The Work of Art in the Age of Home Depot

August 16, 2013, 1:59 pm

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Robert Boyd



Today the Art Guys walked around city hall, each encased in a 6-foot high fence. This was a performance called Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, one of 12 monthly performances they are doing to celebrate 30 years together. (Last month it was 12 solid hours of stand-up.) The fences were about 2 and a half feet wide on each side, I'd estimate. They told me they got the fencing to make their tiny personal exclusion zones at Home Depot.



They could see a little bit through the slats, and Michael Galbreth (i.e., the tall one) could see a little bit over the top of his when it was resting flat on the ground. Jack Massing's hair was just visible over the top of his fence. They both told me that it was very hot inside. It was pretty hot outside, but at least we got a little bit of a breeze.



The idea was to walk around city hall from 11 am to 1 pm, when perhaps they would have the best opportunity to interact with downtown office workers going to lunch. This might have worked on a more pleasant day, but on a day like today, most of those hanging around city hall were homeless folks.  The lunch hour workforce was probably in the air-conditioned tunnels running underneath. The local homeless mostly seemed to know each other.

Jack Massing said that when they did this kind of performance, the people who were most likely to stop and interact with them were homeless people. He theorized that they just didn't have the usual social constraints that keep the rest of us from engaging with strangers--especially eccentric strangers doing weird, inexplicable things.



The Art Guys seemed to want to engage people--they certainly weren't standoffish when folks came up to ask questions or take photos. Which is ironic, since the very object of the performance was separation. When I heard about the performance, I thought about how people have a zone around them that they would generally like people to stay out of, which varies from person to person and varies depending on the situation you're in. It may be a few inches. It may be a foot or two. I have a big "comfort zone"--I don't like being in super crowded places, like popular bars and restaurants. Obviously it will vary according to circumstance--if you're on the subway at rush hour, you make an accommodation to the fact that you will be touching strangers, whether you like it or not.



Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, which is a quote from Robert Frost's poem "Mending Walls," turns that personal "comfort zone" into a physical object. No one can brush up against either of the Art Guys when they are in their fences. They are safe from unwanted physical contact.



The problem with this performance is that in downtown Houston in August, their personal zones were not in any danger of being violated. There were no jostling crowds to navigate. Good Fences Make Good Neighbors would be better performed at the Galleria just before Christmas, or in Manhattan.



What's left is a pair of slowly moving rectangular parallelepipeds. And when they stopped (frequently), they looked like two rough-hewn minimalist sculptures plopped down randomly on a sidewalk. Perhaps they were commenting on a certain strain of public art in a way similar to what Jim Nolan did with shifting SCALE. If they had done this performance late at night, they might have ended up tagged. (I was sure tempted.)



And when they stand in front of city hall, they look like maquettes for a generic civic sculpture.



They weren't the only ones doing a performance in front of city hall. A white-haired man was blowing beautifully pure notes from a twisty animal horn at the front door of city hall. He blew for a while, then lay down his horn and started to shout with his strong lungs--"Repent! Repent!" City hall made no indication that it noticed either performance.

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August 17, 2013, 9:20 am

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Robert Boyd



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Pan Recommends for the week of August 22 to August 28

August 22, 2013, 3:43 am

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Robert Boyd

Here's most of what's opening up this weekend in Houston's art scene in these last few weeks before the fall season.

THURSDAY


painting by Emilio Reato

Argentine Art in Houston curated by Andres Bardon, featuring Ladislao Kelity, Nubar Doulgerian, Sebastian D'Amen, Monica Shulman, Luis Altieri, Alejandro Parisi, Emilio Reato, Franca Barone, Maria Paula Caradonti, Alicia Chaves, Antonia Guzman and many more, at Spring Street Studios, 6 to 8 pm. I don't know much about this show but it looks interesting.



20Hertz: Bill Arning Presents "Sad Bastard Music, C'est Moi", 7:30 pm at CAMH. A lecture by CAMH director and former rocker Bill Arning on "sad bastard music," such as David Bowie, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, The Buzzcocks, Pulp, Belle and Sebastian, Xiu Xiu, and Perfume Genius. What this has to do with visual arts, I don't know but who cares? This is some of my favorite music!

FRIDAY

 
Marcelyn McNeil , Untitled (speed), 2010 , Oil on panel; 74 x 71 x 1" -- this was in the 2011 Texas Biennial

Texas Biennial Invitational : Christie Blizard, Marcelyn McNeil, Tom Orr and Brad Tucker, curated by Michael Duncan and Virginia Rutledge at Lawndale Art Center, 5 to 8:30 pm. This is a little confusing--this show isn't part of the Texas Biennial, but features four artists previously selected for the Texas Biennial. So I guess this is kind of a spin-off?


Susi Brister

Fantastic Habitat by Susi Brister at Lawndale Art Center, 5 to 8:30 pm. Some of these photos may feel like modern updates of Cousin It, but overall this looks like a very beautiful if somewhat unnerving suite of images.


Cary Reeder, Jaundiced View, 2013

Now, What Was There? by Cary Reeder at Lawndale Art Center, 5 to 8:30 pm. Cary Reeder paints beautiful, stripped-down images of the charming but endangered  bungalows in the Heights. Wouldn't it be ironic if the upper-middle-class burgers of the Heights bought them to decorate their new McMansions?


Susannah Mira's Water Tower (2012) isn't going to be in the show, but it looks really cool!

Room Divider by Susannah Mira at Lawndale Art Center, 5 to 8:30 pm. We got a tantalizing taste of Mira's work in the Big Show, and now we will see what a room-full of her geometric assemblages look like.


Picasso brand donuts from the Menil/Fiesta project

The MENIL/FIESTA Project: Ten Years of a Curious Painting Assignment At the University of Houston at Inman Gallery, 6 to 8 pm (up through August 24, so don't procrastinate!) UH Painting professors Aaron Parazette and Gael Stack have, for the last 10 years, been sending their students to the Menil and to Fiesta Mart in order to synthesize their impressions into one painting. This is a show of some of the best results of this assignment.

SATURDAY


Alex Luster's video of the Montrose rollerblade dancer

Houston Is So Hot!featuring Ivete Lucas, Tish Stringer, Bill Daniels, Chris Nelson, Alex Luster, Stephanie Saint Sanchez, Madsen Minax and more at the Aurora Picture Show, 7:30 pm. I don't know about you, but sitting in an air-conditioned movie theater is about my favorite thing to do in August.


Jonah Groeneboer, SUN / MIRRORS, video still, 2009, 22 min

THE DISLOCATED CENTER OF THE MATERIAL WORLD by Jonah Groeneboer at the Galveston Artist Residency, 6 to 9 pm (on view through October 19th).I hate it when there are simultaneous art openings in Houston and Galveston that I want to see. Tough choice! But this one, which includes video, painting, installation and a sound piece, will be up for a while while the videos are Saturday night only... So this one might have to wait until next weekend.

Lawn Art in Spring Branch

August 22, 2013, 5:27 pm

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Robert Boyd

If you've ever been up to the Houston Foundry on Burnett St. in the Fifth Ward, you've probably seen Metalhenge, a sculpture group of metal screens in an empty lot at the corner of Maury and Burnett.


Metalhenge

I have no idea who the artist is. (If you do, please let me know in the comments.) I've always liked them, though.

Imagine my surprise as I was driving through a nondescript Spring Branch neighborhood when I saw this.



This is at 1733 Crestdale, just south of Neuens Rd. It certainly appears to be by the same artist.

Let me add that this is not a neighborhood where I would expect anyone to have a sculpture in their front yard. The reality, I've found, is that Houstonians just choose not to decorate their yards in this way. It's really rare. I was delighted to stumble across this exception to the rule.

Sunday Afternoon Links

August 25, 2013, 10:58 am

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Robert Boyd

Here's a few items that have crossed my RSS feed in the past few days.


