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Pan Recommends for the week of June 6 to June 12
Robert Boyd
It seems as if the summer season has begun--this week is fairly light on new art openings. So maybe this is the weekend to see some shows at the Menil again, or check out one of the many art exhibits that opened last weekend but that you haven't gotten around to yet.
THURSDAY
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Light bulbs unlimited
"Jsut That Way," curator's talk by Rachel Hooper about andy coolquitt: attainable excellence at the Blaffer Museum, 6:30 pm. Hooper tells you everything you want to know about Andy Coolquitt, Austin's master of crackhouse art and combining crap with crap.
FRIDAY/SATURDAY
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Introducing The Texas Punk Problem by Bill Daniels at Gallery Homeland, 7 pm. Friday and 7 pm. Saturday. Photo exhibit, film screening, panel discussion, punk rock music and a fundraiser for a book project by Bill Daniels, the filmmaker who made Who Is Bozo Texino?. We've got nothing better to do than get nostalgic about old punk rock and have a couple of brews.
SUNDAY
James Turrell: The Light Inside from Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Vimeo.
James Turrell: The Light Insideat the MFAH, June 9 (through September 22). Hard to imagine a better way to spend a hot Sunday than taking a cool light bath in James Turrell's retrospective. However, the MFAH is severely rationing photons for this show and recommends that you make a reservation.
![Share]()
It seems as if the summer season has begun--this week is fairly light on new art openings. So maybe this is the weekend to see some shows at the Menil again, or check out one of the many art exhibits that opened last weekend but that you haven't gotten around to yet.
THURSDAY
Light bulbs unlimited
"Jsut That Way," curator's talk by Rachel Hooper about andy coolquitt: attainable excellence at the Blaffer Museum, 6:30 pm. Hooper tells you everything you want to know about Andy Coolquitt, Austin's master of crackhouse art and combining crap with crap.
FRIDAY/SATURDAY
Introducing The Texas Punk Problem by Bill Daniels at Gallery Homeland, 7 pm. Friday and 7 pm. Saturday. Photo exhibit, film screening, panel discussion, punk rock music and a fundraiser for a book project by Bill Daniels, the filmmaker who made Who Is Bozo Texino?. We've got nothing better to do than get nostalgic about old punk rock and have a couple of brews.
SUNDAY
James Turrell: The Light Inside from Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Vimeo.
James Turrell: The Light Insideat the MFAH, June 9 (through September 22). Hard to imagine a better way to spend a hot Sunday than taking a cool light bath in James Turrell's retrospective. However, the MFAH is severely rationing photons for this show and recommends that you make a reservation.
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Jillian Conrad—Notable Vacillations
Betsy Huete
There is a long, rich history of the use of detritus in sculpture, and there seems to be a spike in detrital interest in Houston this year, particularly with the Blaffer Museum’s recent Tony Feher and current Andy Coolquitt exhibits. While Jillian Conrad’s choice of materials shouldn’t exactly be considered detritus, she does gravitate towards objects that comprise our everyday: like concrete, fabric, and even cardboard. As Fehrer uses trash to create reductive works and Coolquitt as carriers of memory and previous usage, Conrad utilizes these strategies to generate far more complex formal narratives. Her work has been described as minimalist and compared to Stan Brakhage—these divergent reads all seeming ridiculous and vaguely plausible.
Conrad is less a sculptor and more a draftswoman, as if she is a cartographer for liminal spaces. Between the totally impractical aerial architectural mappings of Sites and Settlements (2012) and projections of faux landmarks like Arch de (2011), she is undoubtedly preoccupied with locations and mirages. Ley Lines, up now at Devin Borden Gallery, is no different—the literal definition meaning the alleged lines created between monuments, ancient structures, and prominent points in landscapes, like ridge tops. The work in this exhibition constantly vacillates between place and pathway, ultimately residing in permanent ambivalence. It’s agitating and fantastic.
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Jillian Conrad, Bonsai Radio 2, graphite, brass, concrete, porcelain, steel, solder
The Bonsai Radio series steals the show. Here Conrad displays a mastery of line—she stands and leans brass in subtle ways that yield massive vulnerability and pathos. In Bonsai Radio 2 she juxtaposes impossible, at the very least improbable, materials like graphite, brass, porcelain, and concrete as an overflowing, residue-laden box that feels naturally occurring. The grid-like lines in Bonsai Radio 1 simultaneously suggest ardent directionality and total purposelessness. There is an intimacy in the quaint scale of these objects, and the fact that they are placed on shelves as opposed to pedestals forces a specific angle, enabling the viewer to trust Conrad’s directions, as if he is reading a nonsensical map.
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Jillian Conrad, The old straight track, brass, aluminum mesh, thread
The power of Ley Lines lies in moments of utter believability. The viewer cognitively understands that these structures are completely contrived by the artist, yet the pieces somehow effortlessly present themselves as unified objects that could plausibly show up in the world, at least the world outside of the gallery. However, not every moment is completely believable. The old straight track combines a tall yet modest structure of thin brass tubes slightly curving upwards towards the ceiling and leaning against the wall behind it. Near the top, which should be about six feet or so, a perpendicular piece of brass of similar dimensions juts out along the wall. Pieced-together sheets of aluminum mesh cascade down the wall from the perpendicular tube in a triangular format, the tip resting on the floor. Colorful thread scale two sides of the roughly formed triangle, moving in and out like tightly compacted shockwaves. The cold, perpendicular crossing of the brass is arresting by itself. The mesh is strangely decorative, and although the combination of thread and aluminum is materially compelling, it feels confined to the wall and forcefully attached to the brass. Perhaps the mesh should stand freely on the floor, more in line with Collapsed or String Quartet.
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Jillian Conrad, Long Division (left), thread, graphite, linen; and Bonsai Radio 3 (right), brass, cardboard, rubber, cork
Long Division likely stands over eight feet tall. Again, two thin brass tubes tower above the viewer, leaning in a pathetically elegant fashion. At the very bottom a small brass leg emerges as an unlikely support, tacked together with muddied plasticine. The gimpy leg and ball of plasticine that links it to the rest of the structure are sincere, sweet, and stunning. But about a third to half of the way up the structure, a wooly phallic arm juts out the side, disturbing the lovely simplicity of line, stagnating the vertical movement of the viewer’s eye.
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Jillian Conrad, Short Wave (Orange), thread, graphite, linen
On both sides of the gallery, Conrad has placed framed drawings that contain thread, linen, and long thin sticks of graphite. Certainly these drawings are intended to be their own works, and are stated so in the gallery listing. However, given the relation of them to the free standing sculptures in the gallery space, they feel like studies for the larger works, and they are wonderfully effective that way. The course corrections both in thread lines and pencil lines are indicative of process. By looking at these the viewer gains insight into Conrad’s sculptural decision making, and it is both revealing and beneficial for the work at large.
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Jillian Conrad, Collapsed, chicken wire, gold, bronze
Ley Lines as a complete arrangement is sparse, and appropriately so: Jillian Conrad makes pieces that need to meander. They are demure yet aggressive, improbable yet trustworthy. And while they are often reminiscent of an innocent curiosity, they also evoke the kind of anxiety that compels a viewer to repeatedly rethink and revisit her work.
Ley Lines runs through June 25 at Devin Borden Gallery.
![Share]()
There is a long, rich history of the use of detritus in sculpture, and there seems to be a spike in detrital interest in Houston this year, particularly with the Blaffer Museum’s recent Tony Feher and current Andy Coolquitt exhibits. While Jillian Conrad’s choice of materials shouldn’t exactly be considered detritus, she does gravitate towards objects that comprise our everyday: like concrete, fabric, and even cardboard. As Fehrer uses trash to create reductive works and Coolquitt as carriers of memory and previous usage, Conrad utilizes these strategies to generate far more complex formal narratives. Her work has been described as minimalist and compared to Stan Brakhage—these divergent reads all seeming ridiculous and vaguely plausible.
Conrad is less a sculptor and more a draftswoman, as if she is a cartographer for liminal spaces. Between the totally impractical aerial architectural mappings of Sites and Settlements (2012) and projections of faux landmarks like Arch de (2011), she is undoubtedly preoccupied with locations and mirages. Ley Lines, up now at Devin Borden Gallery, is no different—the literal definition meaning the alleged lines created between monuments, ancient structures, and prominent points in landscapes, like ridge tops. The work in this exhibition constantly vacillates between place and pathway, ultimately residing in permanent ambivalence. It’s agitating and fantastic.
Jillian Conrad, Bonsai Radio 2, graphite, brass, concrete, porcelain, steel, solder
The Bonsai Radio series steals the show. Here Conrad displays a mastery of line—she stands and leans brass in subtle ways that yield massive vulnerability and pathos. In Bonsai Radio 2 she juxtaposes impossible, at the very least improbable, materials like graphite, brass, porcelain, and concrete as an overflowing, residue-laden box that feels naturally occurring. The grid-like lines in Bonsai Radio 1 simultaneously suggest ardent directionality and total purposelessness. There is an intimacy in the quaint scale of these objects, and the fact that they are placed on shelves as opposed to pedestals forces a specific angle, enabling the viewer to trust Conrad’s directions, as if he is reading a nonsensical map.
Jillian Conrad, The old straight track, brass, aluminum mesh, thread
The power of Ley Lines lies in moments of utter believability. The viewer cognitively understands that these structures are completely contrived by the artist, yet the pieces somehow effortlessly present themselves as unified objects that could plausibly show up in the world, at least the world outside of the gallery. However, not every moment is completely believable. The old straight track combines a tall yet modest structure of thin brass tubes slightly curving upwards towards the ceiling and leaning against the wall behind it. Near the top, which should be about six feet or so, a perpendicular piece of brass of similar dimensions juts out along the wall. Pieced-together sheets of aluminum mesh cascade down the wall from the perpendicular tube in a triangular format, the tip resting on the floor. Colorful thread scale two sides of the roughly formed triangle, moving in and out like tightly compacted shockwaves. The cold, perpendicular crossing of the brass is arresting by itself. The mesh is strangely decorative, and although the combination of thread and aluminum is materially compelling, it feels confined to the wall and forcefully attached to the brass. Perhaps the mesh should stand freely on the floor, more in line with Collapsed or String Quartet.
Jillian Conrad, Long Division (left), thread, graphite, linen; and Bonsai Radio 3 (right), brass, cardboard, rubber, cork
Long Division likely stands over eight feet tall. Again, two thin brass tubes tower above the viewer, leaning in a pathetically elegant fashion. At the very bottom a small brass leg emerges as an unlikely support, tacked together with muddied plasticine. The gimpy leg and ball of plasticine that links it to the rest of the structure are sincere, sweet, and stunning. But about a third to half of the way up the structure, a wooly phallic arm juts out the side, disturbing the lovely simplicity of line, stagnating the vertical movement of the viewer’s eye.
Jillian Conrad, Short Wave (Orange), thread, graphite, linen
On both sides of the gallery, Conrad has placed framed drawings that contain thread, linen, and long thin sticks of graphite. Certainly these drawings are intended to be their own works, and are stated so in the gallery listing. However, given the relation of them to the free standing sculptures in the gallery space, they feel like studies for the larger works, and they are wonderfully effective that way. The course corrections both in thread lines and pencil lines are indicative of process. By looking at these the viewer gains insight into Conrad’s sculptural decision making, and it is both revealing and beneficial for the work at large.
Jillian Conrad, Collapsed, chicken wire, gold, bronze
Ley Lines as a complete arrangement is sparse, and appropriately so: Jillian Conrad makes pieces that need to meander. They are demure yet aggressive, improbable yet trustworthy. And while they are often reminiscent of an innocent curiosity, they also evoke the kind of anxiety that compels a viewer to repeatedly rethink and revisit her work.
Ley Lines runs through June 25 at Devin Borden Gallery.
↧
Big Five Oh, part 6: Lower East Side Perambulation (NSFW)
Robert Boyd
Back when I first came to New York in 1982, the Lower East Side still had a reputation as a dangerous place. It was still the LES of CBGB's, of druggies and squatters. The Tompkins Square Park riot still lay in the future. The Lower East Side was the home of radical art spaces like ABC no Rio. But a lot has happened in 30 years. The neighborhood feels pretty gentrified. And it is full of art galleries. The art gallery density is not quite equal to that in Chelsea, but it's close. After a day hanging out with DC and LM mostly inChelsea and in the West Village, I wanted to explore the LES. I decided I'd walk over to the New Museum on Bowery then meander south to Basketball City, where the NADA Art Fair was. I would check out whatever galleries I encountered along the way.
The New Museum was founded by Marcia Tucker in 1977 in SoHo. Tucker had been a curator at the Whitney until she was fired for putting on an exhibit by Richard Tuttle which was not well-received. She admirably said fuck it, I'll start my own museum. She started the New Museum in 1977 and ran it for 22 years. There is a long interview with her here, and I recommend her autobiography A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World![]()
. Once the scrappy underdog of a museum in pre-gentrified Soho, it is now an institution in the post-gentrified LES that has garnered a good deal of controversy not because of the cutting edge art it shows but because of its exhibition practices.
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The New Museum at night
The museum was showing NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, which was kind of a nostalgia show. All the art was made and/or shown in New York in 1993. The title of course comes from the Sonic Youth album that came out that year. In 1993, I was living in Seattle and Portland. I was aware of a few of the artists who were in this show, but not most. (Since then I've encountered them frequently enough--and some of the pieces in the show were already pretty well-known.) The museum itself is arranged very oddly--it's like a tall skinny ziggurat, with the upper galleries smaller than the ones below. So to see the show, you have to travel from floor to floor repeatedly. I started at the top and worked my way down.
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Felix Gonzalez-Torres
So Felix Gonzalez-Torres had a tall narrow room of his own.
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Charles Ray, Family Romance, 1992-93, painted fiberglass and synthetic hair
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Janine Antoni, Lick and Lather, 1993, chocolate and soap
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Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 7, 1993, three video monitors and video
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Kiki Smith, Virgin Mary, 1992, cast bronze
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Mike Kelley, Garbage Drawing (not sure which number it is), 1988, acrylic on paper
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Nicole Eisenman, Hanging Birth, 1993, oil on canvas
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Paul McCarthy, Cultural Gothic, 1992, Metal, motors, fiberglass, clothing, compressor, urethane rubber and stuffed goat
I had see Helter Skelter at MOCA in Los Angeles in 1992, which included several of the artists in Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star--Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley and Charles Ray. On one hand, you could divide the work between art that was primarily conceptual and art that was less so, but you could also see it as divided between art that has a certain shock value (or that at least was intended to freak you out in some way) and art that didn't try to operate on that level. Nicole Eisenman, Paul McCarthy and Charles Ray weren't trying to give you warm snuggley feelings nor were they about putting you in a contemplative state. I like their work a lot, but if an animatronic statue of a little boy fucking a goat didn't cause riots, you wonder if anything in the world of contemporary art could.
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The men's bathroom at the New Museum
I was worried that if someone walked in as I photographed the men's bathroom at the New Museum that I'd be arrested (or at least ejected). I felt a little pervy hanging around until the bathroom was empty. But it was worth it to get this photo--this is the most insane public restroom I've ever seen.
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New Museum selfie
The elevators are completely chromed. I suspect they have been the site of thousands of selfies.
After visiting the NewMuseum, I started my LES odyssey at Hahn & Garis, which appears to be a brand new gallery on Bowery.
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Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, T+85_red&blue_diptych, 2013, Lego
They had a group show up called Peripheral Visions: Contemporary Art from Australia. The piece above by Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro depicts the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Their medium? Legos. So this begged the question for me--is Lego art a thing? It seems pretty gimmicky to me, but I love Legos so as soon as I came home, I went to the Lego store and stocked up. We'll see if anything comes of it beyond a second childhood.
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Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, T+77_brown&red, 2011, Lego
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Stephen Bird, What Picasso Called an Erection for the Eyes, 2012, clay, pigment, glaze
This visual pun is amusing, but what really strikes me (and creeps me out) about What Picasso Called an Erection for the Eyes by Stephen Bird is that the erect penis is depicted as having been surgically removed--you see the ring of skin surrounding the disturbing inner tissue. If it had been just a flat color, it would have been a merely funny piece. But by making it fleshy all the way, including along the apparent incision, Bird complicates things. He makes his male viewers uncomfortable. This male, anyway.
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Stephen Bird, Majolica Shoot, 2012, pigment and glaze, 16.1 x 19.7 inches
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Stephen Bird, Persian Blue Shoot Out, 2012, pigment and glaze, 16.1 x 19.7 inches
He also has a series of plates made from one mold depicting two Jesus Christs engaged in a pistol duel, with the left Jesus wounding the right Jesus. The exhibit has three of these plates painted with quite different glazes, suggesting different times of day (Persian Blue Shoot Out seems like a night-time duel).
The show was curated by Marissa Bateman, who happened to be working in the gallery right then. She gave me a small but handsomely produced catalog for the show. The catalog mentions that Bateman "currently resides in both New York City & Sydney." Whenever I read something like that, I always wonder how someone manages such a living arrangement. It seems like residences in both of those cities would be quite expensive to maintain, not to mention the travel costs. And I guess the fact that I'm asking this question must mark me as a naive country mouse.
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Wim Delvoye, Suppo (scale model 1:2), 2010
At Sperone Westwater, there were several clever Wim Delvoye sculptures. It appears that he has taken existing three dimensional objects and using some CAD program twisted them in interesting ways and then fabricated them. Suppo is the name of a scale model RC aircraft maker, and I think that might be what he is referencing in the gothic fantasia Suppo (scale model 1:2) above.
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Wim Delvoye
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Wim Delvoye
Then there are these two pieces made out of stretched and twisted crucifixes. Again, it seems likely that a computer did the twisting prior to their fabrication. The top one has the crucifixes take the form of a double helix. The bottom one is apparently a Möbius strip. I like how they take a visual symbol of pre-scientific thinking and combine it with two visual symbols of post-enlightenment scientific thought--the double helix standing for DNA and biology, the Möbius strip a symbol of topology and in general of post-Euclidian mathematics.
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Amy Bessone, Object, 2013, silkscreen on canvas on panel, 89 x 68 inches
I found this piece by Amy Bessone at Salon 94 quit clever, but while I could see having it on a coffee mug, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want a seven foot high version.
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The exterior of Salon 94 had this fantastic video screen which showed a flower arrangement in the process of decaying.
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Also on the Bowery was this tribute to Houston's own Nekst.
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And at the corner of Bowery and Delancey was this painted building that appears to be the work of Kenny Scharf.
From Bowery I shifted over to Orchard St. because it seemed to have the highest density of galleries.
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On Stellar Rays exterior
On Stellar Rays was my favorite gallery name of all the ones I saw. And a name like that might lead you to expect cosmic art with intense psychedelic colors. But the work inside by Maria Petschnig was anything but cosmic.
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Maria Petschnig, from Vasistas, video
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Maria Petschnig installation
Maria Petschnig was described in the gallery literature as "frequently deal[ing] with the intimate, confronting taboos and dominant ideals surrounding gender and sex. By subjugating her own body to the eyes of the camera and the public, Petschnig implicates the spectator in the construction of narrative and character, beyond comfortable social conventions." In other words, same old, same old. There was work in the New Museum 1993 show that did this first and better. The videos weren't all that interesting.
However, the installation in the gallery was really excellent. From what I can tell, On Stellar Rays space is a typical gallery--clean white walls, high ceiling, versatile. But the installation Petschnig has made converts it utterly--cheap wood paneling, acoustic tile drop ceiling, cheap floor lamps and occasional mysterious objects. It looks like it could be a whorehouse, a sex dungeon, or even maybe the windowless room where a kidnapper has kept his victim for years. The space Ptschnig creates achieves the goal that On Stellar Rays described far better than the videos.
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David Nadel, Burn #299
When I went to Sasha Wolf Gallery just down the road, the vibe couldn't be more different. There was a beautiful show by photographer Katherine Wolkoff up, but it was a photo in the back by David Nadel that really caught my attention. At first, I couldn't tell what I was looking at--thousands of uneven black marks against a white background. It's a photograph of a snow-covered hillside where a forest has burned. Anyone who has driven between Austin and Houston through Bastrop has seen a similar ghost forest, the remains of a serious forest fire in 2011. The sight of it is haunting, and somehow taking similar photos in the snow, as Nadel has done, amplifies the effect.
