Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement

Description

This landmark show explores the experimental tendencies within the Chicano art movement — ones oriented less toward painting and declarative polemics than toward conceptual art, performance, film, photo- and media-based art and "stealthy" interventions in urban spaces.

Review

"Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement," brings together a diverse and satisfying array of recent work. Sometimes the art is specific to questions of ethnic identity; often it's not.

What's passing into history is an aesthetic that matured in the 1970s, produced by Mexican American artists with an eye toward articulation of Mexican American experience. A full generation later, what has arrived on the scene is something different -- an aesthetic produced by Mexican American artists with an eye toward articulating whatever they darn well please.

Thirty-one artists -- most based here, as well as in Texas, New York and elsewhere -- are represented by 102 works. Some is derivative, but the show is gutsy (and correct) in asserting L.A. art's primacy for a significant slice of recent history.

Learn More

Read Times staff writer Agustin Gurza's feature article on this remarkable art exhibition. Also check out Times art critic Christopher Knight's full review as well as a photo gallery that features images taken from the show.

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