Ken Price, The Pinkest and the Heaviest, 1986, fired and painted clay, two parts: 7 x 4 ½ x 3 ¾ in, 8 ½ x 8 ½ x 7 ¾ in

ITEM: This article by the always excellent John Yau on Ken Price was also documents the triumph of conceptualism over craft in major contemporary art institutions (it mentions museums, but art schools and alternative art spaces could be mentioned as well).

I found it perfectly in keeping with long held policies and biases that the show went to the Met [...] and not to the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, or the Whitney Museum of American Art — three institutions which have all but openly declared their hostility toward the craft tradition to which Ken Price, who worked in ceramics, clearly belongs.

In fact, it is apparent to me that all three museums continue to embrace an old and destructive prejudice. As the art historian T. J. Clark has pointed out, painting also belongs to the craft tradition, which is one reason why New York museums have a pretty bad track record when it comes to supporting or examining anything contemporary made by hand, particularly if craft rather than deskilling is involved. ["Ken Price's Time" by John Yau, Hyperallergic, August 25, 2013]

View Robert's Houston Art Map in a larger map

ITEM: Until recently, I hadn't updated my Houston art map in ages. Galleries open and close, though, and new pieces of public art are installed, etc. So here is the updated map. It basically has about a 75 mile radius around Houston. Obviously most art locations tend to be bunched together inside the Loop, but I try to include things that exist further and further out. I wish that there was a Pearl Fincher-style museum in each of the cardinal points. The north has the Pearl Fincher. We need one west (in Katy?), south, and east (Baytown?).  But really, there's enough here to keep interested explorers pretty busy. If you notice any errors or omissions, please let me know!


Keith Haring signing at the FUN Gallery in February 1983. Photo by Martha Cooper. Reproduced in NEA Arts issue 2, 2013.


ITEM: Did you know the NEA has it's own magazine? And it's  pretty good. The second issue has articles on Daniel Clowes, Art Spiegelman, Lady Pink and more. We don't have an official Academy in the U.S., no imposed canon of taste (except that that arises as a general consensus within art schools and museums--see John Yau above), but if there were an Academy in the U.S., it would be the NEA. And here they are, devoting most of their space in their official magazine to comics and street art. If you asked me in 1988, when I first started writing about comics and when I started producing some highly illegal spray can art, whether these art forms would ever be canonical, I would have certain said no while simultaneously longing for it. When I worked for The Comics Journal, we were torn between wanting our artform to be acknowledged by cultural arbiters and disdaining them in favor of an independent path. So now, 25 years later, comics and street art seem to have arrived. Break out the champagne, I guess.

NEA Artsincludes a great audio feature with Patti Astor about the history of the Fun Gallery, which was a key part of the East Village scene in the early 80s and the first flowering of street art.

Since the place was so small our first year, the place was so small we could only have one-man shows. And we never set out to be a graffiti gallery. We just gave shows to all of the people that were in this community that we thought really had talent. So we also included Stephen Kramer, Arch Connelly. And as well as the graffiti greats, Dondi, Fab 5, Lee, Futura. But every artist was treated just as an independent artist. And we were actually the first gallery to give graffiti artists one-man shows. To identify them as separate talents. Because usually they were just in these big smoosh piles. “Oh, that’s graffiti art.” And we were the first gallery to do that, and I think we were very proud of that. And I also think that the thing that we did was we opened up the art world to everyone. No more white wine, white walls, white people. ["Patti Astor and FUN Gallery: Inventing Space for Creative Culture" by Josephine Reed, NEA Arts issue 2, 2013]

Fun Gallery plays a walk-on role in a book I just read, Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz, as the first gallery of the East Village scene in the early 80s, of which Wojnarowicz was an important part. The irony is that Wojnarowicz ended up being locked in battle with the NEA in an opening salvo of the "culture wars." The NEA has remained a punching bag ever since. And to be honest, I never give much thought to it. It seems like a minor factor in my world. But I like NEA Arts.


skeleton + ass + Bill Willis = genius

ITEM: My favorite local Tumblr belongs to Bill Willis, who makes collages of random images with his own face--with an invariably manic expression--pasted in. Willis is a painter who had the last show at the Joanna, but I think this Tumblr is really his primary artistic outlet. Add it to your RSS feed.

A Certain Voluntary Association of Artists

August 26, 2013, 4:59 am

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Robert Boyd

Someone, often an artist, owns or has access to a space that can be subdivided into studios. Maybe it was a warehouse once upon a time. The space is rented out to other artists. These artists need space to do their work. You end up with buildings devoted to the production of art. These buildings come into being for awhile, are inhabited by artists, then go away. If you own one of these buildings, artists renting it is just a way to keep cash flowing in after the building has outlived its original industrial/warehouse use but before the neighborhood gets gentrified. The building's occupation by artists is just a part of its journey. But for the artists who work there (and sometimes surreptitiously live there), this building can become the site of a community where ideas evolve and are traded, where work is critiqued by one's peers, where collaborative works can be initiated.

Commerce Street Artist Warehouse was a legendary space founded by Rick Lowe, Wes Hicks, Kevin Cunningham, Deborah Moore and Robert Campbell in 1985. If a certain era of Houston's art history can be said to have culminated with the Fresh Paint show in 1985, then another era can be said to have begun with the establishment of CSAW that same year. Many of Houston's best artists worked there at one time or another, and the energy seems to have been tremendous. But that ended in 2008 when artists were forced to move out. (The story is told here, here and here.) Some of the artists who left were Michael Henderson, Kathy Kelley, Whitney Riley, Teresa O’Connor, Elaine Bradford and Young Min Kang. They quickly found a new space, where they hoped to avoid the latter-day mistakes of CSAW. In February 2008, they moved into an old storefront on Harrisburg at Cesar Chavez. This new space was Box 13.


Box 13 in 2010

I first encountered the Box in 2009, right when I was starting this blog. As a studio space, it has its problems. The A/C apparently is never very cool in some studio spaces. The studios didn't have doors initially. It's a bit off the beaten path. And there are lots of other studio spaces in town--artists are not starved for choice. There's Winter Street, Spring Street, Summer Street, Hardy & Nance, the Houston Foundry, Independence Studios, Mother Dog Studios, El Rincón Social, and probably others I'm blanking on. A friend of mine was looking around for studio space and checked out Spring Street Studios. He was tempted by its spacious hallways--ideal for exhibiting work--and efficient air-conditioning. It was clean and nice. But he chose Box 13. Because in the end, a studio is not a building. It's a group of artists. And Box 13 was where the artists he wanted to share space with were.

Therefore, it makes sense that Art League would be interested in hosting a Box 13 show. It's not like the Box 13 artists are a collective, nor could it be said that they have much in common with each other, except perhaps for a certain conceptual approach. And their membership is continually in flux. But perhaps more than any other studio in town, except for maybe El Rincón, Box 13 has an adventurous, exciting program of exhibits, including exhibits of its own members' work.

The Trojan Box, the show of Box 13 artists at The Art Laegue, is uncurated. Essentially artists were told to bring in work and that's what got shown. While there is work in the show that I would never have thought about exhibiting together (David McClain's painting and Quinn Hagood's objects, for example), overall my impression is that it works. There is an overall high level of quality that strikes one and helps paper over the occasionally conflicting aesthetic values of the individual pieces.


Daniel Bertalot, Maps for Ghost Limb Project (detail), 18 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches

Daniel Bertalot hand drew maps and hand lettered little statements in pencil on newsprint, which were given away at the opening. The work involved in creating these giveaways must have been tremendous. I thought the statement was a little over-determining. It explained too much. But it was beautifully lettered. The map was drawn do small I had to use a magnifying glass to read it. (This probably says more about my old eyes than anything else.) But aside from that, it was a perfectly useful if eccentric map. The day after the opening, I followed it to where it lead, over in the Second Ward.