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Ryan Humphrey at DCKT
And in an abrupt shift in tone (which was typical of this perambulation), we had the street punk petty criminality of Ryan Humphrey at DCKT. I liked the work because it made me laugh, and like Petschnig's installation, it made for a fairly convincing environment. (Apparently the materials were the results of petty crimes--stolen milk crates, broken bike locks, etc.
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Ryan Humphrey, Titty Fuck the Police
The "Police" part of Titty Fuck the Police is a real sign to which Humphrey's has added the other words. But the reason I like this is because it is the most bizarre variation on "Fuck the police" I've ever seen. Saying "Fuck the Police" or "Fuck the cops" is merely an angry commonplace. But "titty fuck the police" is both specific and absurd. And it made me laugh. (I'm realizing that a lot of the work on this stroll made me laugh. It's a good thing!)
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Amanda Browder, Prism/Livin/Room (detail), fabric installation
In the basement of Allegra LaViola was filled with Prism/Livin/Room by Amanda Browder. By the time I got here, I had seen at least 19 galleries and the New Museum. My feet were aching and I was tired. I almost didn't want to walk down the stairs to see the show in the basement because I was afraid it might be completely uninteresting and I'd have to walk up the stairs for no reason. But I took the chance and descended and saw this delightful installation. In addition to the fabric construction, there was a sewing machine--work on this installation was continuous. Apparently members of the public were invited to help on occasion.
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Amanda Browder, Prism/Livin/Room (detail), fabric installation
But best of all were two fabric covered chairs. They were so comfortable--I almost fell asleep in one. This would have been a good place for a nap. I don't know if it was just my weariness or if it was Amanda Browder's art, but this was the most peaceful and relaxing work I saw all day.
From there, NADA was only a couple of blocks away. But before I talk about NADA, I want to mention a couple of other LES galleries I saw on other days.
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Ford at Gallery Onetwentyright
On Thursday, Ford and I had stopped in Gallery Onetwentyeight after visiting Cutlog. They were having their own art fair--the Fridge Art Fair.
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It was a real art fair in the sense that it had multiple exhibitors. It was a little like the Pan Art Fair--some of the exhibitors were artists, some were galleries.
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paintings by Ingmar Usas at the Fridge Art Fair
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wall of Eric Ginsberg pet art
The guy behind Fridge was Eric Ginsberg, a painter who specializes in faux-naïf paintings of pets. (If you never went to art school and you paint like this, it's naive. If you have an MFA from Columbia, it's faux-naïf.) Of course, I totally approve of the Fridge Art Fair. Things like Fridge and Pan are not satellite art fairs--we're like little bits of space junk.
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Peter Rostovsky, Night Blossoms, 2012, photoshop painting created with Wacom tablet
About a a block from my hotel was P! Gallery. I liked these images by Peter Rostovsky.
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Peter Rostovsky, Tango Red, 2012, photoshop painting created with Wacom tablet
Next: NADA
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Back when I first came to New York in 1982, the Lower East Side still had a reputation as a dangerous place. It was still the LES of CBGB's, of druggies and squatters. The Tompkins Square Park riot still lay in the future. The Lower East Side was the home of radical art spaces like ABC no Rio. But a lot has happened in 30 years. The neighborhood feels pretty gentrified. And it is full of art galleries. The art gallery density is not quite equal to that in Chelsea, but it's close. After a day hanging out with DC and LM mostly inChelsea and in the West Village, I wanted to explore the LES. I decided I'd walk over to the New Museum on Bowery then meander south to Basketball City, where the NADA Art Fair was. I would check out whatever galleries I encountered along the way.
The New Museum was founded by Marcia Tucker in 1977 in SoHo. Tucker had been a curator at the Whitney until she was fired for putting on an exhibit by Richard Tuttle which was not well-received. She admirably said fuck it, I'll start my own museum. She started the New Museum in 1977 and ran it for 22 years. There is a long interview with her here, and I recommend her autobiography A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World
. Once the scrappy underdog of a museum in pre-gentrified Soho, it is now an institution in the post-gentrified LES that has garnered a good deal of controversy not because of the cutting edge art it shows but because of its exhibition practices. 
The New Museum at night
The museum was showing NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, which was kind of a nostalgia show. All the art was made and/or shown in New York in 1993. The title of course comes from the Sonic Youth album that came out that year. In 1993, I was living in Seattle and Portland. I was aware of a few of the artists who were in this show, but not most. (Since then I've encountered them frequently enough--and some of the pieces in the show were already pretty well-known.) The museum itself is arranged very oddly--it's like a tall skinny ziggurat, with the upper galleries smaller than the ones below. So to see the show, you have to travel from floor to floor repeatedly. I started at the top and worked my way down.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
So Felix Gonzalez-Torres had a tall narrow room of his own.
Charles Ray, Family Romance, 1992-93, painted fiberglass and synthetic hair
Janine Antoni, Lick and Lather, 1993, chocolate and soap
Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 7, 1993, three video monitors and video
Kiki Smith, Virgin Mary, 1992, cast bronze
Mike Kelley, Garbage Drawing (not sure which number it is), 1988, acrylic on paper
Nicole Eisenman, Hanging Birth, 1993, oil on canvas
Paul McCarthy, Cultural Gothic, 1992, Metal, motors, fiberglass, clothing, compressor, urethane rubber and stuffed goat
I had see Helter Skelter at MOCA in Los Angeles in 1992, which included several of the artists in Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star--Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley and Charles Ray. On one hand, you could divide the work between art that was primarily conceptual and art that was less so, but you could also see it as divided between art that has a certain shock value (or that at least was intended to freak you out in some way) and art that didn't try to operate on that level. Nicole Eisenman, Paul McCarthy and Charles Ray weren't trying to give you warm snuggley feelings nor were they about putting you in a contemplative state. I like their work a lot, but if an animatronic statue of a little boy fucking a goat didn't cause riots, you wonder if anything in the world of contemporary art could.
The men's bathroom at the New Museum
I was worried that if someone walked in as I photographed the men's bathroom at the New Museum that I'd be arrested (or at least ejected). I felt a little pervy hanging around until the bathroom was empty. But it was worth it to get this photo--this is the most insane public restroom I've ever seen.
New Museum selfie
The elevators are completely chromed. I suspect they have been the site of thousands of selfies.
After visiting the NewMuseum, I started my LES odyssey at Hahn & Garis, which appears to be a brand new gallery on Bowery.
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, T+85_red&blue_diptych, 2013, Lego
They had a group show up called Peripheral Visions: Contemporary Art from Australia. The piece above by Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro depicts the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Their medium? Legos. So this begged the question for me--is Lego art a thing? It seems pretty gimmicky to me, but I love Legos so as soon as I came home, I went to the Lego store and stocked up. We'll see if anything comes of it beyond a second childhood.
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, T+77_brown&red, 2011, Lego
Stephen Bird, What Picasso Called an Erection for the Eyes, 2012, clay, pigment, glaze
This visual pun is amusing, but what really strikes me (and creeps me out) about What Picasso Called an Erection for the Eyes by Stephen Bird is that the erect penis is depicted as having been surgically removed--you see the ring of skin surrounding the disturbing inner tissue. If it had been just a flat color, it would have been a merely funny piece. But by making it fleshy all the way, including along the apparent incision, Bird complicates things. He makes his male viewers uncomfortable. This male, anyway.
Stephen Bird, Majolica Shoot, 2012, pigment and glaze, 16.1 x 19.7 inches
Stephen Bird, Persian Blue Shoot Out, 2012, pigment and glaze, 16.1 x 19.7 inches
He also has a series of plates made from one mold depicting two Jesus Christs engaged in a pistol duel, with the left Jesus wounding the right Jesus. The exhibit has three of these plates painted with quite different glazes, suggesting different times of day (Persian Blue Shoot Out seems like a night-time duel).
The show was curated by Marissa Bateman, who happened to be working in the gallery right then. She gave me a small but handsomely produced catalog for the show. The catalog mentions that Bateman "currently resides in both New York City & Sydney." Whenever I read something like that, I always wonder how someone manages such a living arrangement. It seems like residences in both of those cities would be quite expensive to maintain, not to mention the travel costs. And I guess the fact that I'm asking this question must mark me as a naive country mouse.
Wim Delvoye, Suppo (scale model 1:2), 2010
At Sperone Westwater, there were several clever Wim Delvoye sculptures. It appears that he has taken existing three dimensional objects and using some CAD program twisted them in interesting ways and then fabricated them. Suppo is the name of a scale model RC aircraft maker, and I think that might be what he is referencing in the gothic fantasia Suppo (scale model 1:2) above.
Wim Delvoye
Wim Delvoye
Then there are these two pieces made out of stretched and twisted crucifixes. Again, it seems likely that a computer did the twisting prior to their fabrication. The top one has the crucifixes take the form of a double helix. The bottom one is apparently a Möbius strip. I like how they take a visual symbol of pre-scientific thinking and combine it with two visual symbols of post-enlightenment scientific thought--the double helix standing for DNA and biology, the Möbius strip a symbol of topology and in general of post-Euclidian mathematics.
Amy Bessone, Object, 2013, silkscreen on canvas on panel, 89 x 68 inches
I found this piece by Amy Bessone at Salon 94 quit clever, but while I could see having it on a coffee mug, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want a seven foot high version.
The exterior of Salon 94 had this fantastic video screen which showed a flower arrangement in the process of decaying.
Also on the Bowery was this tribute to Houston's own Nekst.
And at the corner of Bowery and Delancey was this painted building that appears to be the work of Kenny Scharf.
From Bowery I shifted over to Orchard St. because it seemed to have the highest density of galleries.
On Stellar Rays exterior
On Stellar Rays was my favorite gallery name of all the ones I saw. And a name like that might lead you to expect cosmic art with intense psychedelic colors. But the work inside by Maria Petschnig was anything but cosmic.
Maria Petschnig, from Vasistas, video
Maria Petschnig installation
Maria Petschnig was described in the gallery literature as "frequently deal[ing] with the intimate, confronting taboos and dominant ideals surrounding gender and sex. By subjugating her own body to the eyes of the camera and the public, Petschnig implicates the spectator in the construction of narrative and character, beyond comfortable social conventions." In other words, same old, same old. There was work in the New Museum 1993 show that did this first and better. The videos weren't all that interesting.
However, the installation in the gallery was really excellent. From what I can tell, On Stellar Rays space is a typical gallery--clean white walls, high ceiling, versatile. But the installation Petschnig has made converts it utterly--cheap wood paneling, acoustic tile drop ceiling, cheap floor lamps and occasional mysterious objects. It looks like it could be a whorehouse, a sex dungeon, or even maybe the windowless room where a kidnapper has kept his victim for years. The space Ptschnig creates achieves the goal that On Stellar Rays described far better than the videos.
David Nadel, Burn #299
When I went to Sasha Wolf Gallery just down the road, the vibe couldn't be more different. There was a beautiful show by photographer Katherine Wolkoff up, but it was a photo in the back by David Nadel that really caught my attention. At first, I couldn't tell what I was looking at--thousands of uneven black marks against a white background. It's a photograph of a snow-covered hillside where a forest has burned. Anyone who has driven between Austin and Houston through Bastrop has seen a similar ghost forest, the remains of a serious forest fire in 2011. The sight of it is haunting, and somehow taking similar photos in the snow, as Nadel has done, amplifies the effect.
Ryan Humphrey at DCKT
And in an abrupt shift in tone (which was typical of this perambulation), we had the street punk petty criminality of Ryan Humphrey at DCKT. I liked the work because it made me laugh, and like Petschnig's installation, it made for a fairly convincing environment. (Apparently the materials were the results of petty crimes--stolen milk crates, broken bike locks, etc.
Ryan Humphrey, Titty Fuck the Police
The "Police" part of Titty Fuck the Police is a real sign to which Humphrey's has added the other words. But the reason I like this is because it is the most bizarre variation on "Fuck the police" I've ever seen. Saying "Fuck the Police" or "Fuck the cops" is merely an angry commonplace. But "titty fuck the police" is both specific and absurd. And it made me laugh. (I'm realizing that a lot of the work on this stroll made me laugh. It's a good thing!)
Amanda Browder, Prism/Livin/Room (detail), fabric installation
In the basement of Allegra LaViola was filled with Prism/Livin/Room by Amanda Browder. By the time I got here, I had seen at least 19 galleries and the New Museum. My feet were aching and I was tired. I almost didn't want to walk down the stairs to see the show in the basement because I was afraid it might be completely uninteresting and I'd have to walk up the stairs for no reason. But I took the chance and descended and saw this delightful installation. In addition to the fabric construction, there was a sewing machine--work on this installation was continuous. Apparently members of the public were invited to help on occasion.
Amanda Browder, Prism/Livin/Room (detail), fabric installation
But best of all were two fabric covered chairs. They were so comfortable--I almost fell asleep in one. This would have been a good place for a nap. I don't know if it was just my weariness or if it was Amanda Browder's art, but this was the most peaceful and relaxing work I saw all day.
From there, NADA was only a couple of blocks away. But before I talk about NADA, I want to mention a couple of other LES galleries I saw on other days.
Ford at Gallery Onetwentyright
On Thursday, Ford and I had stopped in Gallery Onetwentyeight after visiting Cutlog. They were having their own art fair--the Fridge Art Fair.
It was a real art fair in the sense that it had multiple exhibitors. It was a little like the Pan Art Fair--some of the exhibitors were artists, some were galleries.
paintings by Ingmar Usas at the Fridge Art Fair
wall of Eric Ginsberg pet art
The guy behind Fridge was Eric Ginsberg, a painter who specializes in faux-naïf paintings of pets. (If you never went to art school and you paint like this, it's naive. If you have an MFA from Columbia, it's faux-naïf.) Of course, I totally approve of the Fridge Art Fair. Things like Fridge and Pan are not satellite art fairs--we're like little bits of space junk.
Peter Rostovsky, Night Blossoms, 2012, photoshop painting created with Wacom tablet
About a a block from my hotel was P! Gallery. I liked these images by Peter Rostovsky.
Peter Rostovsky, Tango Red, 2012, photoshop painting created with Wacom tablet
Next: NADA
↧
Da Plane! Jeff Elrod and Jeremy Deprez on Fantasy Island
Robert Boyd
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Jeff Elrod, Echo Painting (green), 2013 UV ink on canvas, 102 x 84 inches
Jeff Elrod was known for creating images on a computer then transferring them by hand to canvas. The work in this show is different in one respect--Elrod is printing his work out. Now on one hand, this shouldn't make much difference at all. What does it matter if Echo Painting (green) was put on canvas by a printer or by a painter? Elrod is responsible for creating the fuzzy, seemingly out-of-focus image either way. On the other hand, this is a piece of merchandise in a retail establishment, Texas Gallery, and if I were a collector, I would be willing to pay more for a unique image than for one that can be printed from a computer file in unlimited quantities. How much more? I don't know and can't even guess--all of these paintings were sold before the show opened. Collectors want their Jeff Elrods apparently, whether printed or painted.
(Of course, thinking about the reproducible quality of Elrod's paintings could lead one to a boring discussion about what constitutes a unique work of art, but it's all been said before so I'll leave that discussion to undergraduates who are still having their minds blown by Walter Benjamin.)
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Jeff Elrod, Worn Copy, 2013, UV ink, acrylic & enamel on canvas, 90 x 64.5 inches
In any case, not all of them are torn straight off the laser printer. The paintings seem to come in two groups, ones made exclusively with UV ink and those made with UV ink and other stuff. It may be that the other stuff--acrylic and enamel paint in Work Copy, for example--is applied by hand. Or maybe there is a computer printer somewhere that can apply paint as well as ink. I looked very closely at the paintings and couldn't tell.
Another way to split Elrod's work is between the "echo" paintings, which look like out-of-focus images, and the others. The "echo" works have a sense of space. The viewer feels she is looking at an indistinct surface, some parts receding, others coming close, that she is in front of or perhaps floating above. The edge of the canvas becomes key in these paintings. It provides the viewer purchase. The edge of a picture is always important in a painting, but here it is especially so because it contrasts so sharply with the formlessness of the image.
![]()
Jeff Elrod, Echo Painting (b/w), 2013, UV ink on canvas, 103 x 84 inches
And because these paintings are quite large, the formlessness of the image is something the viewer can really get lost in. This is not an arrangement of color and value on a flat surface--it is another place altogether, a roiling substance that made me think of Stanislaw Lem's description of the ocean-like organism in Solaris. It feels otherworldly.
![]()
Jeff Elrod, Fantasy Island, 2013, UV ink on canvas, 90 x 64 1/2 inches
But this feeling is not carried through in the other paintings. A piece like Fantasy Island may have been created on a computer screen, but it comes across is a work engaged with the surface of the canvas. The lines, whether sharp (as if carefully painted with a brush or drawn with a pen) or fuzzy (like spray paint lines) came across distinctly as marks on a surface. Even though they are layered (the fine white line is on top of the fuzzy white and black, which in turn are on top of the blue area), they still read as flat. There is some sense of push-pull in the Hans Hoffman sense, but that is overwhelmed by the graffiti-like flatness of the image. These paintings don't feel like windows into an alien world, like the echo paintings. They feel like walls that have been tagged.
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Jeff Elrod, Village HD, 2013, acrylic, enamel & tape on canvas, 90 x 80 inches
Intriguingly, Elrod is teamed with Jeremy DePrez in this show. DePrez is a young Houston artist (he just got his MFA in 2011); it would seem that he benefits a great deal from sharing a show with an established artist like Elrod. Of course, such a pairing can be dangerous for the younger, less-well-known artist. Will his work stand up in comparison with the maestro's? It's hard not to think about these questions when you hear about a show like this.
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Jeremy DePrez, untitled, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 78 x 89 inches
These aren't the right questions to be asking, though. What interests me, once I enter the show, is the relationship between the two bodies of work. The show is hung with the two painters' work mixed together. DePrez is placed next to Elrod repeatedly. The work has roughly the same scale; you don't have any of the installation awkwardness you might get if one artist had been a miniaturist while the other worked large. The two artists similarly work in abstraction (at least, I think it's abstraction--DePrez might be actually depicting real things that are hard to discern).
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Jeremy DePrez, untitled, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 73 x 100 inches
DePrez typically paints with a limited palette. Pieces like the two untitled works above have two colors, a red and a blue. Some of the pieces have a small number of colored marks on a white background, or are black and white. At least one piece is monochrome.
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Jeremy DePrez, untitled, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 71 x 50 1/2 inches
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Jeremy DePrez, untitled, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 62 x 45 1/2 inches
All the pieces with no titles (excluding the ones with parenthetical titles) are similar--two unmixed colors, they look like marks made on a ground. The first three above have choppy marks, like someone idly tapping a marker pen on a piece of paper. Except for the large size of these pieces, there is nothing to distinguish them from the kind of marks that someone might make if stuck in a boring meeting or lecture. They fill up the space with a bare minimum of deliberate design. The last of the untitled works feels a bit more deliberate, as if DePrez is carefully trying to draw unruled parallel lines but having a bit of trouble.
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Jeremy DePrez, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 114 x 66 inches
The other group of DePrez paintings feature small painted areas on large white grounds, as in I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. This approach is similar to what DePrez did in his MFA thesis exhibit. At the time, I suggested that the small painted bits were synecdoches for something bigger. I don't know if this interpretation reflects what DePrez was doing, but it works with I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. The letter I stands in for DePrez himself, and putting it on a canvas suggests that this is a self-portrait.
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Jeremy DePrez, Random Weapons and Loose Body Parts 2013, acrylic on canvas, 114 x 66 inches
Despite its violent title, Random Weapons and Loose Body Parts doesn't look violent. It doesn't depict what's in the title. But the arrangement appears more or less random, as if we are looking at the ground and seeing where bits of debris landed. (Dropping things randomly onto a surface has been an acceptable artistic practice since Duchamp and Arp.) And if we think of these seemingly random marks as a scattering of blood drops and spent casings, the synecdoche theory holds. Since the Sandy Hook shooting in December, things like spent casings and blood drops have been on many of our minds. Random Weapons and Loose Body Parts suggests that these things might have been of DePrez's mind as well.
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Jeremy DePrez, left: Untitled (Milton), 2013, oil and wax on canvas, 82 x 36 inches; and right: Untitled (Harriet), 2013, acrylic on canvas, 82 x 36 inches
But the schema I suggest, between the two color depictions of marks and the "synecdoche" paintings on white grounds, doesn't really work. For one thing, there is another way to divide the canvases--those with perfectly straight stretchers, and those like Milton, Harriet, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I and the big horizontal untitled piece that have bent irregular stretchers. And Milton is altogether different from the other works with its monochromatic color and heavily textured surface.
