, the defining spatial paradigm of the Chicano movement and impetus for much of the Pre-Columbian symbology in Chicano art. 13 In the context of this exhibition, the output of such urban existentialists matters because of their departure from a call to claim or reclaim a homeland. Max Benavidez and Kate Vozoff describe the differences between the collectives Los Four and Asco, with the former's ethnonational and folkloric production and the latter's interest in "visual nausea and conceptual violence" as emblematic of distinct strains in Chicano art since the 1970s. The experience of higher education for Los Four— their work have particular resonance with theorists of urban- ism, postmodern geography, and vernacular architecture. 6 The subtitle to this exhibition, Art after the Chicano Movement, suggests both the transformation of aesthetics and activism from the 1970s to the present as informed by changes brought about by revisionist challenges to ethno- nationalism by feminism and queer theory, changes in arts discourses, and arts funding mandates, as well as the influx of new immigrant populations transforming Mexican or Chicano urban centers into Latino metropolises. The Chicano movement has been shaped by all of these sociopo- litical and cultural occurrences—and thus no longer exists as a singular social protest movement. This essay discusses artists in the exhibition who come after the Chicano move- ment and either have moved away from identifying themselves as Chicano/a artists or have attempted to complicate what that term means at this historical juncture. The artists included in this show are aware that identity is situational, rather than intrinsic and essential; they also have a nonhierarchical approach to media well suited to many of their studio and post-studio practices. Phantom Sightings adjusts its thematic focus on artists whose practices evidence an awareness of street aesthetics as a transnational landscape of signs and forms of address. 7 Informed by an awareness of transcultural currents, artists in this exhibition create "impertinent and out-of-bounds ethnic visions" that veer away from ethnographic or social scientific studies into "real and surreal visions, absurd versions of actual events, [and] symbolic interpretations" of the city. 8 Vast walls used for commercial signage, security fences, telephone poles, and other sites that were once used to promulgate Chicano movement activities are now diversely used as source material for these surreal visions and as subject matter of impertinent ethnic visions. We might be propelled to new sites of surveil- lance and "new world order," as in Sandra de la Loza's Guantanamo (2007), a detournement of a neon theatrical sign from a movie palace in downtown Los Angeles. De la Loza evokes the transnational as phantom in the projection of a geopolitical conversation about dwindling civil liberties that should be illuminated in public spaces but remains just out of sight.

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