Daniel Bertalot, one of the Ghost Limbs

This is what I found. He had taken a tree branch, stripped it of leaves and painted it white, and attached it to a telephone pole. The title Ghost Limbs was literal. A ghostly white limb was reattached to a thing that had once been a tree. Clever and beautiful. In addition to what Bertalot wrote in his explanation, I was also reminded of "ghost bikes," the white painted bicycles left in spots where a cyclist was killed by a car. The idea that a place or object is "haunted" by its history is given a kind of literal representation in this piece. Also, I liked that the piece wasn't "complete" until the viewer went on a little exploration. How many recipients of the map (which were all given away on opening night) followed through? If you got one of these maps, did you follow it to the end? Let me know in the comments.


Michele Chen Dubose, Labyrinth, 2013, oil on canvas

I don't understand the title of Michelle Chen Dubose's Labyrinth, but the subject matter is clear enough--a blurred landscape, as if from a photo taken from of swiftly moving car. The image of the landscape takes the top two thirds of the canvas. The bottom third is left white. The white area is an area of absence, including an absence of motion, which placed under the landscape portion makes it seem as if it is speeding by all the faster. When you see a "blurred" painting, you are likely to think of Gerhard Richter. But in Michelle Chen's case, I think more of Italian futurist painters like Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni, who tried so hard to depict motion early in the 20th century. For them, the blur had not yet become a universal shorthand for motion. Now, anyone looking at Labyrinth will see a depiction of speed.


Jonathan Leach. "W.F.", 2013, acrylic on plexiglass, 43 x 37 x 5 inches

Describing the materials in Jonathan Leach's "W.F." as "acrylic on plexiglass" isn't the whole story. A lot of the lines on the surface of "W.F." are inscribed or etched into the surface of the plexiglass. They make a visible line on the surface and cast a shadow on the wall behind. And the shadow itself is a big part of what you see. Looking at it, I wonder if Leach had control over the lighting. Did he place the track light in just the right spot to cast just the right shadows? "W.F." is kind of a barely-there painting. The thin painted lines and thin inscribed lines cover a minimal part of the surface of the plexiglass. Leach is heading into Larry Bell territory here. "W.F." is an ethereal art machine.


David McClain, Untitled, 2013, acrylic, saliva, semen, graphite, 36 x 48 inches

The extreme opposite of "W.F." is David McClain's painting. I was impressed when I saw it--the raw Baselitz-like painting felt like the real thing and not a pastiche of earlier expressionist work. I make this distinction because I think it's hard to make convincing work that has the ability to shock. But I was startled by this, even before I noticed the giant angry red cock. (In fact, I don't think the cock was necessary, really.) This muscular animal strides out of the sky into your nightmare. It is a very strong image. But then reading the materials made me go "ew." There are no circumstances where it is OK for David McClain's jiz to enter my conscious awareness, even in passing. Thanks a lot, McClain.


Quinn Hagood, untitled, 2013, mixed media and found objects, 9 x 7 x 31 inches

Perhaps the horror of McClain's painting make it the right piece to hang next to Quinn Hagood's ultra-disturbing installation. It consists of our labeled jars filled with liquid and some chicken-like flesh.


Quinn Hagood, untitled (detail), 2013, mixed media and found objects, 9 x 7 x 31 inches

The labels indicate that these are lab experiments of some kind. The main thing seemed to be whether or not the "muscle mass" was "desirable" or "undesireable." It's impossible to look at these without feeling queasy. At the same time, you ask yourself what the hell? Is this art? Is Hagood creating a pastiche of a science experiment?



Quinn Hagood, untitled (detail), 2013, mixed media and found objects, 9 x 7 x 31 inches
 
The words "ARBF Initiative" provide a clue. The ARBF Initiative has a website which describes its scientific mission. It is seeking to create a chicken-like organism that solves the many problems associated with the factory farming of chickens (the cruelty or it, especially). It seeks to create the following organism:

Organism able to procreate within viable budget standards

Organism able to rely on nutrient rich sustainable glucose-fructose based feed

Organism able to self induce tissue building anaerobic exercise and maintenance

Organism able to regulate immune system without the assistance of antibiotics

Organism able to produce and fertilize ovum

Organism’s tissues less undesirable for consumers to prepare and serve

Organism’s tissues devoid major arteries to detract from undesirable qualities

Organism devoid of undesirable adipose tissue

Rudimentary brain capable of only basic respiratory and cardiac functions

Elimination of all appendages, complex organs, and tissues not required for egg production

Increased abundance of nutrients present in organism’s tissues

This sounds pretty sick, but when you consider that cow muscle has been grown in a laboratory, it's not out of the realm of possibility. Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake is built around the premise of such bizarre genetically modified organisms (she even includes a chicken-derived GMO designed to create chicken McNuggets). That's what I think is going on here--the ARBF Initiative is a fiction like Oryx and Crake, but one designed to be convincingly real. Of course, putting these things in an art show reminds you of their fictional nature. But that knowledge doesn't make me feel any less queasy for looking at them. Given the rise of so-called "ag gag" laws, convincing fictions may be the only way to have public discussions of these issues.


Kathy Kelley, i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts, remnant rubber, plaster, wax, clips

The third piece in the "freaky animal trilogy" is Kathy Kelley's i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts, which may remind you of a piebald elephant head. Or an alien space suit. It has a palpable presence that makes you think it is a thing, not an abstract three-dimensional form. It uses her favorite material--reclaimed rubber from old innertubes--but adds what is to me a new element--the white top. It was made with plaster and polished with wax, giving it a bone or ivory-like quality. I won't say i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts is beautiful, but it is compelling. I have to look at it--it really dominates the room. (An amazing achievement considering that the room is full of very interesting artworks.) And at the risk of sounding like Charles Kinbote, the title of this piece describes something I personally experience on a regular basis.


Dennis Harper, The Great Pan Head Is Dead, 2013, paper, foam board, mylar, pedestal, 36 x 24 x 36 inches

A work seemingly designed to excite my Kinbote-like impulses is Dennis Harper's The Great Pan Head Is Dead. This is actually a part of a larger artwork, Motorcycle, that Harper disassembled. (I showed Motorcycle in a show I curated called Pan Y Circos in 2011.) Weirdly enough, it is the second motorcycle engine artwork I've seen--James Drake did one, too. Harper's is bigger and shinier, and more important, it references my blog. What critic could ask for more?

These are just a few of the impressive works in the exhibit. It's a cornucopia of interesting artwork. I could have picked seven other pieces to write about from this show that are just as interesting and visually compelling as the pieces I chose to write about here. The overall level of quality is that high. The Trojan Box is on display through September 20 at the Art League.

Esteban Delgado: Shifting Plasticity

August 26, 2013, 6:26 am

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Jessica Stockholder, while working primarily as a sculptor, widely engages with the type of formal concerns that exist in the realm of painting. She arranges objects that just about anyone could purchase from Home Depot and paints over some parts of the installation, three-dimensionally tackling two-dimensional traditions of line and color. The objects she selects are usually plastic and have a sense of "inherence"—what she describes in her Art21 episode as having color “all the way through.”

Watch Play on PBS. See more from ART:21.

Esteban Delgado, whose work was displayed at Avis Frank Gallery earlier this month, couldn’t be further away from Jessica Stockholder in his practice. He is an abstract painter: geometric abstraction to be exact. The closest he gets to installation is painting on walls. Everything is flat: as he states flatly (pun intended) in his artist statement, “the work is obsessively flat.” And while all of his work emphatically feels that way, there’s something in the architecture of his paintings that is thick, that shares an affinity with Stockholder’s gravitation towards plastic.


Revolving Thirds, 2010, Acrylic on panel, 24”x22”

Likely due to his choice of materials, which consist almost entirely of acrylic latex or enamel on panel, everything reads as industrialized. Idioms of Change (2012) jockeys between positive and negative space, representations of landscape and rabid machination. Bold colors clamor for attention like clawing advertisements. Upon closer examination the viewer can see the lines Delgado probably taped off while painting, allowing her to engage with the paint as material instead of simply as color and line. One would presume that evidence of brushstrokes would betray the mechanized gravitas, but here they remarkably make everything look even less human.