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Jeremy Deprez, Untitled (Milton) detail, 2013, oil and wax on canvas, 82 x 36 inches
Trying to classify the paintings is a mug's game anyway. What matters is that within this context, and next to Elrod's paintings, DePrez's paintings work. They don't look tentative or meek or not ready for prime time. They are handsome and assert their presence. The minimal means DePrez employs only serve to make them bolder as objects. It's an impressive grouping.
![Share]()
Jeff Elrod, Echo Painting (green), 2013 UV ink on canvas, 102 x 84 inches
Jeff Elrod was known for creating images on a computer then transferring them by hand to canvas. The work in this show is different in one respect--Elrod is printing his work out. Now on one hand, this shouldn't make much difference at all. What does it matter if Echo Painting (green) was put on canvas by a printer or by a painter? Elrod is responsible for creating the fuzzy, seemingly out-of-focus image either way. On the other hand, this is a piece of merchandise in a retail establishment, Texas Gallery, and if I were a collector, I would be willing to pay more for a unique image than for one that can be printed from a computer file in unlimited quantities. How much more? I don't know and can't even guess--all of these paintings were sold before the show opened. Collectors want their Jeff Elrods apparently, whether printed or painted.
(Of course, thinking about the reproducible quality of Elrod's paintings could lead one to a boring discussion about what constitutes a unique work of art, but it's all been said before so I'll leave that discussion to undergraduates who are still having their minds blown by Walter Benjamin.)
Jeff Elrod, Worn Copy, 2013, UV ink, acrylic & enamel on canvas, 90 x 64.5 inches
In any case, not all of them are torn straight off the laser printer. The paintings seem to come in two groups, ones made exclusively with UV ink and those made with UV ink and other stuff. It may be that the other stuff--acrylic and enamel paint in Work Copy, for example--is applied by hand. Or maybe there is a computer printer somewhere that can apply paint as well as ink. I looked very closely at the paintings and couldn't tell.
Another way to split Elrod's work is between the "echo" paintings, which look like out-of-focus images, and the others. The "echo" works have a sense of space. The viewer feels she is looking at an indistinct surface, some parts receding, others coming close, that she is in front of or perhaps floating above. The edge of the canvas becomes key in these paintings. It provides the viewer purchase. The edge of a picture is always important in a painting, but here it is especially so because it contrasts so sharply with the formlessness of the image.
Jeff Elrod, Echo Painting (b/w), 2013, UV ink on canvas, 103 x 84 inches
And because these paintings are quite large, the formlessness of the image is something the viewer can really get lost in. This is not an arrangement of color and value on a flat surface--it is another place altogether, a roiling substance that made me think of Stanislaw Lem's description of the ocean-like organism in Solaris. It feels otherworldly.
Jeff Elrod, Fantasy Island, 2013, UV ink on canvas, 90 x 64 1/2 inches
But this feeling is not carried through in the other paintings. A piece like Fantasy Island may have been created on a computer screen, but it comes across is a work engaged with the surface of the canvas. The lines, whether sharp (as if carefully painted with a brush or drawn with a pen) or fuzzy (like spray paint lines) came across distinctly as marks on a surface. Even though they are layered (the fine white line is on top of the fuzzy white and black, which in turn are on top of the blue area), they still read as flat. There is some sense of push-pull in the Hans Hoffman sense, but that is overwhelmed by the graffiti-like flatness of the image. These paintings don't feel like windows into an alien world, like the echo paintings. They feel like walls that have been tagged.
Jeff Elrod, Village HD, 2013, acrylic, enamel & tape on canvas, 90 x 80 inches
Intriguingly, Elrod is teamed with Jeremy DePrez in this show. DePrez is a young Houston artist (he just got his MFA in 2011); it would seem that he benefits a great deal from sharing a show with an established artist like Elrod. Of course, such a pairing can be dangerous for the younger, less-well-known artist. Will his work stand up in comparison with the maestro's? It's hard not to think about these questions when you hear about a show like this.
Jeremy DePrez, untitled, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 78 x 89 inchesThese aren't the right questions to be asking, though. What interests me, once I enter the show, is the relationship between the two bodies of work. The show is hung with the two painters' work mixed together. DePrez is placed next to Elrod repeatedly. The work has roughly the same scale; you don't have any of the installation awkwardness you might get if one artist had been a miniaturist while the other worked large. The two artists similarly work in abstraction (at least, I think it's abstraction--DePrez might be actually depicting real things that are hard to discern).
Jeremy DePrez, untitled, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 73 x 100 inches
DePrez typically paints with a limited palette. Pieces like the two untitled works above have two colors, a red and a blue. Some of the pieces have a small number of colored marks on a white background, or are black and white. At least one piece is monochrome.
Jeremy DePrez, untitled, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 71 x 50 1/2 inches
Jeremy DePrez, untitled, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 62 x 45 1/2 inches
All the pieces with no titles (excluding the ones with parenthetical titles) are similar--two unmixed colors, they look like marks made on a ground. The first three above have choppy marks, like someone idly tapping a marker pen on a piece of paper. Except for the large size of these pieces, there is nothing to distinguish them from the kind of marks that someone might make if stuck in a boring meeting or lecture. They fill up the space with a bare minimum of deliberate design. The last of the untitled works feels a bit more deliberate, as if DePrez is carefully trying to draw unruled parallel lines but having a bit of trouble.
Jeremy DePrez, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 114 x 66 inches
The other group of DePrez paintings feature small painted areas on large white grounds, as in I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. This approach is similar to what DePrez did in his MFA thesis exhibit. At the time, I suggested that the small painted bits were synecdoches for something bigger. I don't know if this interpretation reflects what DePrez was doing, but it works with I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. The letter I stands in for DePrez himself, and putting it on a canvas suggests that this is a self-portrait.
Jeremy DePrez, Random Weapons and Loose Body Parts 2013, acrylic on canvas, 114 x 66 inches
Despite its violent title, Random Weapons and Loose Body Parts doesn't look violent. It doesn't depict what's in the title. But the arrangement appears more or less random, as if we are looking at the ground and seeing where bits of debris landed. (Dropping things randomly onto a surface has been an acceptable artistic practice since Duchamp and Arp.) And if we think of these seemingly random marks as a scattering of blood drops and spent casings, the synecdoche theory holds. Since the Sandy Hook shooting in December, things like spent casings and blood drops have been on many of our minds. Random Weapons and Loose Body Parts suggests that these things might have been of DePrez's mind as well.
Jeremy DePrez, left: Untitled (Milton), 2013, oil and wax on canvas, 82 x 36 inches; and right: Untitled (Harriet), 2013, acrylic on canvas, 82 x 36 inches
But the schema I suggest, between the two color depictions of marks and the "synecdoche" paintings on white grounds, doesn't really work. For one thing, there is another way to divide the canvases--those with perfectly straight stretchers, and those like Milton, Harriet, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I and the big horizontal untitled piece that have bent irregular stretchers. And Milton is altogether different from the other works with its monochromatic color and heavily textured surface.
Jeremy Deprez, Untitled (Milton) detail, 2013, oil and wax on canvas, 82 x 36 inches
Trying to classify the paintings is a mug's game anyway. What matters is that within this context, and next to Elrod's paintings, DePrez's paintings work. They don't look tentative or meek or not ready for prime time. They are handsome and assert their presence. The minimal means DePrez employs only serve to make them bolder as objects. It's an impressive grouping.
↧
↧
Down on the Island with Podgorny, Savorini and Bernstein
Robert Boyd
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Zachary Zeke Podgorny installation
The first time I came down to the Galveston Artists Residency, they were showing work by their first three residents, Nick Barbee, Kelly Sears and Nsenga Knight. It was cool, but I didn't feel like there was any particular connection to Galveston in the art I saw. Not that there is anything wrong with that--the artists aren't there to do art about Galveston. They're just there to have the space and time to do art--artists are given an apartment, a studio and a stipend for a year, with total freedom to do whatever work they want to do. So it was a pleasant surprise this time to go down to see Galveston was reflected in a variety of ways in the work on display in the second residents' exhibit.
For example, Zachary Zeke Podgorny's work made me think of corrosion--the work of sand and wind and salt on natural and man-made things. The sculptural installation above recalls the prow of a partially submerged ship, like the Selma, the concrete ship that sits in half-sunk in Galveston Bay and is visible from the Bolivar ferry. The white and orange substance on the floor recall salt and rust. The driftwood superstructure and colored fabric remind me of the beach. In this one piece, Podgorny has crammed together multiple visual signifiers that suggest "Galveston."
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part of the sculptural installation
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Zachary Zeke Podgorny
The paintings Podgorny showed feel consistent with his earlier pre-GAR work--unusual mixtures of materials (for instance, the honey-comb board used in the piece above) and intense colors. They don't say "Galveston" the way the sculpture does. Still, they had a feeling of brightly colored debris, like flotsam washed up on shore.
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Banana peel installation in Davide Savorani's studio
Part of Davide Savorani's practice while at the GAR has been to eat bananas, pin the peels to his wall, and let the peels dry up. They end up drying into various shapes that look like an alphabet. But if they are spelling out a message in an alien alphabet, what happens to the meaning of the message when the wind blows.
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This gif is taken from Savorani's blog, the Can't Get-Away Club. He writes about Galveston quite a lot there, as well as posting photos and videos taken around the island. For instance, in a very reflective post, "Places in a Coma," Savorani writes about a group of partially finished (but apparently abandoned) cottages that he and his assistant Michelangelo Miccolis came across in Galveston.
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the banana costume and photo-collages of banana peels
There is a good interview with Savorani on Glasstire. It was picked up by Swamplot, which likes to cover anything in the Houston area with a specific sense of place (it is ostensibly a real estate blog, but really so much more). Swamplot's resident troll "commonsense" made a typically nasty comment, calling Savorani an "underachiever." But in an unintended way, he's right. The idea of being in a small coastal tourist town where the living is easy can fill you with inertia and procrastination. There's a reason "Margaritaville" is such a popular song--it speaks the truth about a certain coastal lifestyle. Savorani addresses this in his art and writing--for example, writing about half-built cottages that sit uncompleted for years. It's Galveston.
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me wearing Josh Bernstein's mask
Savorani isn't the only resident using costumes. Josh Bernstein had this elaborate two-headed mask, which I tried on. When I saw it, of course my first thought was that it was some two-headed mythological monster or god, perhaps from a native American culture. But Bernstein explained that the two faces were the two companions of Cabeza de Vaca, the Spanish explorer who was shipwrecked on Galveston in 1528. De Vaca called it the "island of doom," and a lot of Bernstein's work depicts a kind of haunted, demonic place. When I first saw it, I conflated his visions of Galveston with Lovecraftian images. I don't know if that is really accurate, but there is an element of horror that surfaces frequently in his work.
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A monstrous conquistador made partly out of an old football helmet
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Josh Bernstein collage
That feeling of horror was present in much of the work he showed in Galveston. But it is Cabeza de Vaca's story that continues to obsess him. As Savorani said, places are haunted by their history. Galveston is haunted by Cabeza de Vaca, by Jean Lafitte, by Salvatore Maceo, by the Karankawas and the 6,000 folks who were killed by the 1900 hurricane. Galveston is constantly decaying but never dies. A kind of inertia keeps it going, along with occasional bursts of activity, such as the establishment of the GAR. This exhibit was a beautiful statement about Galveston--and the fact that it wasn't necessarily designed to be "about" Galveston makes it feel truer and more heartfelt.
![Share]()
Zachary Zeke Podgorny installation
The first time I came down to the Galveston Artists Residency, they were showing work by their first three residents, Nick Barbee, Kelly Sears and Nsenga Knight. It was cool, but I didn't feel like there was any particular connection to Galveston in the art I saw. Not that there is anything wrong with that--the artists aren't there to do art about Galveston. They're just there to have the space and time to do art--artists are given an apartment, a studio and a stipend for a year, with total freedom to do whatever work they want to do. So it was a pleasant surprise this time to go down to see Galveston was reflected in a variety of ways in the work on display in the second residents' exhibit.
For example, Zachary Zeke Podgorny's work made me think of corrosion--the work of sand and wind and salt on natural and man-made things. The sculptural installation above recalls the prow of a partially submerged ship, like the Selma, the concrete ship that sits in half-sunk in Galveston Bay and is visible from the Bolivar ferry. The white and orange substance on the floor recall salt and rust. The driftwood superstructure and colored fabric remind me of the beach. In this one piece, Podgorny has crammed together multiple visual signifiers that suggest "Galveston."
part of the sculptural installation
Zachary Zeke Podgorny
The paintings Podgorny showed feel consistent with his earlier pre-GAR work--unusual mixtures of materials (for instance, the honey-comb board used in the piece above) and intense colors. They don't say "Galveston" the way the sculpture does. Still, they had a feeling of brightly colored debris, like flotsam washed up on shore.
Banana peel installation in Davide Savorani's studio
Part of Davide Savorani's practice while at the GAR has been to eat bananas, pin the peels to his wall, and let the peels dry up. They end up drying into various shapes that look like an alphabet. But if they are spelling out a message in an alien alphabet, what happens to the meaning of the message when the wind blows.
This gif is taken from Savorani's blog, the Can't Get-Away Club. He writes about Galveston quite a lot there, as well as posting photos and videos taken around the island. For instance, in a very reflective post, "Places in a Coma," Savorani writes about a group of partially finished (but apparently abandoned) cottages that he and his assistant Michelangelo Miccolis came across in Galveston.
I’ve used the word “ghost” a few times, when in fact I’m quite a skeptic myself. The fact that I’m currently living in what is considered one of the most haunted cities in the US is another interesting note, since a creepy house that looks like the Norman Bates‘ mansion or a ruined building don’t make me think of ghosts, and over here there are a lot those. I don’t believe that whoever has been killed there is still wandering around, rather it is the story being told that appears to me as the ghost itself. It resonates from its walls to the storytellers to the newspapers and books and back again to the overpriced ghost tours leading guillible tourists to the sites. They look around the rooms, staring at those walls, those doors and windows, envisioning the atrocities. I could say the same about the house where that famous painter lived, now turned into a museum.
Everyplace is haunted. Places have histories, not just Stonehenge and the Twin Towers but also the ones where you live. Some of them will survive us and will undergo many other tenants. Others are protected and closed to the public like the Lascaux Caves, others survive through books or just word-of-mouth. [Davide Savorani, "Places in a Coma," the Can't Get-Away Club]So what do bananas have to do with all of this? I'm not sure really, but Savorani integrates his banana obsession with his locale through a series of videos and photos of Miccolis wearing a banana costume and wandering around Galveston--mostly in abandoned or somewhat desolate areas of the island.
the banana costume and photo-collages of banana peels
There is a good interview with Savorani on Glasstire. It was picked up by Swamplot, which likes to cover anything in the Houston area with a specific sense of place (it is ostensibly a real estate blog, but really so much more). Swamplot's resident troll "commonsense" made a typically nasty comment, calling Savorani an "underachiever." But in an unintended way, he's right. The idea of being in a small coastal tourist town where the living is easy can fill you with inertia and procrastination. There's a reason "Margaritaville" is such a popular song--it speaks the truth about a certain coastal lifestyle. Savorani addresses this in his art and writing--for example, writing about half-built cottages that sit uncompleted for years. It's Galveston.
me wearing Josh Bernstein's mask
Savorani isn't the only resident using costumes. Josh Bernstein had this elaborate two-headed mask, which I tried on. When I saw it, of course my first thought was that it was some two-headed mythological monster or god, perhaps from a native American culture. But Bernstein explained that the two faces were the two companions of Cabeza de Vaca, the Spanish explorer who was shipwrecked on Galveston in 1528. De Vaca called it the "island of doom," and a lot of Bernstein's work depicts a kind of haunted, demonic place. When I first saw it, I conflated his visions of Galveston with Lovecraftian images. I don't know if that is really accurate, but there is an element of horror that surfaces frequently in his work.
A monstrous conquistador made partly out of an old football helmet
Josh Bernstein collage
That feeling of horror was present in much of the work he showed in Galveston. But it is Cabeza de Vaca's story that continues to obsess him. As Savorani said, places are haunted by their history. Galveston is haunted by Cabeza de Vaca, by Jean Lafitte, by Salvatore Maceo, by the Karankawas and the 6,000 folks who were killed by the 1900 hurricane. Galveston is constantly decaying but never dies. A kind of inertia keeps it going, along with occasional bursts of activity, such as the establishment of the GAR. This exhibit was a beautiful statement about Galveston--and the fact that it wasn't necessarily designed to be "about" Galveston makes it feel truer and more heartfelt.
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Pan Recommends for the week of June 13 to June 19
Robert Boyd
Whazzappen this weekend? Opportunities to see a lot of prints, for one thing. Here are some of the things we'll be checking out.
THURSDAY
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Candace Hicks, Composition in Orange, silkscreen, 2011, 20" x 25"
PRINTX, a juried show of prints featuring work by Ann Johnson, Anna Mavromatis, Brian Johnson, Candace Hicks, Cathie Kayser, Elvia Perrin, Evan Rottet, Jesus de la Rosa, Joan Winter, Joelle Verstraeten, Kathy Trice, Kim Cadmus Owens, Margaret Craig, Miguel Aragon, Nick Mendoza, Orna Feinstein, Ricky Armendariz, Sandra Fernandez, Teresa Gomez-Martorell, and Terri Thoman at the Museum of Printing History, 6 to 8 pm, runs through September 14. Lots of prints by lots of printmakers. A catalog is available and can be previewed online.
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Jim Livesey, The Siamese Twins, 8 x 10 inches
The 2013 UHCL Graduate Student Exhibition with art by Shara Appanaitis, Christina Carfora, Tamara Foster, Yocasta Gonzalés, Michele Humphries, Sarah Langston, Brandie Minchew, Sherrie Schaeffer, Tess Stilwell, Jennifer Windham and Jim Livesey at the UH Clear Lake Gallery, 5 to 7 pm. Lots of ceramics and photography on view for anyone on that side of town Thursday evening.
FRIDAY
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Britt Ragsdale, Run Through 1, from The Chase series, 2013, video. Photo courtesy of the artist
Playback: An exhibition of new video works by Britt Ragsdale, curated by Paul Middendorf at Fresh Arts' Winter Street Gallery, 6 to 8 pm (runs through July 12). Britt Ragsdale's videos dissect popular film culture by laser focusing on one specific part of that language--being chased in The Chase series or romantic embraces in Duets.
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top:Tony Garbarini at galleryHOMELAND, 6 pm to 10 pm.GalleryHOMELAND's Paul Middendorf owns Friday. His gallery space is hosting sculptor/installation artist Tony Garbarini.
SATURDAY
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Sean Starwars
Steamrolled III featuring Sean Starwars and many other printmakers at Peveto, 4 to 6 pm. Did you miss the steamroller printmaking event at St. Arnold's brewery a few weeks back? Yeah, me too--but now you can see the prints made there at Peveto. I anticipate fun.
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Whazzappen this weekend? Opportunities to see a lot of prints, for one thing. Here are some of the things we'll be checking out.
THURSDAY
Candace Hicks, Composition in Orange, silkscreen, 2011, 20" x 25"
PRINTX, a juried show of prints featuring work by Ann Johnson, Anna Mavromatis, Brian Johnson, Candace Hicks, Cathie Kayser, Elvia Perrin, Evan Rottet, Jesus de la Rosa, Joan Winter, Joelle Verstraeten, Kathy Trice, Kim Cadmus Owens, Margaret Craig, Miguel Aragon, Nick Mendoza, Orna Feinstein, Ricky Armendariz, Sandra Fernandez, Teresa Gomez-Martorell, and Terri Thoman at the Museum of Printing History, 6 to 8 pm, runs through September 14. Lots of prints by lots of printmakers. A catalog is available and can be previewed online.
Jim Livesey, The Siamese Twins, 8 x 10 inches
The 2013 UHCL Graduate Student Exhibition with art by Shara Appanaitis, Christina Carfora, Tamara Foster, Yocasta Gonzalés, Michele Humphries, Sarah Langston, Brandie Minchew, Sherrie Schaeffer, Tess Stilwell, Jennifer Windham and Jim Livesey at the UH Clear Lake Gallery, 5 to 7 pm. Lots of ceramics and photography on view for anyone on that side of town Thursday evening.
