Art Lies, Volume 59, Fall 2008 Page: 112

                                
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L. Carlee Fernandez, Self Portrait: Portrait of My Father, Manuel Fernandez,
2006; C-print; 2 prints, each 18 x 12 inches; courtesy the artist and Acuna-
Hansen Gallery, Los Angeles;  Carlee Fernandez
R. Christina Fernandez, Lavanderia #1, 2002; Chromogenic development print
mounted on Sintra; 30 x 40 inches; Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
Ralph M. Parsons Fund;  Christina Fernandez; photo courtesy Gallery
Luisotti, Santa Monica

LOS ANGELES
Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
"Chicanos don't make art, they make graffiti." This is what an unnamed
Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator told Harry Gamboa Jr. in 1972.
In response, Gamboa, along with other members of the art collective
Asco, defiantly spray painted their names on one of the museum's outer
walls. In signing their names to it, they recreated the museum as a piece
of conceptual art. Seeing Asco's photo documentation of this event, Spray
Paint LACMA, at the entrance to Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano
Movement made this writer's idealist heart pump just a little bit faster. This
is the kind of radical gesture that gives one hope that art can actually do
something, inspire a generation and raise important questions, as well as
give the middle finger to people in power unwilling to see what's right in
front of their faces.
Selecting art by a younger generation of artists working after the
ostensible end of the Chicano Movement, curators Howard Fox, Rita
Gonzalez and Chon Noriega use this exhibition to highlight a turn away
from "realist" practices saturated with overt symbolism and indebted to
the didactic murals typical of 1960s radical art. Instead, they select work
by artists laboring not under the Chicano label but alongside it, using
the term as a conceptual springboard rather than an institutionalized
straightjacket. As an exhibition built on investigating Chicano art today-
a concept the curators self-consciously admit is problematic-Phantom
Sightings is comfortable in its willingness to embrace the notion that there
is no monolithic Chicano identity or characteristic kind of "Chicano" art.
The exhibition fills the LACMA galleries to capacity with over 100

artworks by 31 artists, from Whitney Biennial art stars to relative newcom-
ers. The walls look as if they are literally bursting at the seams thanks
to this unfortunate curatorial gesture; likewise, architectural flourishes
resemble shantytown housing. LACMA is known for going over the top
with its exhibition design (bowler hats for guards in a recent Magritte
show, for instance), but here-in a show addressing issues of race, class
and the border-the cobbled together entrance signage and overhangs
just look forced, distracting and offensive. Fortunately, the work in this
exhibition remains largely unscathed by this poor decision.
Works that stand out harness the momentum of Asco's conceptual
slingshot, using the conceptual power of humor, a keen understanding
of institutionalized racism and a fluid understanding of identity. A prime
example is Ken Gonzales-Day's Erased Lynching series in which the artist
erases hanging bodies and ropes from nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century spectacle lynching postcards; what's left is a ghostly illuminated
crowd staring into a void. The simple gesture of removal refocuses the
viewer's gaze and calls attention to the important role spectatorship plays
in gruesome events. A visit to the artist's website informs us that more
Latinos were lynched in California than persons of any other race or ethnic-
ity. Looking at Gonzales-Day's work demands a sobering reflection not just
on the past but on racist violence today, which, in light of the perennial
police riots and crackdowns and state-sponsored executions inflicted on
people of color, has a disturbingly resilient presence.
Sandra de la Loza, working under the name The Pocho Research

112 ART LIES NO. 59

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