Idioms of Change, 2012, Acrylic latex on panel, 20”x24”

Delgado states that his work is influenced by regional colors and landscapes, and that is readily apparent in most of the work, particularly Cuates Feo (2013). Cuates Feo presents what appears to be two cropped, closely snuggling mountains in the left two-thirds of the panel. The left mountaintop stands resolute as the right one leans in, seeking comfort as they both fade to purple with the sunset. But while he effectively extracts pathos from the viewer with these mountainous characters, the general premise of linking abstraction to regional landscape seems obvious and unchallenging.


Cuates Feo, 2013, Acrylic and enamel on panel, 20”x36”

Primetime (2013), on the other hand, asks more from the viewer. The innocuous scale at about a foot and half by two feet belies the dramatic landscape suggested in the abstraction. This time, however, the landscape is contained within a box that reads as a television set, further implied by the title. The juxtaposition in color between the bright and faded reds in the landscape indicates expanse, ratcheting up the tension of vastness and containment. Questions of nostalgia, notions of interior and exterior spaces, and even subtle interrogations of what constitutes a landscape appear to crop up in this piece more so than any other work in the exhibition.


Primetime, 2013, Acrylic latex on panel, 20”x24”

While reading more assertively and exclusively as a landform, Tectonic (2013) also effectively engages in this shift of interior and exterior space. The link between title and form are easy to connect: the painting looks like a pared down, geometric model of one tectonic plate sliding over another. In that it feels like a representation of a model as opposed to the real thing is likely due to the objects’ lack of cropping—well, almost lack of cropping. The red plate is mostly contained within the frame with the exception of its tail on the right, and the very bottom left tip of the purple plate is cropped out. But because most of said plates are captured within the painting’s boundaries, they simultaneously read as something smaller, like children’s playing blocks, or maybe severely uncomfortable modern furniture. The shadows cast on the dark side of the plates seem improbable in sunlight, as if a lamp is illuminating them instead. In this and Primetime, Delgado appears to be conflating the drama, romanticism, and potential violence of nature with the banality of our interior lives.


Tectonic, 2013, Acrylic and enamel on panel, 30”x30”

Esteban Delgado constructs geometric abstractions in such a way that enhance the viewers’ experience beyond the sensibility of color and form. Ironically, it is his method of painting and choices of color that allow the viewer to additionally engage with the materiality of the paint in a way that’s nearly sculptural. While some of the work may be too easily graspable in its allusion to regional landscape, others are making compelling demands of the viewer—demands that Delgado may not have even intended. Or if he did, he certainly did not let on in his artist statement. All of this makes one wonder: why was this work on display so briefly?

Abstractive Constructions ran from August 2-15, 2013 at Avis Frank Gallery.

At Sea With Larson and Connor

August 28, 2013, 4:39 am

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Dylan Conner, Red Snapper, 2013, steel, plaster, enamel, 14 x 5 84 inches

States of Matter is a fairly nondescript name for this show of work by Dylan Connor and Alex Larsen at Avis Frank Gallery. I'm not sure I could have come up with a better name, but both artists have work that references the ocean or the seaside. And curiously, that's the feeling I get with this work--the feeling of walking along the waterfront or in a port. For example, Red Snapper, aside from being named after a delicious Gulf fish, looks like a wave frozen in space. It is actually a plaster cast of some kind, but I can't tell exactly how Connor made it. But one telling feature are the streaks of rust against the bleached whiteness of the plaster. That kind of rust reminds me my own time at sea and in ports, where the salty sea and windblown sand were slowly corroding just about everything.


Alex Larsen, Tidal (I), 2013, wood, marble, steel, 62 x 43 x 29 inches

And wooden pilings might have been painted once or maybe a hundred times, but they always looked like the heavy wooden element in Alex Larsen's Tidal (I), which also includes a metal model of what looks like a sailboat hull. I don't know much about Larsen or Connor, but if I had to guess, I'd guess they live in Galveston or somewhere along the coast or Galveston Bay. I hear waves lapping against the pier when I look at this work.


Alex Larsen, Extrusion Study: Crapshoot, 2013, steel, urethane, plastic, 34 x 40 x 5 inches

I risk overstating this shoreline feeling, though. A lot of Larsen's work in the show was like Extrusion Study: Crapshoot. These "extrusions" seem like a result of process that Larsen has developed. (The same could be said about Connor's casts.) They appear to be made of colored plastic that was liquified, poured, and then solidified mid-pour. They end up becoming very delicate-looking flower-like objects.


Alex Larsen, Scribe, 2013, wood, steel, epoxy, enamel, 22 x 31 inches

Larsen even included an old-fashioned picture among his works, Scribe. This lovely small abstraction feels a little out of place in this show, whose pieces otherwise seem so highly dependent on the process of their making for their final form. But so what? Scribe, with its rough rectangles of color and inscribed linework, is a beautiful piece. The enclosed form in the black rectangle reminded me specifically of Forrest Bess. Perhaps the spermatozoa in the red and white areas have a relationship to Bess's work as well. (But maybe I'm seeing Bess here because Bess has been on my mind so much lately.)


Dylan Connor, Whitecaps, 2013, steel, polymer gypsum, enamel, 48 x 30 inches

Less smooth and sinuous than Red Snapper, this piece is appropriately named Whitecaps. The wind has picked up and the bay has gotten a little choppy. Notice the "wrinkles" in the sides of each vertical element. I think this is a clue to Connor's process.


Dylan Connor, Polar Opposites (top half), 2013, marine buoy, steel, polymer gypsum, steel cable, 3 x 3 x 12 feet

We see more of Connor's technique here. The molds for his plaster and gypsum polymer objects seem to be made partly of stretched fabric of some kind. In Polar Opposites, this gives the illusion of great tension, as if the buoy in the center is pulling the two anchoring elements tightly.


Dylan Connor, Polar Opposites (bottom half), 2013, marine buoy, steel, polymer gypsum, steel cable, 3 x 3 x 12 feet

It has the effect of focusing the viewer on the buoy and its beautiful rusted surface. Polar Opposites is a spectacular piece of work. But it's one of those pieces that when you see it in a commercial gallery, you think, this a piece that demands a lot from whoever possesses it. How would a collector even display that?


Alex Larsen, Material Collision, 2013, steel, 38 x 44 inches

That's a question you would also ask about Material Collision by Alex Larsen. Here Larson, like Connor, is playing with the idea of fabric frozen into rigidity. Where Connor uses plaster and gypsum polymer, Larsen uses steel. But the thing is that the black sphere is sunk into this otherwise fairly flat piece of steel, as if it were a cannonball that had been fired into it. It reminds me of illustrations you sometimes see of spacetime around heavy objects like stars, except that they always depict spacetime as being smooth, like a sheet of rubber. But maybe its more like this, wrinkled and irregular, a little rusty and aged (which is OK, what with space being 13.7 billion years old).


Alex Larsen, Material Collision, 2013, steel, 38 x 44 inches

So the collector who buys this piece literally has to poke a hole in her wall to display it. Well, what's a little sheetrock when you can display something this grand in your home? It's really a magnificent piece--Material Collision and Polar Opposites are the two most exciting pieces in this excellent exhibit. 

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POLL: Where Do You Houston Artists Live?

August 28, 2013, 12:19 pm

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Robert Boyd


Where do you live?

A commenter on Swamplot made the following comment in reference to some new construction in the Third Ward:

My understanding is that it goes like this: First are usually the lower income artistic types who give the area a ‘vibe.’ Then come slightly higher income artistic types who find fixer-uppers and start increasing property values. Then come the affluent who scrape the lots to build their own houses. Finally, the developers come in to build on any remaining semi-large contiguous lots. ["Comment of the Day: Getting Ahead of the Game in the Third Ward", Swamplot, 8/28/2013]

Someone responded, "I’ve lived here [the Third Ward] for 4 years and have yet to meet a single 'artist.' Also, I’m not 'artistic' at all…I’m a square middle-aged white guy working for an oil company."

So this made me wonder--where do the artists live? I know where some Houston artists live because I've been to their homes. Of course, there is Itchy Acres, the clot of artists living up in Independence Heights.