FRIDAY
Britt Ragsdale, Run Through 1, from The Chase series, 2013, video. Photo courtesy of the artist
Playback: An exhibition of new video works by Britt Ragsdale, curated by Paul Middendorf at Fresh Arts' Winter Street Gallery, 6 to 8 pm (runs through July 12). Britt Ragsdale's videos dissect popular film culture by laser focusing on one specific part of that language--being chased in The Chase series or romantic embraces in Duets.
top:Tony Garbarini at galleryHOMELAND, 6 pm to 10 pm.GalleryHOMELAND's Paul Middendorf owns Friday. His gallery space is hosting sculptor/installation artist Tony Garbarini.
SATURDAY
Sean Starwars
Steamrolled III featuring Sean Starwars and many other printmakers at Peveto, 4 to 6 pm. Did you miss the steamroller printmaking event at St. Arnold's brewery a few weeks back? Yeah, me too--but now you can see the prints made there at Peveto. I anticipate fun.
↧
Round 7, Simulacra
Betsy Huete
Since 1979, Lawndale Art Center has been a bastion of the Houston arts community, starting as an extension of the University of Houston and gradually transforming itself into its own organization, eventually becoming one of the premier non-profit art venues in town. Lawndale underwent a major renovation in 2005, and along with it came the Lawndale Artist Studio Program. It is a residency that gives three artists nine months of studio space, a stipend, and an exhibition. Now in its seventh year (hence the exhibition title Round 7), Lawndale’s John M. O’Quinn Gallery is showing the work of residents Domokos Benczedi (including his band Future Blondes 0.0.0.0.), Nancy Douthey, and Patrick Turk.
Domokos Benczedi has been a staple of the Houston noise and underground music scene for probably the past two decades. He has been involved with everything from current project Future Blondes to Rusted Shut to Black Leather Jesus. The Future Blondes 0.0.0.0. sound, while of course varying from track to track, is hauntingly repetitive and mesmerizing, emanating what can only be described as a sepulchral pixilation. Frustratingly, the strongest components of Benczedi’s work do not appear in Round 7.
As the viewer enters the O’Quinn Gallery, she encounters Sioux Dance (2013), a mostly black and white installation comprising a variety of materials: a large collage print, white washed speakers, and about twenty to thirty salt chlorinator unit covers just to name a few. The installation is set up like a stage—the 8’x5’ collage forms the background, while the speakers and false walls flank the sides and what Benczedi coins as a blueprint floor assemblage covers the floor. With the exception of a video collage on a small TV monitor on the left, it’s a stage where nothing happens, and that’s how all the work feels. He performed original sound work via Future Blondes and brought in other local musical acts on June 8th, but the work without his sound comes across as artifacts or props for a concert, not standing on its own. And the one sound piece, Your Eyes My World (2012), is barely, if at all, audible, competing with Justin Boyd’s sound installation upstairs and Douthey’s barking dog nearby.
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Domokos Benczedi, Sioux Dance, 2013, collage print, blueprint floor assemblage w/ recycled salt chlorinator unit covers, white washed Pioneer speakers, vintage amplifier + 8trk/cassette recorder, found broken mirrors, blueprints on moveable walls, video monitor, broken monitors, dimensions variable
Nancy Douthey is a performance and video artist who confronts, utilizes, and mimics various performative and feminist art historical tropes. As the viewer paces across the gallery, he encounters a ninety-degree angle freestanding wall with three video monitors mounted to it, two on adjacent walls and one on the opposite side. The Green Room (Kubrick, Ocean, Numb) (2013) shows Douthey sitting presumably in a bedroom, closely facing the camera. She is thoroughly, roughly massaging her cheeks and face, staring doe-eyed off into the distance. Her movements recall the bodily performances experimented by Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman of the ‘60s and ends with her face bitch-slapped by what appears to be a male hand. The Yellow Bathroom (Mom, Dad, Superman) (2013) conjures Cindy Sherman as Douthey sits on the edge of her bathtub robed in matronly and floral silk. Again, she faces the camera, crying while mouthing the words “mom” and “dad,” occasionally lip syncing to the accompanying music.
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Nancy Douthey, The Green Room (Kubrick, Ocean, Numb), 2013, 2 minute video loop
While Douthey convincingly melds absurdity and sincerity in these performances (she seems to be legitimately crying in The Yellow Bathroom), her most effective and thought provoking work derives from the piece where she isn’t doing much at all. The Fireplace (Not to be reproduced) (2013) is a bifurcated video loop of two Doutheys side by side, standing (waiting?) on two different sides of the same living room mantle. This time Douthey, neither of them, face the camera, but instead stands at a three quarter stance with her back mostly to the camera, only giving the viewer occasional glances of her profile. While the camera is clearly facing the mirror, it quickly becomes obvious that she is intentionally blocking her reflection with the back of her own head. The Fireplace is reminiscent of Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women (1979), where he photographs a woman facing the mirror. The viewer here is implicated as voyeur, staring at the woman. But the woman confronts the “male gaze,” staring straight back at the viewer. However, Douthey in her piece not only undercuts the viewer’s gaze but also her own. In denying both the gaze and her confrontation of it, Douthey provides a thoughtfully vulnerable and ambivalent portrait of what it is to be a woman and be perceived by others in an era of self-revealing social media and slutcore pop stars.
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Nancy Douthey, The Fireplace (Not to be reproduced), 2013, 2 minute video loop
On the opposite end of the gallery one will find Patrick Turk’s The Superorganism: Concrescence and The Superorganism: Entropy (both 2013). Both pieces consist of densely applied paper collages. Microcosms of animals, plant life, and human body parts circulate throughout the collages. The figures pop up three-dimensionally from the background and feel simultaneously anxious, maneuvering through traffic, and frozen, as if these characters are buried like deeply compacted sediment. Both works are mounted on circular pieces of plywood, each nearly four feet in diameter.
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Patrick Turk, The Superorganism: Concrescence, 2013, Plywood, construction paper, glitter, Swarovski crystals, book images, acrylic medium, 46” diameter.
Turk, at least according to his statement, hopes for his pieces to be immersive for his audience, “bring(ing) them into an exotic reality where the body becomes more than it seems.” The Superoganism series delivers a far cry from that immersion. On the contrary, it is trite, glittery, and a little dorky, as if Lisa Frank and a biology illustrator bore a lovechild—and it really works. Turk’s clearly labor-intensive process of cutting and collaging feels sweetly heroic, as if he’s hell-bent on narrating a macabre children’s story of the follies and beauty of concurrently living beings.
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Patrick Turk, The Superorganism: Concrescence (detail), 2013, Plywood, construction paper, glitter, Swarovski crystals, book images, acrylic medium, 46” diameter.
Round 7 provides a wide range of the kind of work that should be conducted in a residency: work that breaks through, struggles, falls flat, and successfully asks questions. It arouses the curiosity of what will come not only for Domokos Benczedi, Nancy Douthey, and Patrick Turk, but also for the eighth round of Lawndale residents.
Round 7 runs through June 15 at Lawndale Art Center.
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Since 1979, Lawndale Art Center has been a bastion of the Houston arts community, starting as an extension of the University of Houston and gradually transforming itself into its own organization, eventually becoming one of the premier non-profit art venues in town. Lawndale underwent a major renovation in 2005, and along with it came the Lawndale Artist Studio Program. It is a residency that gives three artists nine months of studio space, a stipend, and an exhibition. Now in its seventh year (hence the exhibition title Round 7), Lawndale’s John M. O’Quinn Gallery is showing the work of residents Domokos Benczedi (including his band Future Blondes 0.0.0.0.), Nancy Douthey, and Patrick Turk.
Domokos Benczedi has been a staple of the Houston noise and underground music scene for probably the past two decades. He has been involved with everything from current project Future Blondes to Rusted Shut to Black Leather Jesus. The Future Blondes 0.0.0.0. sound, while of course varying from track to track, is hauntingly repetitive and mesmerizing, emanating what can only be described as a sepulchral pixilation. Frustratingly, the strongest components of Benczedi’s work do not appear in Round 7.
As the viewer enters the O’Quinn Gallery, she encounters Sioux Dance (2013), a mostly black and white installation comprising a variety of materials: a large collage print, white washed speakers, and about twenty to thirty salt chlorinator unit covers just to name a few. The installation is set up like a stage—the 8’x5’ collage forms the background, while the speakers and false walls flank the sides and what Benczedi coins as a blueprint floor assemblage covers the floor. With the exception of a video collage on a small TV monitor on the left, it’s a stage where nothing happens, and that’s how all the work feels. He performed original sound work via Future Blondes and brought in other local musical acts on June 8th, but the work without his sound comes across as artifacts or props for a concert, not standing on its own. And the one sound piece, Your Eyes My World (2012), is barely, if at all, audible, competing with Justin Boyd’s sound installation upstairs and Douthey’s barking dog nearby.
Domokos Benczedi, Sioux Dance, 2013, collage print, blueprint floor assemblage w/ recycled salt chlorinator unit covers, white washed Pioneer speakers, vintage amplifier + 8trk/cassette recorder, found broken mirrors, blueprints on moveable walls, video monitor, broken monitors, dimensions variable
Nancy Douthey is a performance and video artist who confronts, utilizes, and mimics various performative and feminist art historical tropes. As the viewer paces across the gallery, he encounters a ninety-degree angle freestanding wall with three video monitors mounted to it, two on adjacent walls and one on the opposite side. The Green Room (Kubrick, Ocean, Numb) (2013) shows Douthey sitting presumably in a bedroom, closely facing the camera. She is thoroughly, roughly massaging her cheeks and face, staring doe-eyed off into the distance. Her movements recall the bodily performances experimented by Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman of the ‘60s and ends with her face bitch-slapped by what appears to be a male hand. The Yellow Bathroom (Mom, Dad, Superman) (2013) conjures Cindy Sherman as Douthey sits on the edge of her bathtub robed in matronly and floral silk. Again, she faces the camera, crying while mouthing the words “mom” and “dad,” occasionally lip syncing to the accompanying music.
Nancy Douthey, The Green Room (Kubrick, Ocean, Numb), 2013, 2 minute video loop
While Douthey convincingly melds absurdity and sincerity in these performances (she seems to be legitimately crying in The Yellow Bathroom), her most effective and thought provoking work derives from the piece where she isn’t doing much at all. The Fireplace (Not to be reproduced) (2013) is a bifurcated video loop of two Doutheys side by side, standing (waiting?) on two different sides of the same living room mantle. This time Douthey, neither of them, face the camera, but instead stands at a three quarter stance with her back mostly to the camera, only giving the viewer occasional glances of her profile. While the camera is clearly facing the mirror, it quickly becomes obvious that she is intentionally blocking her reflection with the back of her own head. The Fireplace is reminiscent of Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women (1979), where he photographs a woman facing the mirror. The viewer here is implicated as voyeur, staring at the woman. But the woman confronts the “male gaze,” staring straight back at the viewer. However, Douthey in her piece not only undercuts the viewer’s gaze but also her own. In denying both the gaze and her confrontation of it, Douthey provides a thoughtfully vulnerable and ambivalent portrait of what it is to be a woman and be perceived by others in an era of self-revealing social media and slutcore pop stars.
Nancy Douthey, The Fireplace (Not to be reproduced), 2013, 2 minute video loop
On the opposite end of the gallery one will find Patrick Turk’s The Superorganism: Concrescence and The Superorganism: Entropy (both 2013). Both pieces consist of densely applied paper collages. Microcosms of animals, plant life, and human body parts circulate throughout the collages. The figures pop up three-dimensionally from the background and feel simultaneously anxious, maneuvering through traffic, and frozen, as if these characters are buried like deeply compacted sediment. Both works are mounted on circular pieces of plywood, each nearly four feet in diameter.
Patrick Turk, The Superorganism: Concrescence, 2013, Plywood, construction paper, glitter, Swarovski crystals, book images, acrylic medium, 46” diameter.
Turk, at least according to his statement, hopes for his pieces to be immersive for his audience, “bring(ing) them into an exotic reality where the body becomes more than it seems.” The Superoganism series delivers a far cry from that immersion. On the contrary, it is trite, glittery, and a little dorky, as if Lisa Frank and a biology illustrator bore a lovechild—and it really works. Turk’s clearly labor-intensive process of cutting and collaging feels sweetly heroic, as if he’s hell-bent on narrating a macabre children’s story of the follies and beauty of concurrently living beings.
Patrick Turk, The Superorganism: Concrescence (detail), 2013, Plywood, construction paper, glitter, Swarovski crystals, book images, acrylic medium, 46” diameter.
Round 7 provides a wide range of the kind of work that should be conducted in a residency: work that breaks through, struggles, falls flat, and successfully asks questions. It arouses the curiosity of what will come not only for Domokos Benczedi, Nancy Douthey, and Patrick Turk, but also for the eighth round of Lawndale residents.
Round 7 runs through June 15 at Lawndale Art Center.
↧
Big Five Oh, part 7: NADA
Robert Boyd
My stroll through the Lower East Side had a destination--NADA. NADA is the New Art Dealers Alliance. Last year, NADA was in a narrow, cramped space in Chelsea. This year they were located in Basketball City, a giant space with 12 basketball courts.
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NADA in Basketball City
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NADA looked like this when you walked in
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NADA from an inside balcony
It was a much more pleasant environment than last year's. The galleries had lots of space, there was ample space in the aisles and the overall floorplan was very open.
The funny thing about the art fairs in New York is that a lot of the exhibitors are from New York. Having just walked through and visited many LES galleries, it made me laugh to see these same galleries here. In some cases, they literally could have wheeled their art over from their gallery space to NADA in a shopping cart.
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Debo Eller art in the On Stellar Rays booth
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Debo Eilers, Overhaul, 2013, Metal, epoxy, urethane, acrylic paint belts, foam ,59 by 48 by 12 inches
I had just been to On Stellar Rays and here they were again, 13 small blocks away. And presumably they paid thousands of dollars for the privilege. But I liked the art they had at NADA, a suite of pieces by Debo Eilers, better than their then current gallery show. Both shows shared a slightly creepy, squeamish esthetic, though. I don't know if that typifies On Stellar Rays or not.
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Scott Reeder at Lisa Cooley Gallery
Lisa Cooley is another gallery that traveled just a few blocks to get to NADA. I thought these Scott Reeder paintings, which look like amateur Ed Ruscha pastiches, were funny.
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Andy Coolquitt at Lisa Cooley Gallery
And Andy Coolquitt raised the flag for Texas there.
Another nearby gallery was American Contemporary, who were showing work by David Brooks (unrelated to the Times columnist, I assume).
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David Brooks at American Contemporary
Brooks was one of the artists who had a large freestanding installation at NADA.
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David Brooks, Stress Tests: Un-Sites No. 1-2 & 3-5 (homage to Gordon), 2013, extracted sections of Desert Rooftops, cable, hardware
I'm not sure what "Desert Rooftops" are, but "Gordon" surely refers to Gordon Matta-Clark and specifically Splitting: Four Corners.
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Bill Komoski, Cluster, 2013, mixed media, 56 x 69 1/2 x 18 inches at Feature Inc.
Another LES Gallery at Nada was Feature Inc. They had work I liked a lot--it tended to be busy and colorful, like Cluster by Bill Komoski or An Unnamed Flowing by Douglas Melini (which could have been mine if I had $35 thousand of $15,500 respectively to blow). I liked these pieces a lot, in fact, but I wondered as I looked at them if part of the reason they appealed to me is that they caught my attention among the loud visual clutter that is the art fair. Art fairs favor certain kinds of art--big, brash, attention grabbing. Works that are subtle and quiet don't have much of a chance. It would be quite interesting if an art fair entrepreneur created an art fair that permitted only "quite" works to be shown. Small pastel colored paintings, faint pencil drawings, conceptual projects marked primarily by absence and invisibility. In keeping with the convention of one-word art fair names, it could be called "Shy."
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Douglas Melini, An Unnamed Flowering, 2013, acrylic paint on canvas with hand-painted frame, 67 1/2 x 45 1/2 x 1 3/4 inches at Feature Inc.
Like American Contemporary, Feature Inc also had an artist who had a large scale sculpture hosted by NADA. And Collider by David Shaw definitely fit in with the general Feature Inc vibe.
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David Shaw, Collider, 2013, aluminum and holographic laminate, 8' 9" x 15' 7" x 14' 4"
But while man of the galleries at NADA traveled a few blocks to be there, some come quite a distance. Braverman Gallery came from Tel Aviv.
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Reuven Israel at Braverman Gallery
I liked these shapes pierced by poles by Reuven Israel. They made me think of the olives and cocktail onions in a martini. I suddenly felt thirsty for some reason.
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Oliver Michaels at Cole Gallery
I think this piece is by Oliver Michaels. I liked its combination of Henry Moore and 70s rumpus room.
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Richard Jackson sculpture at Parisa Kind
Another kind of art that stands out at art fairs (stand our to me, at least) is art that makes me laugh. For a long time, it seemed uncool for art to be funny. And there's at least one good reason for that. If you have a piece of art hanging on your wall ("you" being a collector or a museum) and it's a joke, well that joke is probably funny the first 100 or so times you see it. But humor fades away--we want the next joke, not the same one over and over.
But it seems like humor has really returned to art. Maybe it's a less serious time for art now. I just watched Beauty is Embarrassing![]()
about Wayne White, and he's very defensive of the fact that his art is funny. But the fact that Wayne White is accepted as part of the art world is itself a signal that humor is now OK. And sometimes the humor is really dumb stuff, like dogs peeing, which seems to be a specialty of Richard Jackson. Anyway, it made me laugh.
I had been to three art fairs in three days before I came over to NADA, but NADA was the first fair where I serendipitously ran into someone I knew (which reflects how few people in the art world I know, I guess). I was walking along and saw Houston painter Howard Sherman, who had been up in New York for a few weeks. The funny thing is that while we chatting, another person I knew came up. And this was the weirdest coincidence of all--it was Brian Dupont, the artist whose work my friend DC had really fallen for at Pulse the day before.
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Brian Dupont left and Howard Sherman right exchanging digits
(The coincidences don't stop there--we later discovered that Dupont is married to a cousin of DC.) Anyway, that was about all the "networking" I managed this trip.
Derek Eller Gallery (which I'm pretty sure was one of the galleries that was pretty badly flooded by Sandy) was there.
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Karl Wirsum piece at Derek Eller Gallery
They had three color drawings by one of my favorite artists, Karl Wirsum. The one above was my favorite of the three they had, all of which were pretty minor examples of Wirsum's work. Still, I was curious about the price since I've always coveted a Karl Wirsum. I asked, and they were all five figures--way out of my range. In a way, that was a relief--if they had been barely in my price range, I would have had to think hard about whether I wanted to spend a lot of money (for me) for lesser works by an artist I love.
I was reminded of a day of gallery-hopping in New York I spent with my friend Tom Devlin maybe about 10 years ago. I we went to a gallery that represented Wirsum (I think it was Phyllis Kind) and the gallery director happened to be there and happened to be nice--he took us into the back room to show us the Karl Wirsums he had in inventory, including a giant mind-blowing painting from the 60s. On that day, I could have bought it for $5000. Of course, I had about $5 in my bank account, so I reluctantly passed. Ten years pass and I'm slightly more prosperous, but Karl Wirsum is still way out of my range.
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Hundreds of copies of Do It by Hans Ulrich Obrist at Independent Curators International
Independent Curators International is a non-profit, and that's one thing I liked about NADA--non-profits were treated as equals to galleries. (Unlike the way the Texas Contemporary Art Fair does it, where most of the non-profits are shuffled off into tiny booths in Siberia.) Their main thing was selling copies of Do It: The Compendium![]()
by Hans Ulrich Obrist. This is a collection of instructions for projects by artists that Olbrich has been compiling for 20 years. Some are quite impractical (Nicholas Hlobo's reads in its entirety, "To an ambitious curator: install a work of mine on the moon.") Some aren't even really projects. But a bunch are things that one could actually do--they might be difficult to do or may seem absurd, but they are imminently doable. There are literally 330 pages of projects here. I've been browsing it, but I think I'd like to actually do some of the more achievable ones.
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Stephen Kaltenbach, Open Before Deaccession at Independent Curators International
ICI also had some artworks, including Open Before Deaccession by Stephen Kaltenbach, which I am including because (wait for it!) I thought it was funny. I hope they send a copy of this piece to the Detroit Museum.
