Phantom Sightings @ LACMA

My friend Gary Garay will be participating in this exhibition, upcoming at LACMA.

April 6, 2008–September 1, 2008 | Art of the Americas

Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement will be the largest exhibition of cutting-edge Chicano art ever presented at LACMA. Chicano art, traditionally described as work created by Americans of Mexican descent, was established as a politically and culturally inspired movement during the counterculture revolutions of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This exhibition explores the more experimental tendencies within the Chicano art movement—ones oriented less toward painting and declarative polemical assertion than toward conceptual art, performance, film, photo- and media-based art, and "stealthy" artistic interventions in urban spaces. The exhibition includes approximately 125 works in all media, including painting and sculpture as well as installation, conceptual, video, performance art, and intermedia works that incorporate film, digital, and sound art. Artists featured are photographer Christina Fernandez, who documents the poetic and “phantom” in the urban landscape; Mario Ybarra Jr., who creates performances, site-specific installations and intermedia works; the “intermedia synaesthesia” of the seminal conceptual art group Asco; and the New York-based artist Nicola Lopez, who creates dramatic installations with drawings that extend from the wall into the gallery.

The curators are Rita Gonzalez, American Art, LACMA, Howard Fox, Contemporary Art, LACMA, and Chon Noriega, Adjunct Curator of Latino and Chicano Art, LACMA, and Director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and was made possible in part by the Peter Norton Family Foundation and LACMA's Art Museum Council.

Additional support was provided by the Contemporary Projects Endowment Fund. Contributors to the fund include Mr. and Mrs. Eric Lidow, Ronnie and Vidal Sassoon, Steve Martin, The Broad Art Foundation, Bob Crewe, Tony and Gail Ganz, Ansley I. Graham Trust, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Barry and Julie Smooke, and Sandra and Jacob Y. Terner.

Comments

[Gene McCarthy]

I recently attended the opening "Founder's" reception at LACMA for Phantom Sightings. One word can describe what I saw. Horrible!