Are you an artist? If so, please tell me in the comments where you live (just your neighborhood--I don't want your street address). If you don't want to mention where you live in public, please feel free to email me. I will keep the information private. Then once I have enough responses, I'll publish the results.

P.S. If you are willing to reveal this, would you tell me if you rent or own? (Or have some other arrangement altogether?)

P.P.S. I assumed that respondents would all be visual artists of one sort or another, but I've gotten responses from people who identify themselves as musicians and writers. So if you want to, please let us know what kind of artist you are.

Pan Recommends for the week of August 29 to September 4

August 29, 2013, 4:01 am

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Robert Boyd

Happy Labor Day weekend! If you're not at the beach, here are some art things to do. (And if you are at the beach, swing by GAR and the Galveston Art Center.)

THURSDAY


This 3-D image of a handprint on a mouse will probably make a lot more sense if you see Felipe Lopez's show at the Alliance Gallery

Felipe Lopez: Constructing the Praxis of Interactivity at the Alliance Gallery, 6 to 8 pm. This solo show by Felipe Lopez features thermochromics (paint that changes color when the temperature changes) and 3-D glasses. I'm disappointed by the lack of smellovision, though.



"No Matter How Hard I Try I Can’t Look The Same As I Did Yesterday" by soprano Lisa Harris featuring DJ Fat Tony at Fresh Arts, 6 to 8 pm. A new performative installation including video. I'm not sure if there is any performance at the opening reception (aside from the DJ), but there are two official performance dates scheduled; one on September 13 and one on September 20.



Design Now–Houston: Democratic Design: Envisioning Houston featuring Susan Rogers, Ned Dodington, and Javier Fadul at the CAMH, 6:30 to 7:30 pm. Part of a lecture series to accompany CAMH's current design show, this one is about envisioning Houston on different scales.

FRIDAY

 
I think this one is by Beau Pope

Strictly Stencils! featuring work by 2:12, Zen Full, Cutthroat, Pahnl Whatnow, Bryan Cope, Chad HKs, Stencil Killer Art, Wiley Robertson, Emmanuel Nuño Arámbula, Jessica Pope and Beau Pope at East End Studio Gallery, one night only, 6 to 10 pm. Presented by Popeswithpaint.com. I wish it lasted longer than one night...


Alex Larsen's studio at El Rincón Social

OPEN STUDIOS ¡JUEGOS! at El Rincón Social, 8 pm to 2 am. Come see the artists' studios  an play some games, including mariachi gritos,  monkey dodge ball, marbles, cat rodeo, indoor fishing, ice sliding, checkers, rhino boobs, bobbing for Jalapenos, over-the-top arm wrestling and more.

SATURDAY


Earl Staley, Distant Shore, watercolor on paper, 6 x 12 inches

Earl Staley's Going to Rome Sale at his studio at Art Supply on Main, 10am to 4pm. Earl Staley is heading off to the American Academy in Rome, and wants to sell you a watercolor or two before he goes. Staley is an excellent and highly prolific watercolorist, and these pieces, mostly from 2008 to the present, are being sold at bargain prices ($25 to $500). Not a bad price to pay for work by an artist who represented the U.S. at the 1984 Venice Biennale!



EXTRA ! EXTRA ! A News Media Art Happening featuring Mic McAllister, Yamin Cespedes, William H. Miller, Vincent Fink, Brent Bruni Comiskey, Michael Wooten, Samar Allarakia, Yota Papadopulos, Zoanna Maney, Niole Gavin, Elizabeth Cencini, Eric Harker, John Paul Hartman, Solomon Kane, Gian Palacios-Świątkowski, Kyle Fu, Joe Sioufi, Mandy Peyrani, Catherine Kleinhans, Victoria Lewelling, George Bibb, Dirk Strangely, Moe Profane, Dandee Warhol, Kristen Blakeway, Gordon Greenleaf, Victor Hugo Zambrano Navarro, Paula Hawkins, Chasity Porter, James Hudek, Randall Kallinen, Christian Perkins, Christina Lynn Todaro, Denise St. Clair, Jonathan Rosenstein, Lenora Palacios, Angela Obenhaus, Marsha Glickman, Naz Kaya-Erdal, Charlene Zak and Hope Sanford at Kallinen Contemporary, 7 to 10 pm. The subject is the news media, and this show will include an appearance by Wayne Dolcefino--not the Houston art world's favorite reporter!

Soo Sunny Park and Total Reflective Abstraction

August 31, 2013, 6:33 am

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Betsy Huete

There is an article filed away in an old issue of Cabinet Magazine written by Josiah McElheny. In it he proposes the canonization of a movement born of a conversation between Isamu Noguchi and Buckminster Fuller called "Total Reflective Abstraction." As one can fairly easily conclude, the general premise of the movement is to engender a new form of abstraction based entirely off reflectivity. What’s less obvious, however, is the crux of the arguments Total Reflective Abstraction makes. While one may surmise the abstraction lies in the refraction of bouncing light and the bending of reflected images, the idea is actually that the abstraction exists in its invisibility. Devoid of edges, shadow, or content, the form is continually reflecting the environment back onto the viewer.

Soo Sunny Park’s Unwoven Light (2013), recently up at Rice Gallery, seems to reify this buried movement. It’s a massive installation comprising of thirty-seven welded and tied together chain-link fencing. Suspended mid-air, tufts of fencing twist and curl about, writhing like metal wind. The pores of the fencing are mostly filled with Plexiglas inserts, each lightly tinted with an acrylic film. The result is a wavy, tumultuous crystalline and prismatic structure that, in line with the tenets of Total Reflective Abstraction, harbors a sense of invisible presence.


Unwoven Light, 2013, Chain-link fence, Plexiglas, acrylic film, dimensions variable

According to the brief film in the front of the gallery, Park engages herself primarily with interstitial spaces. And she certainly achieves that with Unwoven Light—the combination of chain-link fence to Plexiglas creates a form that feels simultaneously wistful and intimidating. Because of its reflective nature, it’s also a piece that constantly changes: the viewer can have an entirely different experience simply by attending to the piece at different stages in the day.


Soo Sunny Park: Unwoven Light from Walley Films on Vimeo.

The write-up Rice Gallery provides details this potentiality of constant change not only due to reflection but also color. The slight tint Park applies to the Plexiglas squares shimmers, harkening to the iridescence present in nature on things like feathers, scales, wings, and water. But it curiously discusses very little, if at all, the presence of the object in the room and the ways in which it commands the space. While formally light and even playful, it pulls and leads and magnetizes the viewer’s movement like dark matter. As the viewer advances through the space, he gets sucked into and hugged by the piece as it curls in on itself, creating micro-spaces of refuge and claustrophobia within the totality of the environment.

In being that the most successful component of Unwoven Light is its invisible presence, it is disappointing to see that not every space of the fencing is filled with Plexiglas. This is likely due to Park’s interest in the chain-link fence as both a hefty and porous material, but the addition and uniformity of the Plexiglas within the pores of the fence is precisely and paradoxically what makes it feel so invisible in the first place. So here, the vacant spots read less as pores and more as missing teeth. Park and her assistants endured great pains, not to mention probably hundreds of hours welding fence and tying wire—which makes it all the more frustrating to see the separate components attached with plastic ties. While Park may be hard pressed to find a more practical form of attachment, the plastic ties are materially incompatible and nevertheless distracting.


Unwoven Light, detail, 2013, Chain-link fence, Plexiglas, acrylic film, dimensions variable

Soo Sunny Park’s installation is surprisingly forceful, commanding of movement while maintaining a visual pulchritude and weightlessness. In terms of liminality, it’s an environment that imminently hints at danger and entrapment, yet immanent in its ability to exude and reflect back onto the world color in its most beautiful form.