One problem with this type of art fair is that the booths are pretty much the same. It has to be this way because they are temporary modular structures. Usually galleries live with it--they're just in the booth for a few days, so why bother with too much customization? Besides, what can you do that makes your booth truly different?
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Know More Games (which is, in fact, an art gallery in Brooklyn) actually came up with a clever variation on the typical booth display by copying that old mall standard, the poster display. I mentioned to them that it reminded me of places like Spencer's Gifts. They said that was precisely the inspiration.
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Meg Cranston, Emerald City at Newman Popiashvili Gallery/Fitzroy Gallery
Meg Cranston used her booth space pretty well by turning the whole space into an installation called Emerald City. It would have been better if they could have done it without the booth attendant sitting there, but I guess there was no way around that. I thought it was pretty cool and Artadia agreed. They gave her an award for most bad-ass art fair booth or something like that.
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Merkx & Gwynne, King Arthur Green Room (detail), mixed media
NADA gave a big corner of the floor over to Merkx & Gwynne for their ongoing installation/film set/performance/rock opera/Gesamkunstwerk KARO. This installment was called King Arthur Green Room.
Sculpture Center (another non-profit space with a nice booth) also hosted a performance by Megha Barnabas.
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It was sort of a dance thing. I can't find a credit anywhere for the trumpeter, but he was really good.
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I was surprised by how many children were around, transfixed by this performance. And indeed, by how many children were around, period. Of all the art fairs, NADA seemed the most overtly kid friendly. they even had tours just for kids (so mom and dad could drop them off and look at art on their own).
Finally, the greatest piece of art I saw in New York.
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Anne-Lise Coste, You Text Too Much, 2103, airbrush and gesso on canvas, 14 x 11 inches at Eleven Rivington
Anne-Lise Coste's You Text Too Much is a towering statement of man's isolation. While not quite achieving the Olympian heights of Cory Archangel's Soggy Bowl of Cornflakes (a piece of art whose creation was the peak moment of human civilization), it nonetheless deserves a place in the pantheon.
And with that, my NADA experience was over for this year. I enjoyed all of the art fairs I went to that weekend--Frieze, Cutlog, Pulse and NADA, but if I had to choose, I'd say NADA was the best. But that was not the end of my day--my next stop (after grabbing some grub) was Bushwick.
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My stroll through the Lower East Side had a destination--NADA. NADA is the New Art Dealers Alliance. Last year, NADA was in a narrow, cramped space in Chelsea. This year they were located in Basketball City, a giant space with 12 basketball courts.
NADA in Basketball City
NADA looked like this when you walked in
NADA from an inside balcony
It was a much more pleasant environment than last year's. The galleries had lots of space, there was ample space in the aisles and the overall floorplan was very open.
The funny thing about the art fairs in New York is that a lot of the exhibitors are from New York. Having just walked through and visited many LES galleries, it made me laugh to see these same galleries here. In some cases, they literally could have wheeled their art over from their gallery space to NADA in a shopping cart.
Debo Eller art in the On Stellar Rays booth
Debo Eilers, Overhaul, 2013, Metal, epoxy, urethane, acrylic paint belts, foam ,59 by 48 by 12 inches
I had just been to On Stellar Rays and here they were again, 13 small blocks away. And presumably they paid thousands of dollars for the privilege. But I liked the art they had at NADA, a suite of pieces by Debo Eilers, better than their then current gallery show. Both shows shared a slightly creepy, squeamish esthetic, though. I don't know if that typifies On Stellar Rays or not.
Scott Reeder at Lisa Cooley Gallery
Lisa Cooley is another gallery that traveled just a few blocks to get to NADA. I thought these Scott Reeder paintings, which look like amateur Ed Ruscha pastiches, were funny.
Andy Coolquitt at Lisa Cooley Gallery
And Andy Coolquitt raised the flag for Texas there.
Another nearby gallery was American Contemporary, who were showing work by David Brooks (unrelated to the Times columnist, I assume).
David Brooks at American Contemporary
Brooks was one of the artists who had a large freestanding installation at NADA.
David Brooks, Stress Tests: Un-Sites No. 1-2 & 3-5 (homage to Gordon), 2013, extracted sections of Desert Rooftops, cable, hardware
I'm not sure what "Desert Rooftops" are, but "Gordon" surely refers to Gordon Matta-Clark and specifically Splitting: Four Corners.
Bill Komoski, Cluster, 2013, mixed media, 56 x 69 1/2 x 18 inches at Feature Inc.
Another LES Gallery at Nada was Feature Inc. They had work I liked a lot--it tended to be busy and colorful, like Cluster by Bill Komoski or An Unnamed Flowing by Douglas Melini (which could have been mine if I had $35 thousand of $15,500 respectively to blow). I liked these pieces a lot, in fact, but I wondered as I looked at them if part of the reason they appealed to me is that they caught my attention among the loud visual clutter that is the art fair. Art fairs favor certain kinds of art--big, brash, attention grabbing. Works that are subtle and quiet don't have much of a chance. It would be quite interesting if an art fair entrepreneur created an art fair that permitted only "quite" works to be shown. Small pastel colored paintings, faint pencil drawings, conceptual projects marked primarily by absence and invisibility. In keeping with the convention of one-word art fair names, it could be called "Shy."
Douglas Melini, An Unnamed Flowering, 2013, acrylic paint on canvas with hand-painted frame, 67 1/2 x 45 1/2 x 1 3/4 inches at Feature Inc.
Like American Contemporary, Feature Inc also had an artist who had a large scale sculpture hosted by NADA. And Collider by David Shaw definitely fit in with the general Feature Inc vibe.
David Shaw, Collider, 2013, aluminum and holographic laminate, 8' 9" x 15' 7" x 14' 4"
But while man of the galleries at NADA traveled a few blocks to be there, some come quite a distance. Braverman Gallery came from Tel Aviv.
Reuven Israel at Braverman Gallery
I liked these shapes pierced by poles by Reuven Israel. They made me think of the olives and cocktail onions in a martini. I suddenly felt thirsty for some reason.
Oliver Michaels at Cole Gallery
I think this piece is by Oliver Michaels. I liked its combination of Henry Moore and 70s rumpus room.
Richard Jackson sculpture at Parisa Kind
Another kind of art that stands out at art fairs (stand our to me, at least) is art that makes me laugh. For a long time, it seemed uncool for art to be funny. And there's at least one good reason for that. If you have a piece of art hanging on your wall ("you" being a collector or a museum) and it's a joke, well that joke is probably funny the first 100 or so times you see it. But humor fades away--we want the next joke, not the same one over and over.
But it seems like humor has really returned to art. Maybe it's a less serious time for art now. I just watched Beauty is Embarrassing
about Wayne White, and he's very defensive of the fact that his art is funny. But the fact that Wayne White is accepted as part of the art world is itself a signal that humor is now OK. And sometimes the humor is really dumb stuff, like dogs peeing, which seems to be a specialty of Richard Jackson. Anyway, it made me laugh.I had been to three art fairs in three days before I came over to NADA, but NADA was the first fair where I serendipitously ran into someone I knew (which reflects how few people in the art world I know, I guess). I was walking along and saw Houston painter Howard Sherman, who had been up in New York for a few weeks. The funny thing is that while we chatting, another person I knew came up. And this was the weirdest coincidence of all--it was Brian Dupont, the artist whose work my friend DC had really fallen for at Pulse the day before.
Brian Dupont left and Howard Sherman right exchanging digits
(The coincidences don't stop there--we later discovered that Dupont is married to a cousin of DC.) Anyway, that was about all the "networking" I managed this trip.
Derek Eller Gallery (which I'm pretty sure was one of the galleries that was pretty badly flooded by Sandy) was there.
Karl Wirsum piece at Derek Eller Gallery
They had three color drawings by one of my favorite artists, Karl Wirsum. The one above was my favorite of the three they had, all of which were pretty minor examples of Wirsum's work. Still, I was curious about the price since I've always coveted a Karl Wirsum. I asked, and they were all five figures--way out of my range. In a way, that was a relief--if they had been barely in my price range, I would have had to think hard about whether I wanted to spend a lot of money (for me) for lesser works by an artist I love.
I was reminded of a day of gallery-hopping in New York I spent with my friend Tom Devlin maybe about 10 years ago. I we went to a gallery that represented Wirsum (I think it was Phyllis Kind) and the gallery director happened to be there and happened to be nice--he took us into the back room to show us the Karl Wirsums he had in inventory, including a giant mind-blowing painting from the 60s. On that day, I could have bought it for $5000. Of course, I had about $5 in my bank account, so I reluctantly passed. Ten years pass and I'm slightly more prosperous, but Karl Wirsum is still way out of my range.
Hundreds of copies of Do It by Hans Ulrich Obrist at Independent Curators International
Independent Curators International is a non-profit, and that's one thing I liked about NADA--non-profits were treated as equals to galleries. (Unlike the way the Texas Contemporary Art Fair does it, where most of the non-profits are shuffled off into tiny booths in Siberia.) Their main thing was selling copies of Do It: The Compendium
by Hans Ulrich Obrist. This is a collection of instructions for projects by artists that Olbrich has been compiling for 20 years. Some are quite impractical (Nicholas Hlobo's reads in its entirety, "To an ambitious curator: install a work of mine on the moon.") Some aren't even really projects. But a bunch are things that one could actually do--they might be difficult to do or may seem absurd, but they are imminently doable. There are literally 330 pages of projects here. I've been browsing it, but I think I'd like to actually do some of the more achievable ones.
Stephen Kaltenbach, Open Before Deaccession at Independent Curators International
ICI also had some artworks, including Open Before Deaccession by Stephen Kaltenbach, which I am including because (wait for it!) I thought it was funny. I hope they send a copy of this piece to the Detroit Museum.
One problem with this type of art fair is that the booths are pretty much the same. It has to be this way because they are temporary modular structures. Usually galleries live with it--they're just in the booth for a few days, so why bother with too much customization? Besides, what can you do that makes your booth truly different?
Know More Games (which is, in fact, an art gallery in Brooklyn) actually came up with a clever variation on the typical booth display by copying that old mall standard, the poster display. I mentioned to them that it reminded me of places like Spencer's Gifts. They said that was precisely the inspiration.
Meg Cranston, Emerald City at Newman Popiashvili Gallery/Fitzroy Gallery
Meg Cranston used her booth space pretty well by turning the whole space into an installation called Emerald City. It would have been better if they could have done it without the booth attendant sitting there, but I guess there was no way around that. I thought it was pretty cool and Artadia agreed. They gave her an award for most bad-ass art fair booth or something like that.
Merkx & Gwynne, King Arthur Green Room (detail), mixed media
NADA gave a big corner of the floor over to Merkx & Gwynne for their ongoing installation/film set/performance/rock opera/Gesamkunstwerk KARO. This installment was called King Arthur Green Room.
Sculpture Center (another non-profit space with a nice booth) also hosted a performance by Megha Barnabas.
It was sort of a dance thing. I can't find a credit anywhere for the trumpeter, but he was really good.
I was surprised by how many children were around, transfixed by this performance. And indeed, by how many children were around, period. Of all the art fairs, NADA seemed the most overtly kid friendly. they even had tours just for kids (so mom and dad could drop them off and look at art on their own).
Finally, the greatest piece of art I saw in New York.
Anne-Lise Coste, You Text Too Much, 2103, airbrush and gesso on canvas, 14 x 11 inches at Eleven Rivington
Anne-Lise Coste's You Text Too Much is a towering statement of man's isolation. While not quite achieving the Olympian heights of Cory Archangel's Soggy Bowl of Cornflakes (a piece of art whose creation was the peak moment of human civilization), it nonetheless deserves a place in the pantheon.
And with that, my NADA experience was over for this year. I enjoyed all of the art fairs I went to that weekend--Frieze, Cutlog, Pulse and NADA, but if I had to choose, I'd say NADA was the best. But that was not the end of my day--my next stop (after grabbing some grub) was Bushwick.
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Links From All Over
Robert Boyd
Ivan Brunetti is a genius who nonetheless believes that anyone can do what he does. And maybe he's right. In any case, I hope this little video encourages you to pick up Aesthetics: A Memoir![]()
, because it's boss!
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And speaking of genius cartoonists, Dan Clowes is about to have an exhibit at the MCA in Chicago. (I wish a museum in Houston would give an exhibit to a cartoonist like Clowes.) There are a few photos from the install on his website.
It's nice to know you're right. Last year I saw Trenton Doyle Hancock's new exhibit at James Cohan Gallery, and commented that it seemed that he had left behind his "vegans and mounds" story in exchange for something that seemed much more personal. And that's exactly what happened!
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Not a real solution
A fake solution to the Museum Tower/Nasher Sculpture Center reflected light controversy. Museum Tower is a mirror clad skyscraper that reflects bright hot light down into the Museum District in Dallas, including into the Nasher Sculpture Center. The two institutions have been fighting it out, and Museum Tower has essentially come up with a solution that involves replacing the Nasher's innovative roof with a variation on the current design that would prevent reflected light from Museum Tower from directly entering the building. But the problem is that it doesn't do anything for the Nasher's sculpture garden or the neighborhood around the Nasher. And as Walkable DFW puts it, it doesn't really address the real issue.
![Share]()
Ivan Brunetti is a genius who nonetheless believes that anyone can do what he does. And maybe he's right. In any case, I hope this little video encourages you to pick up Aesthetics: A Memoir
, because it's boss!
And speaking of genius cartoonists, Dan Clowes is about to have an exhibit at the MCA in Chicago. (I wish a museum in Houston would give an exhibit to a cartoonist like Clowes.) There are a few photos from the install on his website.
It's nice to know you're right. Last year I saw Trenton Doyle Hancock's new exhibit at James Cohan Gallery, and commented that it seemed that he had left behind his "vegans and mounds" story in exchange for something that seemed much more personal. And that's exactly what happened!
Not a real solution
A fake solution to the Museum Tower/Nasher Sculpture Center reflected light controversy. Museum Tower is a mirror clad skyscraper that reflects bright hot light down into the Museum District in Dallas, including into the Nasher Sculpture Center. The two institutions have been fighting it out, and Museum Tower has essentially come up with a solution that involves replacing the Nasher's innovative roof with a variation on the current design that would prevent reflected light from Museum Tower from directly entering the building. But the problem is that it doesn't do anything for the Nasher's sculpture garden or the neighborhood around the Nasher. And as Walkable DFW puts it, it doesn't really address the real issue.
I've measured temperatures on the sidewalks exceeding 130 F. [T]he specifics of this spat are far less important than future zoning implications of every other property from here to eternity? How much can your property (and what is your right) to degrade the surrounding environment, public space, and properties? This has been answered throughout the years (see: lead smelters and various other LULUs or Locally Undesirable Land Uses), but progress has a way of always bringing new issues to the fore. In this case, that is LEED or (supposedly) green design which emphasizes cooling inside of buildings naturally through (in this case) reflectivity and in this case that means at the expense of everything around it. [...] I've maintained from the beginning this HAS to go to court to establish a precedent to how similar issues are addressed in the future. Less mess, more straight forward, but MT/Nasher spat is the battle to spare the war. [Walkable DFW, June 13, 2013]Museum Tower put up a website about their proposed solution with a really slick video (which I can't embed, unfortunately) where they don't mention the temperature of the sculpture garden or the surrounding sidewalks at all. They solve the problem by just not talking about it.
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Pan Recommends for the week of June 20 to June 26
Robert Boyd
Here a few art things to do this weekend.
FRIDAY
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Britt Ragsdale, Run Through 1, from The Chase series, 2013, video. Photo courtesy of the artist
Playback: An exhibition of new video works by Britt Ragsdale, curated by Paul Middendorf at Fresh Arts' Winter Street Gallery, 6 to 8 pm (runs through July 12). Britt Ragsdale's videos dissect popular film culture by laser focusing on one specific part of that language--being chased in The Chase series or romantic embraces in Duets.
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LaToya Ruby Frazier, Holland Avenue Parking Lot, 2011. Silver gelatin print, 30 x 40 inches
LaToya Ruby Frazier: Witness at CAMH, 6:30 to 9:00 pm. You're thinking, summer's going great! I'm so happy! I need a splash of cold, depressing reality! Come see the LaToya Ruby Frazier exhibit which documents her hometown of Braddock, PA, a post-industrial town that has seen its population plummet from over twenty thousand to less than five thousand. Fun!
SATURDAY
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Kathryn Spence's scrappy fox sculpture
Kathryn Spence at Front Gallery, 4 to 6 pm (runs through July 27). Kathryn Spence makes sculptural objects through the time-honored method of combining crap with crap. Among the crap used to create this exhibit is string, wire, mud, "how to wash" labels, "do not remove" upholstery and mattress tags, "do not eat" desiccant packets, hair, money, beanie babies, "Ken" dolls, and petroleum jelly.
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Work in progress--beading Rosine Kouamen's piece for Coming Through the Gap in the Mountain on an Elephant
Coming Through the Gap in the Mountain on an Elephant featuring Regina Agu, Gregory Michael Carter, Nathaniel Donnett, Robert Hodge, Autumn Knight, Rosine Kouamen, Lovie Olivia, Phillip Pyle II, Sehba Sarwar, Michael Kahlil Taylor, and Monica Villareal and curated by Robert Pruitt at Texas Southern University - University Museum, 7:30 pm (runs through August 25). This show has something to do with old World's Fairs, and the title seems to reference Hannibal. That's all I know, but this line-up of artists makes it a pretty safe bet!
![Share]()
Here a few art things to do this weekend.
FRIDAY
Britt Ragsdale, Run Through 1, from The Chase series, 2013, video. Photo courtesy of the artist
Playback: An exhibition of new video works by Britt Ragsdale, curated by Paul Middendorf at Fresh Arts' Winter Street Gallery, 6 to 8 pm (runs through July 12). Britt Ragsdale's videos dissect popular film culture by laser focusing on one specific part of that language--being chased in The Chase series or romantic embraces in Duets.
LaToya Ruby Frazier, Holland Avenue Parking Lot, 2011. Silver gelatin print, 30 x 40 inches
LaToya Ruby Frazier: Witness at CAMH, 6:30 to 9:00 pm. You're thinking, summer's going great! I'm so happy! I need a splash of cold, depressing reality! Come see the LaToya Ruby Frazier exhibit which documents her hometown of Braddock, PA, a post-industrial town that has seen its population plummet from over twenty thousand to less than five thousand. Fun!
SATURDAY
Kathryn Spence's scrappy fox sculpture
Kathryn Spence at Front Gallery, 4 to 6 pm (runs through July 27). Kathryn Spence makes sculptural objects through the time-honored method of combining crap with crap. Among the crap used to create this exhibit is string, wire, mud, "how to wash" labels, "do not remove" upholstery and mattress tags, "do not eat" desiccant packets, hair, money, beanie babies, "Ken" dolls, and petroleum jelly.
Work in progress--beading Rosine Kouamen's piece for Coming Through the Gap in the Mountain on an Elephant
Coming Through the Gap in the Mountain on an Elephant featuring Regina Agu, Gregory Michael Carter, Nathaniel Donnett, Robert Hodge, Autumn Knight, Rosine Kouamen, Lovie Olivia, Phillip Pyle II, Sehba Sarwar, Michael Kahlil Taylor, and Monica Villareal and curated by Robert Pruitt at Texas Southern University - University Museum, 7:30 pm (runs through August 25). This show has something to do with old World's Fairs, and the title seems to reference Hannibal. That's all I know, but this line-up of artists makes it a pretty safe bet!
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Kim Thompson, 1956 - 2013
Robert Boyd
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Kim Thompson as drawn by Adrian Tomine from "Shamrock Squid: Autobiographical Cartoonist!" by Peter Bagge and Adrian Tomine, 1997
For four years (1989 to 1993), Kim Thompson was one of my two bosses. Along with his business partner Gary Groth, he co-owned and co-ran Fantagraphics Books. Kim Thompson died yesterday. He was 56 years old.
With a small publisher like Fantagraphics, there is really no distinction between publisher and editor. There were many times I unloaded trucks full of books with Kim. He was in the trenches every day. When I started there, I was 25 years old and Kim definitely seemed like my "elder". He was the right age to be a mentor. (Now six years difference seems like nothing. It makes his passing all the more shocking.)