Pan Recommends for the week of September 5 to September 11

September 5, 2013, 4:19 am

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Robert Boyd

This is the busiest weekend of the year as far  as gallery and museum openings go. Below is a list of most of what's opening this weekend--33 exhibits by my count. Can one possibly see them all? I think so--and to make it a little easier for you, I've grouped them by geographic proximity, which should help the dedicated art trekker minimize her travel time.

THURSDAY

Thursday's relatively easy--three openings within a three-block radius.


photo by Galina Kurlat

A Likeness by Main Street Projects. A group exhibition displaying recent contemporary works by Main Street Projects founders Brandon Dimit, Theresa Escobedo, Galina Kurlat, and Rahul Mitra.
 
Eduardo Portillo: New Work at The Gallery at HCC Central- Houston Community College , 5–7:30 pm. Somehow these HCC exhibits are related to the Texas Biennial, which sprawls over 80 participating institutions and is so diffuse in my mind that it doesn't really have an identity. I would expect some large rag dolls if this is a typical Eduardo Portillo show.
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Melanie Miller, Silk Road 5, 2013, acrylic on paper, 44"x30"

Melanie Millar: New Work  at The Gallery at HCC Central- Houston Community College, 5–7 pm. Decoration informs Melanie Miller's work.
 
FRIDAY

For your Friday perambulations, there are two clusters and three singletons. First is the Isabella Court Galleries on Main (with Diverse Works one block south). 


Barry Stone, Bouquet 3487_1, 2013, archival digital print, 24 x 16 inches

Barry Stone: Look Near Into the Distance at Art Palace, 6 to 8 pm. Check out this beautiful on-line catalog. I like Barry Stone's photos so much that I bought one. I look forward to seeing the digitally distressed flowers like the one above.


Wayne White, DUNNO, 2013, acrylic on offset lithograph, 25 1/2 x 45 1/2 inches

Wayne White: Dunnoat David Shelton Gallery, 6–8 pm. From his early comics to his Peewee Herman Show puppetry to his word paintings, I have loved Wayne White's work literally for decades. I think this is his first show in Houston since the amazing Big Lectric Fan installation.


Todd Hebert, Goose With Glacier, 2013

Todd Hebert: Ebb and Flow at Devin Borden Gallery, 6–8 pm.



Somehow, this appropriated press photo is part of Katrina Moorhead's exhibit

Katrina Moorhead: The Bird that Never Lands(cape) at Inman Gallery, 6–8 pm.


Rachel Hecker, Eleventh Hour, 1992 acrylic on wood, 120 x 80 inches, (destroyed)

The Eleventh Hour featuring Elia Arce, Eric Avery, Johannes Birringer, Mel Chin, Ben DeSoto, Karen Finley, Michael Galbreath, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, the Gorilla Girls/Houston, Deborah Hay, Sharon Hayes, Rachel Hecker, Zhang Huan, Infernal Bridegroom Productions, Rhodessa Jones, William Pope.L, Annie Sprinkle, Mary Ellen Strom, and many others at DiverseWorks, 7–9 pm. I'm not sure what to expect, but this exhibit seems to be about the history of Diverse Works itself. Presumably the above painting will not be included, alas.

Then there are the galleries at 4411 Montrose...

Katja Loher: Who Collects Clouds in the Sky? at Anya Tish Gallery, 6 to 8:30 pm.Katja Loher's kaleidoscopic videos are always fun to look at.

Michael Crowder, Mariposa

Retro-spectacle: Michael Crowder at Wade Wilson Art, 6–8 pm.Michael Crowder produces delicate, surprisingly conceptual glass artwork.

Lauren Kelley, Stills from “Brown Objects (Pink Head)” 2013

Lauren Kelley: Puce Parade at Zoya Tommy Contemporary, 6–8 pm.

Gavin Perry, Untitled, 2013, Pigmented resin, vinyl on board, 72 x 96 inches

Gavin Perry: End of the Line at Barbara Davis Gallery, 6:30–8:30 pm.

Finally, you'll have to drive hither and yon to see the three shows below.


Dan Havel, Wall Burster

Dan Havel: Homewrecker – Disrupted Architecture at  Avis Frank Gallery, 6-8 pm. -I'm very interested in seeing what Dan Havel does outside his Havel+Ruck partnership. The pair have forged such a distinct artistic identity that I can't quite imagine what one of them alone will be like!


Tom Marioni: The Act of Drinking Beer from Smart Museum of Art on Vimeo.

Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art including art, documentary materials, and new public projects by Marina Abramović and Ulay, Sonja Alhäuser, Miguel Amat, Mary Ellen Carroll, Mary Evans, Fallen Fruit, Theaster Gates, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, InCUBATE, The Italian Futurists, Mella Jaarsma, Alison Knowles, Suzanne Lacy, Gabriel Martinez, Lynne McCabe, Lee Mingwei, Laura Letinsky, Tom Marioni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Mildred’s Lane, Julio César Morales and Max La Rivière-Hedrick, motiroti, National Bitter Melon Council, Ana Prvacki, Sudsiri Pui-Ock, Michael Rakowitz, Ayman Ramadan, Red76, David Robbins, Allen Ruppersberg, Bonnie Sherk, Barbara T. Smith, Daniel Spoerri, and Rirkrit Tiravanija at theBlaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, 7:00 pm. This is the kind of show where even if the work in it is not so good, at least there will be something to eat, right? The Art Guys will apparently be among the bartenders at The Act of Drinking Beer With Friend is the Highest Form of Art by Tom Marioni.


It's not performance art without naked guys--Josh Urban Davis

Submission featuring performances by Joshua Yates, Unna Bettie, Ryan Hawk, Daniel Bertalot, Patrick Doyle, Karen Mazzu, Renee Cosette Pedersen, Josh Urban Davis, Hilary Scullane, Raindawg, Jana Whatley, Neil Ellis Orts, Y. E. Torres, Koomah, Tina McPherson & Sandy Ewen, Evan McCarley, Julia Wallace, Jonatan Lopez, Chris Meadows and Emmanuel Nuno Arambula at Summer Street Studios, 9 pm – 12 am.If you aren't completely exhausted from looking at art, you can go check out some performance in the vast spaces of Summer Street.

SATURDAY

The big cluster here is Colquitt St., home to many galleries having openings this week.


Anna Ferrer, Rain Flower Trench Coat

Red Hot by Anna Ferrer at Nicole Longnecker Gallery, 5–7 pm.

Michael Bise, Life on the List comics pages

Love in the Kingdom of the Sick: Michael Bise at Moody Gallery, 5–7 pm. Graphite drawings and pages from his comic, Life on the List, will be on display. The comic deals with Bise's heart transplant and has been fitfully serialized on Glasstire.


Rusty Scruby, Crown Point, 2013

If You Cut It, They Will Come featuring Sandi Seltzer Bryant, Jane Eifler, Michael Guidry, Ted Larsen, Lance Letscher and Rusty Scruby at McMurtrey Gallery, 6–8 pm.

Ward Sanders, A Short History of Dust, 2013 , assemblage , 7 x 9 x 2"

Jacqueline Dee Parker: The Gameboard and Ward Sanders: Birds of Time at Hooks-Epstein Galleries, 6–8 pm. I don't know much about Jacqueline Dee Parker, but Ward Sanders is an artist I have followed eagerly for several years (and own a piece by). His work is perfect for bookish lovers of Borges and Calvino.


Randall Reid, Crime Fighters, found printed metal object w/ printed and painted metal parts, on wood and steel box construction, 6.75" x 7"x 2" y. 2013

Randall Reid: A New World at d. m. allison, 6–8 pm.

Rachel Phillips, Blue Smoke Rising, Wet transfer pigment print on vintage envelope

Rachel Phillips: Field Notesat Catherine Couturier Gallery, 6-8 p.m. I'm unfamiliar with Rachel Phillips, but the work looks intriguing--and looks like it will go well with the Ward Sanders art shown next door at Hooks-Epstein.

Then up in the Heights there is the two-gallery cluster on 11th Street...


art by Jon Read

Jon Read: The Shrine to the Myth of Man and Yuliya Lanina: Not a Sad Tale at G Gallery, 6–9 pm.

b. moody, o this crushing burden - these sins of my fathers what fetid weight this melancholy we call the deep south surely the day of reckoning is upon this land of cotton for behold: the conversion of St. Stonewall on the road to Damascus, Georgia

An American Family: b. Moody at Redbud Gallery, 6–9 pm.

But after that, you are going to have to drive all over the inner Loop to see the art opening tonight. 

work by Perla Krauze

Perla Krauze: Suspended Blues at Gallery Sonja Roesch, 5–7 pm.

Stephanie Reid

Stephanie Reid: Hidden Places at the Jung Center, 5–7 pm.


Miguel Angel Ríos, Untitled (from the series The Ghost of Modernity, 2012. Single-channel video, 3:11 min.

Miguel Angel Ríos: Folding Borders at Sicardi Gallery, 6–8 pm.

Collective Identity featuring Robert Barry , Jessica Crute , Jenny Holzer , Christian Tomaszewski , Philippe Tougard-Maucotel and Christian Xatrec at Deborah Colton Gallery, 6–9 pm.

James Ciosek, Unknown Soldier, found corrugated tin patterned by buckshot, found corrugated fiberglass, red plexiglass, fluorescent lights with red lenses, cement, 29 by 54 by 14 inches

in-DEPTH: Texas Sculpture Group Member Exhibition at the Art Car Museum, 7–10 pm.This is another TX Biennial-related show. I'm not sure of the included artists, although apparently James Ciosek is one of them, which is a good sign!

...mistress: Regina Agu at BOX 13 ArtSpace, 7–9:30 pm.



The New Black – Angela Malchionno at Box 13, 7-9:30 pm.

WORDPLAY: curated by Sapphire Williams featuring work by Logan Sebastian Beck, Harry Dearing III, David Feil,Sebastian Forray, Jorge Galvan, Matthew Gorgol, Jordan Johnson, Lillie Monstrum, Darcy Rosenberger, and Sapphire Williams at  BOX 13 ArtSpace, 7–9:30 pm. When a show is described as aiming "to examine a current generations’ interest in text and semiotics," I reach for my revolver. But this has some artists I really like, including the excellent Jorge Galvan, who doesn't show his work very often.

a God's Eye outpost by Kate Kendall, Box 13 Artspace, 7-9:30 pm.


The Brandon: Group Show from Cody Ledvina on Vimeo.

Group Show (50 Humans) featuring Mark Flood, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Robyn O'Neil, Rachel Hecker, Michael Bise, Aaron Parazette, John Sparagana, Tisch Abelow, Otis Ike, Georganne Deen, Lane Hagood, Jeremy Deprez, Seth Alverson, Jim Nolan, Cheyanne Ramos Forray, Gabriel Martinez, Hillerbrand+Magsamen, Tony Day, Shane Tolbert, Keith Varadi, Raymond Uhlir, Kent Dorn, Dylan Roberts, Ana Villagomez, Michelle Rawlings, Brandon Araujo, Jack Erikkson, Sebastian Forray, Ryan Storm, Ludwig Schwarz, Marjorie Schwarz, Brian Moss (B.Moss), Lauren Moya Ford, Miguel Martinez, Wayne Gilbert, Debra Berrera, Anne J. Regan, Patrick Turk, Chris Cascio, Jessica Ninci, Angel Oloshove, Russell Etchen, Geoff Winningham, Mike Osborne, Dennis Harper, Guillaume Gelot, Avril Falgout, Bill Daniel, Donal Mosher, Keith M. Wilson, Bill Willis, Dennis Nance & James Hays and Kayla Escobedo at The Brandon, 7–10 pm. The Brandon (the gallery in the space that used to be Domy) is starting off with a bang. It includes Houston's two hottest artists, Mark Flood and Trenton Doyle Hancock, many interesting "out-of-towners" (Robyn O'Neil, Georganne Deen, Tisch Abelow and maybe more), and many of Houston's best artists, young and old. Two surprises for me were Geoff Winningham, my old photography professor and longtime chronicler of the Gulf Coast) and Avril Falgout, the 15-year-old sculptor who made a huge splash at The Big Show this summer.

Hogan Kimbrell, Athelete

Texas Bi 2013 featuring Vonetta Berry, Linda Cornflake, Ryan Hawk, Hogan Kimbrell, Koomah, Traci Matlock, Madsen Minax, Tish Stringer, Y.E. Torres, Stalina Villarreal and Julia Wallace at Gallery 1724, 8–10 pm. No associated with the Texas Biennial, all the work in this show somehow deals with bisexuality.

Where the Artists Are

September 6, 2013, 9:07 am

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Robert Boyd

About a week ago, I asked artists to respond to an informal poll about where they lived. I wanted to see if there were particular neighborhoods that artists favored. I got 52 responses and added to that 22 artists and their dwellings that I personally knew about. This is in no way a scientific poll (below I'll talk about the information I'd want for a better poll). But the results are interesting and suggestive.

One thing I asked was whether you rented, owned or had some other arrangement (for example, you live with someone but don't pay rent). Respondents said the following:


I think this result reflects the age of the respondents. In some cases I know (roughly) the ages, and I suspect that the older you are, the more likely you are to own your home. In any case, a similar poll in New York would probably yield a very different result. This is one advantage for artists Houston has over New York or other art capitals. Buying a building in Houston is very much doable for artists, particularly if you are willing to live in a marginal neighborhood (which many artists are more than willing to do). Har.com is currently listing 19 houses for sale in Houston for less than $20,000, for example.

Owning a house provides you a hedge against gentrification--if your neighborhood becomes more valuable, your property likewise increases in value. You can use it as collateral for a loan or sell it for a capital gain. A renter, on the other hand, faces nothing but years of rent hikes as his neighborhood gentrifies.

Above are the neighborhoods that respondents gave us. When I read these neighborhoods, what struck me was how many I had never head of. Many of them are subdivision names, left over from a time when some developer was trying to market the houses there. The biggest surprise for me was Glenbrook Valley. Glenbrook Valley seems like a typical Houston developer-coined name for a subdivision. It is redundant (a glen is a valley), it is incorrect (there is no valley there), and it ignores the one natural feature that does exist there, Sims Bayou (hardly a "brook"). This is a neighborhood just north of Hobby Airport.

Glenbrook Valley surprised me because I had no awareness of it before. It not only wasn't on my radar as an artsy neighborhood like Montrose or the Heights, it wasn't on my radar at all. There are no artistic institutions there--no galleries, no art spaces, no museums. The closest is the Orange Show, as near as I can figure. But apparently a few artistic types have found it an amenable place to live.

Eastwood is a little less of a surprise. Eastwood is a neighborhood just north of I-45 and of UH.

I was very surprised to see that there were artists living in Greenspoint, a neighborhood that to my mind has nothing to recommend it (except for easy access to some pretty good Mexican food).

Independence Heights was already well-known as an artists' enclave known as Itchy Acres.



Houston is divided into"superneighborhoods" by the city of Houston, and I decided to look at their artistic population. (The "blank" entries reflect respondents who do not live in Houston.) No big surprises here.

If I were running this as a more scientific poll, I would have included some more demographic information--specifically age and marital status, two items that I think are strongly related to home ownership. (Younger unmarried people are less likely to own homes.) I'd also like to know what the primary source of income for one's household is. If you make most of your income from doing art, I suspect (but don't know) that you may be less likely to own a house and more likely not to live in a gentrified neighborhood like Montrose or the Heights. (I can think of several exceptions I know, however.) If your primary income comes from teaching, your spouse's job, or some other day job you have, you may be more likely to own a house. But these are just guesses! That's why I wish I had done a more serious, thought-through poll instead of the very casual one here.

Still, this is interesting information. If, as has been suggested many places, artists are on the cutting edge of gentrification, some real estate sharks might start investing in Glenbrook Valley and Eastwood. Of course, they may be too late--there are houses going for over $400,000 in Eastwood. However, Glenbrook Valley still looks like a bargain. If I were in the market, I'd snap up the Glenbrook Valley house pictured below.