I realize that the readers of this blog might not understand why Kim Thompson was an important person--not just to me, but to art. The world of comics and the art world are distinct, intersecting only occasionally. The thing to remember is that for most of their existence, comics have been an art that existed primarily to make money. Some of the comics nonetheless were excellent pieces of art, but economic imperatives constantly drove the business side of comics towards assembly line production, corporate ownership of creative work, and marketing to the lowest common denominator--all of which mitigated against artistic quality. In the 60s, the underground cartoonists for the first time published comics whose main reason for existing was not economic. But this was a short-lived flowering--by the late 70s, underground comics were nearly extinct.
But at the same time, comic book stores were popping up all over the country, as well as specialized comics distributors. Now it's hard to imagine spaces more uncongenial to "comics as art" than comic stores, which for the most part were run by corporate comics fanboys for corporate comics fanboys. But the door was opened a crack for small publishers, and publishers sprung up to take advantage of the opening. Fantagraphics, which had published a fanzine, The Comics Journal, started adding comics to their publishing program in 1981. (Kim started working for Fantagraphics in 1977, I think, and became co-owner in 1978.)
Comics as art were revived at that time, thanks in large part to the publishing efforts of Fantagraphics. They published Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Peter Bagge, Ivan Brunetti, Carol Tyler and so many other great cartoonists, and are still doing it today. When you compare the publishing achievements of the underground comics generation (a brief brilliant flame) to Fantagraphics (and its peers, like Drawn & Quarterly), it's hardly a contest. Fantagraphics is one of the greatest publishers of comics in any language of all time and one of the strongest promulgators of the art of comics in existence. And Kim Thompson was crucial to that 30+ years of artistic success.
Any artistic form needs its impresarios and enablers. Art dealers, curators, publishers, editors, etc.--without them, art can't flourish. Kim encouraged and cajoled many cartoonists to produce art they never otherwise would have dreamed possible. I imagine that if Fantagraphics had not been there in 1982, Jaime Hernandez might have gone on to a successful, respectable career as a penciller for Marvel and DC. Instead, he has created a body of highly personal comics art that broke many artistic barriers and places him in the pantheon of great artists of his time.
When I started working for Fantagraphics, I lived with Kim and Gary Groth. For them, there was little distance between their private lives and their work lives--Fantagraphics bought a house that they both lived in, along with me and Kim's brother Mark. Once Kim acquired a girlfriend (Lynn Emmert, who subsequently became Kim's wife and who wrote moving journal entries detailing Kim's last months), he moved out of that testosterone-packed environment. Prior to that, he wore a daily uniform of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Lynn gradually converted him to dressing like a responsible adult. Still, his casual wear set the tone for the Fantagraphics office--Tom Spurgeon once wrote that the dress code there was "pants."
Despite his aging fanboy wardrobe, Kim was a model of maturity. I remember when we had an upcoming issue of The Comics Journal with a Lynda Barry interview (November 1989). In it, we also ran an interview with Paul Chadwick. At the time, I complained that we should not be interviewing Chadwick because he was, to my mind, "totally mainstream." And Kim wisely pointed out that Chadwick may seem mainstream to you and me, but for many comics readers he is a radical alternative to what they're used to. He shook me out of my snotty smugness.
Another thing I remember about Kim with fondness was his love of music. He was always eager to be hip to whatever was happening right now. In our common work area where The Comics Journal was produced, Kim had a stereo and an ever-growing selection of CDs. It was the loudest office environment ever--and the selections would range from the Pixies to John Zorn to Body Count and beyond. (I was appalled the day Kim brought in Use your Illusion.) And he liked to see live music; we saw Neil Young and Sonic Youth together, for example. But his greatest love was 70s glam rock and especially David Bowie. Once a bunch of us went to Rebar, a dance club in Seattle. When the DJ cued up "Young Americans," Kim joyfully shouted out, "This is the Motown of our generation!" as he danced.
Kim and I stayed in touch over the years, mostly through email. Our last correspondence was in January, discussing how to translate the title of Joost Swarte's Passi Messa. I suggested "Not This, That" but Kim wrote:
![Share]()
Kim Thompson as drawn by Adrian Tomine from "Shamrock Squid: Autobiographical Cartoonist!" by Peter Bagge and Adrian Tomine, 1997
For four years (1989 to 1993), Kim Thompson was one of my two bosses. Along with his business partner Gary Groth, he co-owned and co-ran Fantagraphics Books. Kim Thompson died yesterday. He was 56 years old.
With a small publisher like Fantagraphics, there is really no distinction between publisher and editor. There were many times I unloaded trucks full of books with Kim. He was in the trenches every day. When I started there, I was 25 years old and Kim definitely seemed like my "elder". He was the right age to be a mentor. (Now six years difference seems like nothing. It makes his passing all the more shocking.)
I realize that the readers of this blog might not understand why Kim Thompson was an important person--not just to me, but to art. The world of comics and the art world are distinct, intersecting only occasionally. The thing to remember is that for most of their existence, comics have been an art that existed primarily to make money. Some of the comics nonetheless were excellent pieces of art, but economic imperatives constantly drove the business side of comics towards assembly line production, corporate ownership of creative work, and marketing to the lowest common denominator--all of which mitigated against artistic quality. In the 60s, the underground cartoonists for the first time published comics whose main reason for existing was not economic. But this was a short-lived flowering--by the late 70s, underground comics were nearly extinct.
But at the same time, comic book stores were popping up all over the country, as well as specialized comics distributors. Now it's hard to imagine spaces more uncongenial to "comics as art" than comic stores, which for the most part were run by corporate comics fanboys for corporate comics fanboys. But the door was opened a crack for small publishers, and publishers sprung up to take advantage of the opening. Fantagraphics, which had published a fanzine, The Comics Journal, started adding comics to their publishing program in 1981. (Kim started working for Fantagraphics in 1977, I think, and became co-owner in 1978.)
Comics as art were revived at that time, thanks in large part to the publishing efforts of Fantagraphics. They published Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Peter Bagge, Ivan Brunetti, Carol Tyler and so many other great cartoonists, and are still doing it today. When you compare the publishing achievements of the underground comics generation (a brief brilliant flame) to Fantagraphics (and its peers, like Drawn & Quarterly), it's hardly a contest. Fantagraphics is one of the greatest publishers of comics in any language of all time and one of the strongest promulgators of the art of comics in existence. And Kim Thompson was crucial to that 30+ years of artistic success.
Any artistic form needs its impresarios and enablers. Art dealers, curators, publishers, editors, etc.--without them, art can't flourish. Kim encouraged and cajoled many cartoonists to produce art they never otherwise would have dreamed possible. I imagine that if Fantagraphics had not been there in 1982, Jaime Hernandez might have gone on to a successful, respectable career as a penciller for Marvel and DC. Instead, he has created a body of highly personal comics art that broke many artistic barriers and places him in the pantheon of great artists of his time.
When I started working for Fantagraphics, I lived with Kim and Gary Groth. For them, there was little distance between their private lives and their work lives--Fantagraphics bought a house that they both lived in, along with me and Kim's brother Mark. Once Kim acquired a girlfriend (Lynn Emmert, who subsequently became Kim's wife and who wrote moving journal entries detailing Kim's last months), he moved out of that testosterone-packed environment. Prior to that, he wore a daily uniform of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Lynn gradually converted him to dressing like a responsible adult. Still, his casual wear set the tone for the Fantagraphics office--Tom Spurgeon once wrote that the dress code there was "pants."
Despite his aging fanboy wardrobe, Kim was a model of maturity. I remember when we had an upcoming issue of The Comics Journal with a Lynda Barry interview (November 1989). In it, we also ran an interview with Paul Chadwick. At the time, I complained that we should not be interviewing Chadwick because he was, to my mind, "totally mainstream." And Kim wisely pointed out that Chadwick may seem mainstream to you and me, but for many comics readers he is a radical alternative to what they're used to. He shook me out of my snotty smugness.
Another thing I remember about Kim with fondness was his love of music. He was always eager to be hip to whatever was happening right now. In our common work area where The Comics Journal was produced, Kim had a stereo and an ever-growing selection of CDs. It was the loudest office environment ever--and the selections would range from the Pixies to John Zorn to Body Count and beyond. (I was appalled the day Kim brought in Use your Illusion.) And he liked to see live music; we saw Neil Young and Sonic Youth together, for example. But his greatest love was 70s glam rock and especially David Bowie. Once a bunch of us went to Rebar, a dance club in Seattle. When the DJ cued up "Young Americans," Kim joyfully shouted out, "This is the Motown of our generation!" as he danced.
Kim and I stayed in touch over the years, mostly through email. Our last correspondence was in January, discussing how to translate the title of Joost Swarte's Passi Messa. I suggested "Not This, That" but Kim wrote:
Yes, but graphically the two have to be the same length for it to work in the layouts.Tragically, he didn't have five months to figure it out. He never was a smoker, but somehow it was lung cancer that got him in the end. The same thing that got my dad. Kim was sort of a father figure for many young editors and designers who passed through the Fantagraphics offices as I did. We all learned so much from him. I'm lucky to be able to say that he was my friend and mentor.You could say "Not This, But That" but it doesn't have the prescriptive implication. "Zo" means "in this way" but "this" can just mean "this thing.""Not Like This, But Like That" gets the sense across, but then is clunky and unwieldy.Well, we've got five months to figure it out. Maybe there's some popular expression I haven't remembered.
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Tony Garbarini at galleryHOMELAND
Robert Boyd
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Tony Garbarini, Top
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Tony Garbarini, Seated Lady Figure, 2013, wood, yarn, fleece, aqua resin, enamel paint, found objects, 50 x 33 x 11.5 inches
Little pieces of black yarn hang off the green-painted wooden post, looking for all the world like stubble on an unshaven cartoon character. Ironically, this piece is called Seated Lady Figure, but the graphic cartoony visual image provides a way into the work of Tony Garbarini in Top a show of work at galleryHOMELAND. The work consists of a video, two wall pieces, and four free-standing sculptures. It's the sculptures that seem the most cartoonish--they have an antic screwball feeling that makes me think of early animated cartoons by the Fleischer Brothers or comics by Rube Goldberg or Bill Holman and Will Elder. The work comes out of a tradition of assemblage, but it has none of the grungy feel of assemblagists like Rauschenberg or Kienholz of Herms or even Jessica Stockholder, although Garbarini shares her love of bright color. It's the humorous juxtaposition of disparate elements--often boldly painted and containing visual puns--that makes me think of Bill Holman, and his comic strip Smokey Stover.
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Bill Holman, Smokey Stover, Nov 20, 1938
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Bill Holman, Smokey Stover, February 14, 1943
The objects in the Smokey Stover's home and in the firehouse where he works are the ancestors of Tony Garbarini's sculptural objects. I don't know if Garbarini is aware of Bill Holman's comic strips--probably not. Smokey Stover ran until 1973 and the strips have only been occasionally reprinted. But this kind of absurdity has remained an undercurrent in American culture. The idea that Garbarini is influenced by the long history of assemblage in art is obvious. He has a serious art education where it would have been difficult for him not to become aware of this history. But the link between Garbarini and Bill Holman (or Rube Goldberg or Milt Gross or any other "screwball" newspaper comic artist) may exist purely in my mind--this isn't the kind of art history they teach in art school, after all.
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Tony Garbarini, The Education of Apocalumps, 2013, fiberglass, epoxy, resin, aqua resin, acrylic paint, found objects, 60 x 30 x 24 inches
I can't see The Education of Apocalumps without also seeing Smokey Stover with a bowling ball on his head. Its meaning is obscure--the model volcano and books suggest "education" or "school," and the knife driven into a sphere could be read as an apocalyptic event, the destruction of a planet. But trying to find symbolism or metaphors or metonymy here is not likely to provide a big payoff. Perhaps better to think about it in formal terms, as a three-dimensional object in a space. But such an analysis would involve ignoring the absurdity of The Education of Apocalumps. Maybe the books provide clues. One is a book folk medicine and another is called Apocalypse Code by Hal Lindsey, an evangelical whose book tying the book of Revelations to current events, The Late Great Planet Earth, was popular in the 1970s. Lindsey is a disturbing fear-mongerer, but the sculpture is more wacky than ominous. Perhaps by being wacky, it satirizes the humorless death worship of Christian Zionism/premillennialism. But that interpretation almost feels too serious because it sucks some of the fun out of the work.
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Tony Garbarini, Cheese Slug, 2013, grout sponges, polyurethane foam, yarn, pencils, 40 x 33 x 11.5 inches
The Cheese Slug slithers with two knitting hands growing out of it. The yellow sponges look like cheese a bit. The pencils are not visible--maybe they are inside the structure, holding it all together. The hands, molded with polyurethane foam, are a kind of deathly white. They add a slightly disquieting element to an otherwise humorous piece. They seem ghostly, and the fact that they are rising out an amorphous shape adds an element of the supernatural.
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Tony Garbarini, Columbust, 2013, plaster, aqua resin, epoxy resin, yarn, enamel paint, found objects, 42 x 36 x 26 inches
Traditionally, a pedestal has been a neutral element designed to lift a sculpture off the floor and closer to the viewer. But in both Seated Lady Figure and Columbust, Garbarini explicitly incorporates the pedestal into the sculpture. Seated Lady Figure features a saw resting under the pedestal. Columbust has a dial embedded in the pedestal. Plus, it plays with the idea of a pedestal by having two of them--the modern white box and the classical column. Two pedestals implies that the topper is going to be special indeed! And it's... a trashcan lid, some white yarn and blue resin which sculpturally depicts standing water.
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Tony Garbarini, Untitled (Soldier, ship, trophy), 2013, oil painting ordered from http://www.europic-art.com/ , wood, found objects, 84 x 44 x 4 inches
Then there are the two Unititleds, both of which feature paintings created by Europic Art & Craft Company. Here's how Europic describes itself:
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Tony Garbarini, Untitled (Wit and Without), 2013, oil painting ordered from http://www.europic-art.com/ , wood, found objects, 63.5 x 32 x 4 inches
I find the use of these paintings slightly disturbing. Garbarini is toying with our conception of an oil painting (a valuable unique object that can be bought and sold), but to play this game, he becomes an exploiter of cheap Chinese artistic labor--just as someone who purchases the toys that rest above the paintings is purchaser of cheap Chinese factory labor. The paintings really mitigate the sense of fun that the sculptures embody. Looking at these paintings, I felt a sudden sensation of taking a "cheap holiday in other people's misery." Fortunately, the opening feature free alcoholic beverages. After I looked at the art, I went outside, sat in the sun and sipped my beer.
![Share]()
Tony Garbarini, Top
Tony Garbarini, Seated Lady Figure, 2013, wood, yarn, fleece, aqua resin, enamel paint, found objects, 50 x 33 x 11.5 inches
Little pieces of black yarn hang off the green-painted wooden post, looking for all the world like stubble on an unshaven cartoon character. Ironically, this piece is called Seated Lady Figure, but the graphic cartoony visual image provides a way into the work of Tony Garbarini in Top a show of work at galleryHOMELAND. The work consists of a video, two wall pieces, and four free-standing sculptures. It's the sculptures that seem the most cartoonish--they have an antic screwball feeling that makes me think of early animated cartoons by the Fleischer Brothers or comics by Rube Goldberg or Bill Holman and Will Elder. The work comes out of a tradition of assemblage, but it has none of the grungy feel of assemblagists like Rauschenberg or Kienholz of Herms or even Jessica Stockholder, although Garbarini shares her love of bright color. It's the humorous juxtaposition of disparate elements--often boldly painted and containing visual puns--that makes me think of Bill Holman, and his comic strip Smokey Stover.
Bill Holman, Smokey Stover, Nov 20, 1938
Bill Holman, Smokey Stover, February 14, 1943
The objects in the Smokey Stover's home and in the firehouse where he works are the ancestors of Tony Garbarini's sculptural objects. I don't know if Garbarini is aware of Bill Holman's comic strips--probably not. Smokey Stover ran until 1973 and the strips have only been occasionally reprinted. But this kind of absurdity has remained an undercurrent in American culture. The idea that Garbarini is influenced by the long history of assemblage in art is obvious. He has a serious art education where it would have been difficult for him not to become aware of this history. But the link between Garbarini and Bill Holman (or Rube Goldberg or Milt Gross or any other "screwball" newspaper comic artist) may exist purely in my mind--this isn't the kind of art history they teach in art school, after all.
Tony Garbarini, The Education of Apocalumps, 2013, fiberglass, epoxy, resin, aqua resin, acrylic paint, found objects, 60 x 30 x 24 inches
I can't see The Education of Apocalumps without also seeing Smokey Stover with a bowling ball on his head. Its meaning is obscure--the model volcano and books suggest "education" or "school," and the knife driven into a sphere could be read as an apocalyptic event, the destruction of a planet. But trying to find symbolism or metaphors or metonymy here is not likely to provide a big payoff. Perhaps better to think about it in formal terms, as a three-dimensional object in a space. But such an analysis would involve ignoring the absurdity of The Education of Apocalumps. Maybe the books provide clues. One is a book folk medicine and another is called Apocalypse Code by Hal Lindsey, an evangelical whose book tying the book of Revelations to current events, The Late Great Planet Earth, was popular in the 1970s. Lindsey is a disturbing fear-mongerer, but the sculpture is more wacky than ominous. Perhaps by being wacky, it satirizes the humorless death worship of Christian Zionism/premillennialism. But that interpretation almost feels too serious because it sucks some of the fun out of the work.
Tony Garbarini, Cheese Slug, 2013, grout sponges, polyurethane foam, yarn, pencils, 40 x 33 x 11.5 inches
The Cheese Slug slithers with two knitting hands growing out of it. The yellow sponges look like cheese a bit. The pencils are not visible--maybe they are inside the structure, holding it all together. The hands, molded with polyurethane foam, are a kind of deathly white. They add a slightly disquieting element to an otherwise humorous piece. They seem ghostly, and the fact that they are rising out an amorphous shape adds an element of the supernatural.
Tony Garbarini, Columbust, 2013, plaster, aqua resin, epoxy resin, yarn, enamel paint, found objects, 42 x 36 x 26 inches
Traditionally, a pedestal has been a neutral element designed to lift a sculpture off the floor and closer to the viewer. But in both Seated Lady Figure and Columbust, Garbarini explicitly incorporates the pedestal into the sculpture. Seated Lady Figure features a saw resting under the pedestal. Columbust has a dial embedded in the pedestal. Plus, it plays with the idea of a pedestal by having two of them--the modern white box and the classical column. Two pedestals implies that the topper is going to be special indeed! And it's... a trashcan lid, some white yarn and blue resin which sculpturally depicts standing water.
Tony Garbarini, Untitled (Soldier, ship, trophy), 2013, oil painting ordered from http://www.europic-art.com/ , wood, found objects, 84 x 44 x 4 inches
Then there are the two Unititleds, both of which feature paintings created by Europic Art & Craft Company. Here's how Europic describes itself:
Europic Art & Craft Co., Ltd,a fast growing and now is a leading art company in China, focuses on the oil painting reproductions, oil paintings from photos and other related arts for a low price. We are located in Xiamen, the premier oil paintings reproducing center in China. All our artworks are genuine hand-painted oil paintings on canvas. No machine printing or computer spraying is used. Our artists are talented graduates of the art schools for professionals, thus, museum quality is guaranteed.Garbarini got them to make paintings of three gruesome images--a child soldier from Liberia with a skull on a pike behind him, a sinking ship and a mutilated elephant. The paintings are arranged so that their top edges are lined up. Resting on top of the paintings are a bunch of colorful cheap geegaws, things that you might expect to see in a child's room. There is obvious tension between the horribleness of the paintings' subject matter and the childlike playthings above them, but this feels like easy irony to me. What is more interesting is that he chose to have someone else paint these images, specifically laborers in a Chinese factory. In the late 60s, there was a short-lived group in New York called the Art Workers Coalition. But the people who work at Europic are real art workers, churning out product for a pay stub like any other industrial worker. I am reminded of what John Berger wrote in Ways of Seeing: "Hack work is not the result of either clumsiness or provincialism; it is the result of the market making more insistent demands than the art." The Europic painters are the ultimate hacks, but are blameless. Presumably no one does this for artistic satisfaction; they do it to put food one the table.
Tony Garbarini, Untitled (Wit and Without), 2013, oil painting ordered from http://www.europic-art.com/ , wood, found objects, 63.5 x 32 x 4 inches
I find the use of these paintings slightly disturbing. Garbarini is toying with our conception of an oil painting (a valuable unique object that can be bought and sold), but to play this game, he becomes an exploiter of cheap Chinese artistic labor--just as someone who purchases the toys that rest above the paintings is purchaser of cheap Chinese factory labor. The paintings really mitigate the sense of fun that the sculptures embody. Looking at these paintings, I felt a sudden sensation of taking a "cheap holiday in other people's misery." Fortunately, the opening feature free alcoholic beverages. After I looked at the art, I went outside, sat in the sun and sipped my beer.
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Pan Recommends for the week of June 27 to July 3
Robert Boyd
There is actually quite a lot of stuff happening in Houston's art world this weekend--a little surprising for the middle of summer. Below are just a few of the events we'll be braving the triple digits to check out this weekend.
THURSDAY
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Presumably no paint will be involved in this hand-shaking performance
Shake Hands With The Art Guys in the Tunnel System Beneath The Esperson Building, 7 am – 3 pm. Press the flesh with Massing and Galbreth downtown Thursday as they continue their year-long celebration of 30 years collaborating.
FRIDAY
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Jay Giroux
Jay Giroux: Ideas Are Free at Devin Borden Gallery, 6-8 pm, with a talk by the artist on June 29 at noon. From the outstanding 2011 UH MFA class, now in Brooklyn, Giroux returns to Houston with new work.
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Erik Shane Swanson, Polychromatic Pentaptych, 2013, enamel and acetone on panel, 19 x 75 inches
Under the Moon Tower at David Shelton Gallery featuring Peter Abrami, Janaye Brown, Georgia Carter, Adriana Corral, Aaron Meyers, James Scheuren and Erik Shane Swanson, 6-8 pm. All right all right all right, party at the moon tower with seven graduates and candidates from the 2013-2015 UT MBA classes. There's a new fiesta in the making as we speak. Everybody's gonna be there--you outta go.
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Michael Menchaca, Sweven , 2013
Fahamu Pecou: All Dat Glitters Ain't Goals and Michael Menchaca: SWEVEN at BLUEorange, 6:00 - 9:00 pm. Atlanta artist Fahamu Pecou and San Antonio artist Michael Menchaca each have shows at BLUEorange, one of Houston's newer galleries. I saw the Pecou show in Austin, and it's great. And Menchaca's graphic work looks totally insane.
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I think that's a Rabéa Ballin on the left and an Ann Johnson on the right, but I'm not quite sure!
Bāsfeaturing Rabéa Ballin, Ann Johnson, Delita Martin, Lovie Olivia at the Art League Houston, 6 to 9 PM with the artists speaking at 7:00 PM. These four artists have been having joint exhibits for four years. I've been a fan of Ballin's for years, and Johnson's technique of photo printing on surfaces like dried leaves allows her to create some haunting images.
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Carter Ernst
Carter Ernst: Fur Bitten, Ken Mazzu: Echoes of Oblivion, and Pat Johnson: Artist Tries to Save the World at the Art Car Museum, 7 to 10 pm. If you missed her show at the Nave Museum, you still have a chance to see Carter Ernst's sculpture show, along with additional shows by Ken Mazzu and Pat Johnson (I wonder if this is the same Pat Johnson who was an art critic here in town for so long?)
![Share]()
There is actually quite a lot of stuff happening in Houston's art world this weekend--a little surprising for the middle of summer. Below are just a few of the events we'll be braving the triple digits to check out this weekend.
THURSDAY
Presumably no paint will be involved in this hand-shaking performance
Shake Hands With The Art Guys in the Tunnel System Beneath The Esperson Building, 7 am – 3 pm. Press the flesh with Massing and Galbreth downtown Thursday as they continue their year-long celebration of 30 years collaborating.
FRIDAY
Jay Giroux
Jay Giroux: Ideas Are Free at Devin Borden Gallery, 6-8 pm, with a talk by the artist on June 29 at noon. From the outstanding 2011 UH MFA class, now in Brooklyn, Giroux returns to Houston with new work.
Erik Shane Swanson, Polychromatic Pentaptych, 2013, enamel and acetone on panel, 19 x 75 inches
Under the Moon Tower at David Shelton Gallery featuring Peter Abrami, Janaye Brown, Georgia Carter, Adriana Corral, Aaron Meyers, James Scheuren and Erik Shane Swanson, 6-8 pm. All right all right all right, party at the moon tower with seven graduates and candidates from the 2013-2015 UT MBA classes. There's a new fiesta in the making as we speak. Everybody's gonna be there--you outta go.
Michael Menchaca, Sweven , 2013
Fahamu Pecou: All Dat Glitters Ain't Goals and Michael Menchaca: SWEVEN at BLUEorange, 6:00 - 9:00 pm. Atlanta artist Fahamu Pecou and San Antonio artist Michael Menchaca each have shows at BLUEorange, one of Houston's newer galleries. I saw the Pecou show in Austin, and it's great. And Menchaca's graphic work looks totally insane.
I think that's a Rabéa Ballin on the left and an Ann Johnson on the right, but I'm not quite sure!
Bāsfeaturing Rabéa Ballin, Ann Johnson, Delita Martin, Lovie Olivia at the Art League Houston, 6 to 9 PM with the artists speaking at 7:00 PM. These four artists have been having joint exhibits for four years. I've been a fan of Ballin's for years, and Johnson's technique of photo printing on surfaces like dried leaves allows her to create some haunting images.
Carter Ernst
Carter Ernst: Fur Bitten, Ken Mazzu: Echoes of Oblivion, and Pat Johnson: Artist Tries to Save the World at the Art Car Museum, 7 to 10 pm. If you missed her show at the Nave Museum, you still have a chance to see Carter Ernst's sculpture show, along with additional shows by Ken Mazzu and Pat Johnson (I wonder if this is the same Pat Johnson who was an art critic here in town for so long?)
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Political Projections of Our Puerile Politicos
Dean Liscum
Presidential Head Projections by Jonatan Lopez and Hilary Scullane had a limited run (Friday, June 28th, 9:30 p.m. to may be 11 p.m.) and played to a very exclusive crowd, those riding in June's Critical Mass. Nevertheless, it was (and is) extremely timely.
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The piece consisted of Lopez and Scullane projecting looping video of their faces onto one of David Adickes' two-story tall presidential busts. The artists' expressions ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, dallying in somber-smile stares and then expanding into tongue-wagging, toothy grins.
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The images alternated evenly between the two artists (gender equity with their political polemics) and were projected on to only one of the presidential busts, which appeared to be more of a matter of logistics rather than opprobrium for that particular president. A soundscape accompanied the projections. Although, I couldn't quite follow the content (too much echoing and reverb both intentional and not), the dissonance conveyed was disturbing enough.
Except for Wendy Davis doing an Abramovic tribute, I can't think of any more politically au courant art. (Don't get me wrong, Coming Through the Gap in the Mountain on an Elephant at TSU's University Museum is politically timeless, and runs through August 25, 2013.)
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Lopez and Scullane's snarky, tongue-wagging is pitch perfect with the Obama administration's defense of the NSA surveillance program. Their denial-justification plays out like an adolescence who's been caught.
This video of the President Head Projections doesn't do the performance justice, but it's better than nothing.
For me, PHP was a poignant, political-artistic moment in the midst of a party. I wasn't expecting it; I was momentarily captivated by it, and then I moved on. I headed over to the food trucks, the drink lines, and the homemade slip-n-slide, because I'd just been on a 2-hour bike ride and the high temperature had been 100 F.
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But it was memorable enough to stick with me through the party and the bike ride home.
![Share]()
Presidential Head Projections by Jonatan Lopez and Hilary Scullane had a limited run (Friday, June 28th, 9:30 p.m. to may be 11 p.m.) and played to a very exclusive crowd, those riding in June's Critical Mass. Nevertheless, it was (and is) extremely timely.
The piece consisted of Lopez and Scullane projecting looping video of their faces onto one of David Adickes' two-story tall presidential busts. The artists' expressions ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, dallying in somber-smile stares and then expanding into tongue-wagging, toothy grins.
Except for Wendy Davis doing an Abramovic tribute, I can't think of any more politically au courant art. (Don't get me wrong, Coming Through the Gap in the Mountain on an Elephant at TSU's University Museum is politically timeless, and runs through August 25, 2013.)
Lopez and Scullane's snarky, tongue-wagging is pitch perfect with the Obama administration's defense of the NSA surveillance program. Their denial-justification plays out like an adolescence who's been caught.
We're only kind of spying on you.
Everyone else is doing it.
It's OK when I do it. Really! It's for your own good. Because I'm a good guy. I'm special and that makes it different.
No really, just because I ignored and\or persecuted all the other whistle blowers doesn't mean I will you. That's just not fair to me. You're not giving me a chance to change."The administration's disclaimers matched up with the artists' alternately wry and ridiculous facial expressions punch through the political pablum. (A mash-up with press conference sound bites would have been really cool, but perhaps a little too explicit...after all, the eyes and ears of the NSA are upon them and you and me.)
This video of the President Head Projections doesn't do the performance justice, but it's better than nothing.
For me, PHP was a poignant, political-artistic moment in the midst of a party. I wasn't expecting it; I was momentarily captivated by it, and then I moved on. I headed over to the food trucks, the drink lines, and the homemade slip-n-slide, because I'd just been on a 2-hour bike ride and the high temperature had been 100 F.
But it was memorable enough to stick with me through the party and the bike ride home.
↧
The Lamentable End of Domy
Robert Boyd
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A rumor had been going around that when Domy closed at its current location that it would be moving into the location of Space around the corner. Space had been evicted (and is moving across the street), so it seemed reasonable to believe that Domy would be moving into the smaller space while the Brandon art gallery opened in Domy's old location. However, yesterday Domy officially announced that instead it would be permanently closing.
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In Chicago, you have Quimby's. In Portland you have Reading Frenzy and CounterMedia. In Los Angeles you have Family. Austin has Farewell Books, Austin Books & Comics and Guzu Gallery. Domy had a wide variety of art comics, some zines, an unusual and interesting selection of art books (including a lot of street art and lowbrow art), a bunch of "psychotronic" videos, an oddball selection of other books and lots of toys.
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If Domy had a problem, it was that it stocked goods in its various interests shallowly. Its merchandise was a bit scattered. I think it would have been better to have one or two specialties and a super-deep selection of each. (Personally I could have lived without the toys, but I know lots of people loved them.)
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And occasionally the "toys" are pretty amazing, like this hot pink bust of Ho Chi Minh.
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I was at Domy yesterday and bought a lot of books, including Nobrow 8. Without Domy, where will I find books like this? Nowhere in Houston, it seems.
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So I am selfishly mourning the demise of Domy because a book store which carries a lot of books I like is going away. Now I can probably find what I'm looking for online or in other city's good bookstores when I travel. So for me, the closing of Domy is a sad event. But for Houston, it's a tragedy. It removes the one place in Houston where someone can stumble across a copy of Nobrow serendipitously. Maybe the days of finding something obscure in a bookstore or record store or wherever is an archaic experience, obviated by the coming of the internet. But I don't believe it. Until you see a copy of Nobrow and flip through it, how will you know this might appeal to you? In other words, finding these kinds of things by accident in a funky old store off the beaten track can expand your mind. Especially if you're young.
When I was 16 and got my driver's license (in 1979), my buddies and I started coming to The River Oaks Theater, which at the time was a repertory theater--a new double feature every night. Initially, we were going to see rock and roll movies like The Kids Are Alright or Yessongs. But eventually we started discovering weird movies that we had never heard of there. Likewise, we started haunting the Half Price Books & Records on Waugh, buying records just because they had cool covers. I mention this because these places were part of my cultural education--they opened my eyes to new ways of reading and seeing and listening. And I would be amazed if Domy hadn't had the same effect on many a young person, seeking something without exactly knowing what it was they sought until they found it at Domy.
And now it's gone and there's nothing to replace it in Houston. You can still buy art books at the Menil and MFAH bookstores, and Kaboom! and Brazos Bookstores are fine places to get a book. But if you want to buy (or even just browse) zines or art comics or lowbrow art books or any number of other things, Domy was your only choice.
So they are closing with a big sale. You should head down there and pick their bones. (I already walked off with $160 worth of sale books yesterday...) Here are a few recommendations.
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Jack Survives by Jerry Moriarty. Much of this was originally published in RAW. It's utterly brilliant work by a painter who never sells his paintings.
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The Nancy Book by Joe Brainard. Joe Brainard was a writer/artist/proto-zinester back in the 60s and 70s. He was obsessed with Nancy and did a lot of Nancy-related artwork, collected here in this great book.
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This pretty book about Dan Clowes, the great alternative cartoonist currently having a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, is well worth having. (But you would probably be better off buying some of his actual comics, which Domy also had when I was there.)
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This is my favorite collection of comics by Ron Regé, one of the best art comics guys to come out the Boston scene centered around Highwater Books.
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Goodbye Domy. It was great while it lasted. Is there another nutcase out there willing to risk everything on a funky alternative bookstore? If so, you have one customer--me--waiting for you to open your doors.
![Share]()
A rumor had been going around that when Domy closed at its current location that it would be moving into the location of Space around the corner. Space had been evicted (and is moving across the street), so it seemed reasonable to believe that Domy would be moving into the smaller space while the Brandon art gallery opened in Domy's old location. However, yesterday Domy officially announced that instead it would be permanently closing.
Alright folks, in case you haven't heard by now, Domy Books - Houston will be closing our doors this month. The owner, Dan Fergus, made a small statement regarding it:
"We would like to thank everyone who has supported Domy over the years. Please join us for our going away party on Sunday , July 7th 6-8pm. Everything in the store will be on clearance from July 7-July 14"
So there you go. All of us at Domy throughout our seven years would like to thank you for your patronage and support. Come out on Sunday, July 7th and give us a good send off and a hot slap on the ass. Food, drinks, music, and tons of cheap stuff. And yes, things are already being marked down so if you wanna get a jump on things pop on by.
And many thanks to everyone who did time behind the counters in both locations these years: Russell, Seth, Patrick, Nick, Lane, Lisa, Bucky, John, Stewart, Sam, Matt, Brandon, Whitney, Ariana, Ali, Travis, Mikaylah...i know i'm missing some Austin folk.
But you get the idea. You all helped make Domy what it is/was. Thanks.This announcement on Facebook caused wails of dismay in the comments section. As well it should. The problem with Domy closing is not just that an interesting bookstore is going away, but that there is no substitute for it locally. When an art gallery in Houston closes, I feel bad for them but I know I'll still be able to see art in Houston. But what Domy sold was unique--no other store in Houston carries this stuff.
Now come buy some books!!! I can't take them all home!
In Chicago, you have Quimby's. In Portland you have Reading Frenzy and CounterMedia. In Los Angeles you have Family. Austin has Farewell Books, Austin Books & Comics and Guzu Gallery. Domy had a wide variety of art comics, some zines, an unusual and interesting selection of art books (including a lot of street art and lowbrow art), a bunch of "psychotronic" videos, an oddball selection of other books and lots of toys.
If Domy had a problem, it was that it stocked goods in its various interests shallowly. Its merchandise was a bit scattered. I think it would have been better to have one or two specialties and a super-deep selection of each. (Personally I could have lived without the toys, but I know lots of people loved them.)
And occasionally the "toys" are pretty amazing, like this hot pink bust of Ho Chi Minh.
I was at Domy yesterday and bought a lot of books, including Nobrow 8. Without Domy, where will I find books like this? Nowhere in Houston, it seems.
So I am selfishly mourning the demise of Domy because a book store which carries a lot of books I like is going away. Now I can probably find what I'm looking for online or in other city's good bookstores when I travel. So for me, the closing of Domy is a sad event. But for Houston, it's a tragedy. It removes the one place in Houston where someone can stumble across a copy of Nobrow serendipitously. Maybe the days of finding something obscure in a bookstore or record store or wherever is an archaic experience, obviated by the coming of the internet. But I don't believe it. Until you see a copy of Nobrow and flip through it, how will you know this might appeal to you? In other words, finding these kinds of things by accident in a funky old store off the beaten track can expand your mind. Especially if you're young.
When I was 16 and got my driver's license (in 1979), my buddies and I started coming to The River Oaks Theater, which at the time was a repertory theater--a new double feature every night. Initially, we were going to see rock and roll movies like The Kids Are Alright or Yessongs. But eventually we started discovering weird movies that we had never heard of there. Likewise, we started haunting the Half Price Books & Records on Waugh, buying records just because they had cool covers. I mention this because these places were part of my cultural education--they opened my eyes to new ways of reading and seeing and listening. And I would be amazed if Domy hadn't had the same effect on many a young person, seeking something without exactly knowing what it was they sought until they found it at Domy.
And now it's gone and there's nothing to replace it in Houston. You can still buy art books at the Menil and MFAH bookstores, and Kaboom! and Brazos Bookstores are fine places to get a book. But if you want to buy (or even just browse) zines or art comics or lowbrow art books or any number of other things, Domy was your only choice.
So they are closing with a big sale. You should head down there and pick their bones. (I already walked off with $160 worth of sale books yesterday...) Here are a few recommendations.
Jack Survives by Jerry Moriarty. Much of this was originally published in RAW. It's utterly brilliant work by a painter who never sells his paintings.
The Nancy Book by Joe Brainard. Joe Brainard was a writer/artist/proto-zinester back in the 60s and 70s. He was obsessed with Nancy and did a lot of Nancy-related artwork, collected here in this great book.
This pretty book about Dan Clowes, the great alternative cartoonist currently having a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, is well worth having. (But you would probably be better off buying some of his actual comics, which Domy also had when I was there.)
This is my favorite collection of comics by Ron Regé, one of the best art comics guys to come out the Boston scene centered around Highwater Books.
Goodbye Domy. It was great while it lasted. Is there another nutcase out there willing to risk everything on a funky alternative bookstore? If so, you have one customer--me--waiting for you to open your doors.
↧
Party at the Moon Tower
Robert Boyd
It's always kind of a game to get to know the work of MFA candidates before graduation and think about which ones have "it." It's kind of a sick game, but I'll admit to playing it. It's exciting to see the work of someone before it takes the public stage. You don't know if the artist whose work you like will go on to a career of life-long art production or will be one of the many MFAs who gradually stop being artists and fade away from the scene. And at its crassest level, it's a gamble on whose work is going to be worth money, and whose isn't. I wish I could say I was pure enough that such thoughts never entered my head.
And what's a more perfect summer show than a bunch of MFA candidates or recent MFAs. It's not the time of year when collectors are around--they're at their vacation homes in Maine. (I'm projecting here because that's where I wish I was.) A gallery has freedom to experiment a bit if they want and show some work by artists without proven track records. David Shelton Gallery is taking advantage of the season with Under the Moon Tower, a show featuring work by University of Texas MFA grads and candidates from the classes of 2013 through 2015. Now a show like this is inherently a hit-or-miss affair, but the work I saw there really impressed me.
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James Scheuren, BMX Cloudescape, 2012, archival inkjet print, 40 x 50 inches
BMX Cloudescape by James Scheuren is my favorite piece in the show and is the most mysterious one. There is a fairly flat, dusty looking landscape, devoid of vegetation or human structures, with a low horizon. It's a cloudy day. But then there are two uncanny elements. First if the vertical crease in the middle of the image. You wonder if Scheuren photographed an open book--if this is a photograph of a printed image of another photograph. Then the other element are the faint brown/black marks in the sky. The title suggests that they might be from bicycle wheels. They have that look. Maybe Scheuren printed out a large split image of a landscape, ran a BMX bicycle over it, and rephotographed it.
But these were not the thoughts going through my head when I saw it in the gallery. I wasn't even aware that it was a photograph. It feels painterly. The marks in the sky, which look so random, nonetheless suggest motion, like maybe you are seeing part of a windstorm passing over this dusty area. These lines feel like the motion lines of cartoon characters in comic books. But motion lines without the object in motion. It is the ghost of motion, and it is beautiful and uncanny.
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James Scheuren, Boneless Christ (IKEA Hammock), 2013, archival inkjet print, 50 x 40 inches
Scheuren's Boneless Christ (IKEA Hammock) is a more conventional photograph, but haunting nonetheless. The faded stripes on the hammock parallel the ridges on the corrugated metal wall behind it, and the greyed-put palette speaks of old forgotten things. It's a formally beautiful photograph, and one that radiates nostalgia, but neither glowing sunny nostalgia nor nostalgie de la boue. It's a feeling of regret that I get from this piece. Both of Scheuren's pieces are so quiet and so beautiful that I'm almost suspicious of my feelings about them.
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Aaron Meyers, Column, 2013, cast concrete, modified IKEA shelf, 12 x 75 x 12 inches
Aaron Myers sculpture Column was placed next to the two James Scheuren photos, and it was a good juxtaposition. They share grey and black colors and a grungy matter-of-factness. (And there is the Ikea connection--the gallery should have gotten the Swedish cheap furniture retailer to sponsor the exhibit!) If you have a piece called Column, folks are going to think of Brancusi's Endless Column. Endless Column could be made to any height and in any number of versions. The same could be said of Meyers' Column, especially when you recall the modular nature of many of Ikea's shelving units which can be expanded just as endlessly as a Brancusi.
These pieces were all in the back room of the gallery. Greys, blacks and browns dominated all the work in that room. Maybe the color scheme gave the collected work a collective sense of gravitas that pieces might not have had if seen individually. If so, that is a testament to the curation. But I think that feeling of seriousness was inherent in the work.
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Georgia Carter, Timber, 2013, oil on linen, 24 x 30 inches
Georgia Carter's landscapes, such as Timber above, had this a quiet feeling of sunset (or moonrise), silhouetting pine trees against a lighter colored sky. One shows the trees reflected in a lake with an undisturbed surface. That communicates a stillness and quiet, but with these Southern forest scenes its never quiet. Crickets, birds, cicadas. etc., are serenading you, and these paintings make me think of these country sounds. You can hear the lonesome whippoorwill when you look at Carter's paintings.
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Erik Shane Swanson, Polychromatic Pentaptych, 2013, enamel and acetone on panel, 19 x 75 inches
With work like Carter's, Meyers' and Scheuren's in the back gallery, you can see why Erik Shane Swanson's work was separated in the front. His bright colors would have stuck out. But even as intense as they are, Swanson's pieces exercise restraint. Only two of the panels in Plychromatic Pentaptych have bright colors, and in those two panels, the range of colors is limited (yellow, red and green in one, green and yellow in the other). This piece starts of chromatically intense on the outer panels. growing less so as the eye moves towards the center. Intriguingly, one of the panels is an recognizable (photographic?) image. It appears to be an image of a formal garden that has been run through a photocopier and folded twice.
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Erik Shane Swanson, Sunset Prism, 2013, enamel on mild steel, 47.5 x 13.5 x15 inches
Sunset Prism reminded me of a piece by David Shaw, Collider, that I saw at NADA. The difference is that the shifting colors in Sunset prism are painted and fixed in place, while David Shaw's colors are created using holographic laminate and shift as you walk around the piece. I like this piece, but I confess I wished that the colors moved. I'm spoiled that way. We live in an interactive world.
There were pieces by Peter Abrami, Janaye Brown and Adriana Corral in the show as well, which all were interesting in their own way and added to the excellence of the whole exhibit. Under the Moon Tower is up through July 20.
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It's always kind of a game to get to know the work of MFA candidates before graduation and think about which ones have "it." It's kind of a sick game, but I'll admit to playing it. It's exciting to see the work of someone before it takes the public stage. You don't know if the artist whose work you like will go on to a career of life-long art production or will be one of the many MFAs who gradually stop being artists and fade away from the scene. And at its crassest level, it's a gamble on whose work is going to be worth money, and whose isn't. I wish I could say I was pure enough that such thoughts never entered my head.
And what's a more perfect summer show than a bunch of MFA candidates or recent MFAs. It's not the time of year when collectors are around--they're at their vacation homes in Maine. (I'm projecting here because that's where I wish I was.) A gallery has freedom to experiment a bit if they want and show some work by artists without proven track records. David Shelton Gallery is taking advantage of the season with Under the Moon Tower, a show featuring work by University of Texas MFA grads and candidates from the classes of 2013 through 2015. Now a show like this is inherently a hit-or-miss affair, but the work I saw there really impressed me.
James Scheuren, BMX Cloudescape, 2012, archival inkjet print, 40 x 50 inches
BMX Cloudescape by James Scheuren is my favorite piece in the show and is the most mysterious one. There is a fairly flat, dusty looking landscape, devoid of vegetation or human structures, with a low horizon. It's a cloudy day. But then there are two uncanny elements. First if the vertical crease in the middle of the image. You wonder if Scheuren photographed an open book--if this is a photograph of a printed image of another photograph. Then the other element are the faint brown/black marks in the sky. The title suggests that they might be from bicycle wheels. They have that look. Maybe Scheuren printed out a large split image of a landscape, ran a BMX bicycle over it, and rephotographed it.
But these were not the thoughts going through my head when I saw it in the gallery. I wasn't even aware that it was a photograph. It feels painterly. The marks in the sky, which look so random, nonetheless suggest motion, like maybe you are seeing part of a windstorm passing over this dusty area. These lines feel like the motion lines of cartoon characters in comic books. But motion lines without the object in motion. It is the ghost of motion, and it is beautiful and uncanny.
James Scheuren, Boneless Christ (IKEA Hammock), 2013, archival inkjet print, 50 x 40 inches
Scheuren's Boneless Christ (IKEA Hammock) is a more conventional photograph, but haunting nonetheless. The faded stripes on the hammock parallel the ridges on the corrugated metal wall behind it, and the greyed-put palette speaks of old forgotten things. It's a formally beautiful photograph, and one that radiates nostalgia, but neither glowing sunny nostalgia nor nostalgie de la boue. It's a feeling of regret that I get from this piece. Both of Scheuren's pieces are so quiet and so beautiful that I'm almost suspicious of my feelings about them.
Aaron Meyers, Column, 2013, cast concrete, modified IKEA shelf, 12 x 75 x 12 inches
Aaron Myers sculpture Column was placed next to the two James Scheuren photos, and it was a good juxtaposition. They share grey and black colors and a grungy matter-of-factness. (And there is the Ikea connection--the gallery should have gotten the Swedish cheap furniture retailer to sponsor the exhibit!) If you have a piece called Column, folks are going to think of Brancusi's Endless Column. Endless Column could be made to any height and in any number of versions. The same could be said of Meyers' Column, especially when you recall the modular nature of many of Ikea's shelving units which can be expanded just as endlessly as a Brancusi.
These pieces were all in the back room of the gallery. Greys, blacks and browns dominated all the work in that room. Maybe the color scheme gave the collected work a collective sense of gravitas that pieces might not have had if seen individually. If so, that is a testament to the curation. But I think that feeling of seriousness was inherent in the work.
Georgia Carter, Timber, 2013, oil on linen, 24 x 30 inches
Georgia Carter's landscapes, such as Timber above, had this a quiet feeling of sunset (or moonrise), silhouetting pine trees against a lighter colored sky. One shows the trees reflected in a lake with an undisturbed surface. That communicates a stillness and quiet, but with these Southern forest scenes its never quiet. Crickets, birds, cicadas. etc., are serenading you, and these paintings make me think of these country sounds. You can hear the lonesome whippoorwill when you look at Carter's paintings.
Erik Shane Swanson, Polychromatic Pentaptych, 2013, enamel and acetone on panel, 19 x 75 inches
With work like Carter's, Meyers' and Scheuren's in the back gallery, you can see why Erik Shane Swanson's work was separated in the front. His bright colors would have stuck out. But even as intense as they are, Swanson's pieces exercise restraint. Only two of the panels in Plychromatic Pentaptych have bright colors, and in those two panels, the range of colors is limited (yellow, red and green in one, green and yellow in the other). This piece starts of chromatically intense on the outer panels. growing less so as the eye moves towards the center. Intriguingly, one of the panels is an recognizable (photographic?) image. It appears to be an image of a formal garden that has been run through a photocopier and folded twice.
Erik Shane Swanson, Sunset Prism, 2013, enamel on mild steel, 47.5 x 13.5 x15 inches
Sunset Prism reminded me of a piece by David Shaw, Collider, that I saw at NADA. The difference is that the shifting colors in Sunset prism are painted and fixed in place, while David Shaw's colors are created using holographic laminate and shift as you walk around the piece. I like this piece, but I confess I wished that the colors moved. I'm spoiled that way. We live in an interactive world.
There were pieces by Peter Abrami, Janaye Brown and Adriana Corral in the show as well, which all were interesting in their own way and added to the excellence of the whole exhibit. Under the Moon Tower is up through July 20.
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Some Last Minute Pan Recommendations
Robert Boyd
The 4th of July holiday and my abject laziness have conspired to make this post late. But there's a lot of stuff happening today, so check out some of these thangs.
SATURDAY
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Djenne or Dogon Miniature Equestrian, Mali, Bronze/Brass, 3 1/2 inches
African Equestrians and Gallery Artists at Gallery Jatad, 3 to 6 pm. The gallery with the slightly confusing (but excellent) mixture of contemporary art and traditional African art seeks to confuse you again by combining the two in one show. This is the kind of mixture I welcome. As Jackson do Pandeiro sang about a different cultural mixture, "Eu quero ver a confusão."
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The UNIT pop-up in process of being hung
What's In Store, an exhibit from UNIT featuring work by Harry Gamboa Jr, Sage Paisner, Lewis Mauk, Jean-Baptiste Lenglet, Gissette Padilla, Rosane Volchan O’Connor, Sebastian Forray, Solomon Kane, Simone Montemurno, Justin Amrhein, Kari Reardon, Donna Brown, Zach Kleyn, Myke Venable, Mark Ponder, Rand Renfrow, Tony Day, Mary Magsamen + Stephan Hillerbrand, Ben Tong, Robert Dansby, Elyse Graham, Kate Kendall, Rachel McRae, Dennis Ichiyama, Kamila Szczesna, Raul Gonzales, Sean Caulfield, Valerie Green and Susannah Mira at Gallery Sonja Roesch. It's summer, and that means prints for sale--lots of them at Gallery Sonja Roesch in UNIT's second annual gallery sale.
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Jimmy James Canales has plans for Houston
CAMx (Houston): Jimmy James Canales and Lee Michael Peterson at Redbud Gallery, 6 to 9 pm. This is some kind of exchange with San Antonio for that city's Contemporary Art Month. I don't know much about the artists, but I love the image above from Jimmy James Canales plus I love his name. It makes me want to start introducing myself as Bobby Robert Boyd.
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Jenny Meyer, Magic Hat, 32"x 22" acrylic on canvas
Jenny Meyer at d.m. allison gallery, 6 to 8 pm. Playful, colorful paintings that look a bit like deconstructed animated cartoons from Jenny Meyer. Should be fun!
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Chris Cascio's jumbo drug bags
Chris Cascio: Calm Down at Cardoza Fine Art, 6 to 10 pm. Cascio just got his MFA, so that means he's now in the race against oblivion that all recent art grads face. My money's on him--this may be the last time you see a solo show by him in a funky gallery like Cardoza. But I may be totally wrong. Either way, don't miss this show.
SUNDAY
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Angela Obenhaus painting -- I like the Malevich earrings
Thank you Houston! Group Show at the East End Studio Gallery featuring Anat Ronen, Daniel Anguilu, Gabriel Dieter, Kelly Kielsmeier, Julie Zarate, David Pilgrim, Alex Barber, Jamey Franklin, Patricia Thündercat Oun Corron, Valerie Gudell, John Paul Luna, Michael C. Rodriguez, Blue OneThirty, D.j. Twinkle-Toes Browncoat, Krystlle Bazan, Stephanie Guajardo, Armando Castelan, Cathy E. Payne, Nesreen Hussain Alawami, Sue Donaldson, Lee Carrier, NoL, Jeremy Walker, Catfish Perez, Blue Rooster Customs, Katsola, Carolina Guzman, Bryan Cope, Joseph Walker, Felipe Contreras, Heather Gordy, Marco Guerra, Erik Martinez, Brandy Black, Cutthroat Art, Patricia Torres, Lizbeth Ortiz, Angela Obenhaus, Leslie Roades, Kentra Gilbert, Ack!, Wiley Robertson, Robin S. Silvers, Mandy Peyrani, Bryan Lee, Beau Pope, Jessica Pope, Rafael Villarreal, Isaias Crow, Jessica Glover Guerra, Dae one from 12 pm to 5 pm. Wow, that's a lot of artists.
![Share]()
The 4th of July holiday and my abject laziness have conspired to make this post late. But there's a lot of stuff happening today, so check out some of these thangs.
SATURDAY
Djenne or Dogon Miniature Equestrian, Mali, Bronze/Brass, 3 1/2 inches
African Equestrians and Gallery Artists at Gallery Jatad, 3 to 6 pm. The gallery with the slightly confusing (but excellent) mixture of contemporary art and traditional African art seeks to confuse you again by combining the two in one show. This is the kind of mixture I welcome. As Jackson do Pandeiro sang about a different cultural mixture, "Eu quero ver a confusão."
The UNIT pop-up in process of being hung
What's In Store, an exhibit from UNIT featuring work by Harry Gamboa Jr, Sage Paisner, Lewis Mauk, Jean-Baptiste Lenglet, Gissette Padilla, Rosane Volchan O’Connor, Sebastian Forray, Solomon Kane, Simone Montemurno, Justin Amrhein, Kari Reardon, Donna Brown, Zach Kleyn, Myke Venable, Mark Ponder, Rand Renfrow, Tony Day, Mary Magsamen + Stephan Hillerbrand, Ben Tong, Robert Dansby, Elyse Graham, Kate Kendall, Rachel McRae, Dennis Ichiyama, Kamila Szczesna, Raul Gonzales, Sean Caulfield, Valerie Green and Susannah Mira at Gallery Sonja Roesch. It's summer, and that means prints for sale--lots of them at Gallery Sonja Roesch in UNIT's second annual gallery sale.
Jimmy James Canales has plans for Houston
CAMx (Houston): Jimmy James Canales and Lee Michael Peterson at Redbud Gallery, 6 to 9 pm. This is some kind of exchange with San Antonio for that city's Contemporary Art Month. I don't know much about the artists, but I love the image above from Jimmy James Canales plus I love his name. It makes me want to start introducing myself as Bobby Robert Boyd.
Jenny Meyer, Magic Hat, 32"x 22" acrylic on canvas
Jenny Meyer at d.m. allison gallery, 6 to 8 pm. Playful, colorful paintings that look a bit like deconstructed animated cartoons from Jenny Meyer. Should be fun!
Chris Cascio's jumbo drug bags
Chris Cascio: Calm Down at Cardoza Fine Art, 6 to 10 pm. Cascio just got his MFA, so that means he's now in the race against oblivion that all recent art grads face. My money's on him--this may be the last time you see a solo show by him in a funky gallery like Cardoza. But I may be totally wrong. Either way, don't miss this show.
SUNDAY
Angela Obenhaus painting -- I like the Malevich earrings
Thank you Houston! Group Show at the East End Studio Gallery featuring Anat Ronen, Daniel Anguilu, Gabriel Dieter, Kelly Kielsmeier, Julie Zarate, David Pilgrim, Alex Barber, Jamey Franklin, Patricia Thündercat Oun Corron, Valerie Gudell, John Paul Luna, Michael C. Rodriguez, Blue OneThirty, D.j. Twinkle-Toes Browncoat, Krystlle Bazan, Stephanie Guajardo, Armando Castelan, Cathy E. Payne, Nesreen Hussain Alawami, Sue Donaldson, Lee Carrier, NoL, Jeremy Walker, Catfish Perez, Blue Rooster Customs, Katsola, Carolina Guzman, Bryan Cope, Joseph Walker, Felipe Contreras, Heather Gordy, Marco Guerra, Erik Martinez, Brandy Black, Cutthroat Art, Patricia Torres, Lizbeth Ortiz, Angela Obenhaus, Leslie Roades, Kentra Gilbert, Ack!, Wiley Robertson, Robin S. Silvers, Mandy Peyrani, Bryan Lee, Beau Pope, Jessica Pope, Rafael Villarreal, Isaias Crow, Jessica Glover Guerra, Dae one from 12 pm to 5 pm. Wow, that's a lot of artists.
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Shootout at Texas Art Supply
Robert Boyd
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This is the "new" mural on Texas Art Supply on Voss Drive, just north of Westheimer. It replaces the old faded mural that had a similar West Texas theme. I don't know who painted it--Texas Art Supply's website doesn't say. Susan and David Frye painted at least one of the earlier murals there (but not this one).
The murals on this building always fade after a while. That afternoon sun on that west-facing wall can be brutal. They tend to end up looking kind of shabby after a few years. But this one is still fresh with very vibrant colors.
UPDATE: Anonymous in the comments kind of shamed me into making a couple of calls. The mural is by Mark Lyons, who is an employee of Texas Art Supply at their Baybrook store. You can see a little more of his work here.
![Share]()
This is the "new" mural on Texas Art Supply on Voss Drive, just north of Westheimer. It replaces the old faded mural that had a similar West Texas theme. I don't know who painted it--Texas Art Supply's website doesn't say. Susan and David Frye painted at least one of the earlier murals there (but not this one).
The murals on this building always fade after a while. That afternoon sun on that west-facing wall can be brutal. They tend to end up looking kind of shabby after a few years. But this one is still fresh with very vibrant colors.
UPDATE: Anonymous in the comments kind of shamed me into making a couple of calls. The mural is by Mark Lyons, who is an employee of Texas Art Supply at their Baybrook store. You can see a little more of his work here.
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It's a Sickness
Robert Boyd
Collecting, that is. C.K. Chesterton once wrote that there is little that separates a collector from a miser. Collectorsarenotnicepeople. But I can't stop! Here are a few recent acquisitions.
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Ron Regé, Jr. drawing, 2 1/2 x 3 inches
I already have several drawings and comics pages by Ron Regé, Jr., so this just deepens the collection a little. As some of you know, Regé designed the logo for The Great God Pan Is Dead.
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Ron Regé, Jr., Skibber Bee Bye page 4, 2000, 12 x 9 inches
Skibber Bee Bye![]()
is Regé's early masterpiece, a strange and at times disturbing graphic novel.
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Cary Reeder, Storybook, 2013, 9 x 7 inches
Ever since I first sawCary Reeder's house paintings in 2011, I've loved them. This tiny gouache was part of the Diverse Work's annual Luck of the Draw event.
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Nic Nicosia, DW #2, 2013, 7 x 9 inches
This is the second Nic Nicosia I have gotten at the Luck of the Draw. It is a creepy and inexplicable image, which is why I like it.
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Lisa Tan, The Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch Drawn From Memory, 2013, 7 x 9 inches
I had no idea who Lisa Tan was when I got this piece at Luck of the Draw. I still don't, really, but this isn't the first piece she has made about good old Bosch.
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Raymond Pettibon, The Means to an End, 2000 , lithograph, hand colored by the artist, 24 in x 18 inches, edition of 20
This piece by one of my favorite artists was purchased at a Paddle 8 auction.
![Share]()
Collecting, that is. C.K. Chesterton once wrote that there is little that separates a collector from a miser. Collectorsarenotnicepeople. But I can't stop! Here are a few recent acquisitions.
Ron Regé, Jr. drawing, 2 1/2 x 3 inches
I already have several drawings and comics pages by Ron Regé, Jr., so this just deepens the collection a little. As some of you know, Regé designed the logo for The Great God Pan Is Dead.
Ron Regé, Jr., Skibber Bee Bye page 4, 2000, 12 x 9 inches
Skibber Bee Bye
is Regé's early masterpiece, a strange and at times disturbing graphic novel. 
Cary Reeder, Storybook, 2013, 9 x 7 inches
Ever since I first sawCary Reeder's house paintings in 2011, I've loved them. This tiny gouache was part of the Diverse Work's annual Luck of the Draw event.
Nic Nicosia, DW #2, 2013, 7 x 9 inches
This is the second Nic Nicosia I have gotten at the Luck of the Draw. It is a creepy and inexplicable image, which is why I like it.
Lisa Tan, The Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch Drawn From Memory, 2013, 7 x 9 inches
I had no idea who Lisa Tan was when I got this piece at Luck of the Draw. I still don't, really, but this isn't the first piece she has made about good old Bosch.
Raymond Pettibon, The Means to an End, 2000 , lithograph, hand colored by the artist, 24 in x 18 inches, edition of 20
This piece by one of my favorite artists was purchased at a Paddle 8 auction.
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