Designed by modernist architect Mel O'Brien and built in 1957, it can be yours for $139,000. It would nice if artists moved into this lovely mod. Apparently they'd have some pretty artistic neighbors, too.

In the Eleventh Hour, Cuteness

September 7, 2013, 9:49 am

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Seen last night at Diverse Works.


Mel Chin, Jilava Prison Bed, 1982, steel, cotton batting, cotton, 42 by 37 by 69 inches

A Borges Shaped Hole

September 8, 2013, 7:51 pm

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Robert Boyd

June 1985. I had a summer job on a seismic boat in the Gulf of Mexico. Anticipating plenty of reading time, I brought several books with me, including the Labyrinths (Modern Library, 1983), an anthology of fiction and nonfiction by by Jorge Luis Borges. It was a good trip for reading--I also read Moby-Dick and Guerrillas by V.S. Naipaul. All astonishing books, but Labyriths was the one that engrossed me most. By the end of summer I had also read Brodie's Report and had become a life-long devotee of the bookish Argentine writer.

Winter 1987. I had a job in Brazil and took occasional side trips to Buenos Aires.  I loved exploring old bookstores there. I spent two days in La Recoleta Cemetary looking for the Borges family mausoleum. It was a maze--a labyrinth--of extravagant, beautiful tombs. Of course I never found it. Borges is buried in Geneva.

2000. I wrote and published a short pamphlet called Ron Regé and his Precursors, an homage to Borges' classic essay, "Kafka and his Precursors."

Early 2010. I saw Ward Sanders' work at Hooks Epstein Gallery for the first time. Each piece is a wooden box that appears quite ancient, filled with a strange cacophony of seemingly antique objects and pieces of paper. They are like wunderkammern, the Renaissance collections of curious artistic and scientific objects that prefigured the modern museum. But Sanders' boxes aren't meant to show real history, but to construct artificial antiquity. They are like collections of hrönir, the objects on the planet of Tlön in the Borges story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" which are found (and thus come into existence) because someone is searching for them.

The systematic production of hrönir (says Volume Eleven) has been of invaluable aid to archaeologists, making it possible not only to interrogate but even to modify the past, which is now no less plastic, no less malleable than the future. ("Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley)

I was spell-bound by Sanders' objects. I bought one called Zarzuelas.


Ward Sanders, Zarzuelas (closed), assemblage, 11" x 16" x 5.5", 2010

 
Ward Sanders, Zarzuelas (partially open), assemblage, 11" x 16" x 5.5", 2010


Ward Sanders, Zarzuelas (open), assemblage, 11" x 16" x 5.5", 2010 

October 2011.Another show by Sanders at Hooks Epstein Gallery. This time, Sanders made the literary quality of the work more explicit by adding a bit of gnomic text to each piece. The texts reminded of Borges. I met Sanders and we got to talking about literature. He told me he loved Italo Calvino. He recommended Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman. But then he shocked me by admitting that he had never read Borges.

To me, Sanders' boxes are like illustrations of imaginary Borges stories. I told him that he must read Borges. I said, you have a Borges-shaped hole in your literary life. This void had just been waiting for him to fill it. His excuse was that he didn't want to start into a writer's oeuvre if it was too vast. I smiled and told him that all of Borges' fiction fits into a single large volume.

September 2013. Sanders has a two person show (with Jacqueline Dee Parker) up at Hooks Epstein. I went there for the opening, but the space was so crowded that I decided not to enter. I walked past and looked at some art in other galleries. I came back a little later and the space had opened up a bit. I went in and there was Sanders.

He came up to me and let me right back out of the gallery. We went to his car. He had something for me in a paper shopping bag. It was a wooden box made of rough old wood and has a glass top. Under the glass are three sections. The top section has an antique comb. The central section has what I think is a cat skull with a metal attachment (that looks a little like a toe clip from a bicycle) and some pieces of string. The bottom is stuffed with old blue pieces of paper that look a little like laundry tickets. The box is titled A Borges Shaped Hole (for Robert Boyd).


Ward Sanders, A Borges Shaped Hole (for Robert Boyd), assemblage, 2013

He included a card with a Borges epigram: "That one individual should awaken in another memories that belong still to a third is an obvious paradox." On such an occasion, Borges would no doubt have some erudite statements on the heterogeneous history of gift-giving. I was just speechless.

 

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Real Estate Art #4

September 11, 2013, 8:10 am

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Robert Boyd

For this installment of Real Estate Art, we're going to leave the wealthier precincts behind and look at a more middle-class offering in Mangum Manor, just north of 290. This is one of those houses that looks pretty boring from the outside but is actually quite interesting on the inside. And this is how I think of the suburbs in general: you drive through subdivisions full of houses that from the outside display almost no sense of individuality whatsoever. But sometimes when you get past that front door, you find creative, eccentric, even daring people.

So this house has numerous pieces of decorative wall art, some quite amusing (a framed poster for Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, for example), but what interest me are two pieces of art that look like they are originals, each showing two faces.





Two woman, one wearing a tiara, clearly having the time of their life. Are they necking? Not sure. This painting doesn't wow me with its execution, but it does impress me with its subject. Usually when I look at the art on peoples walls in the real estate listings in HAR.com, I find my stereotypes of the kind of art that the owners of such a house would like brutally confirmed. Back in the early 90s, the Russian-American conceptual art team Komar & Melamid conducted a poll to find out what kind of paintings Americans would most like. The results were, of course, absurd (but really funny). The inherent flaw with their approach is that they asked questions. A better way to approach it would be to see what Americans actually like based on what they choose to hang in their homes. That's what you get when you look at a lot of these real estate photos, and after a while, it all starts to look the same.



That's what I like about this house. These two double portraits are so unexpected (and so fun) that I want to meet the people who live (lived?) inside this house that from the outside seems so ordinary. The second portrait appears possibly to be a work in progress. Could this be the home of an artist? Does anyone recognize the work?

Pan Recommends for the week of September 12 to September 18

September 12, 2013, 4:27 am

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Robert Boyd

After last week's artapalooza, this week is more sedate. The big event is the Karen Finley reading next Wednesday, plus there are some opportunities Saturday to see work that in some ways describes the art history of Houston--the painters who dominated in the 60s and 70s and the conceptualists/performance artists who followed in the 80s/90s.

THURSDAY

Marlon Puac Méndez at Koelsch Gallery, 6–9 pm. I'm sorry to say that I know nothing about this artist except that he may be an illustrator from Guatamala.


Robert Hodge, We Didn't Start the Fire, 2013 mixed media collage on found paper 58 x 82 inches

Robert Hodge: A Memory Worth Fighting For... at Peveto , 6–8 pm. Multimedia artist Robert Hodge presents a group of paintings and collages.


Francesca Fuchs, Framed Painting: Bottles, 2013, Acrylic on canvas over board, 20 x 25"

Francesca Fuchs: (Re)Collection: Paintings of Framed Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Photos at Texas Gallery, 6–8 pm. A big selection of Francesca Fuch's pale, milky paintings, some of which appear to be paintings of other framed images.

 
Kelley Devine's jackrabbit

West End Animals by Kelley Devine at the West End Pub, 6:00pm until 9:00pm.Kelley Devine continues her practice of drawing on book pages, but her subject matter this time around are animals. What I've seen look pretty interesting.


Wols, Untitled [Also known as It's All Over and The City], 1946-1947

Panel Discussion: "Wols: His Life, Work & Context" at the Menil Museum, 6 pm.The Wols exhibit officially opens tomorrow, but presumably one can get a glimpse of it tonight in this panel discussion featuring Frankfurt scholar Dr. Ewald Rathke, Menil curator Toby Kamps, Dr. Andreas Kreul, director of Bremen’s Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation, Patrycja de Bieberstein Ilgner, Hollweg Foundation archivist, and Dr. Katy Siegel, Hunter College, New York, professor and gallery chief curator, writer, and Wols catalogue essayist.

SATURDAY


The Art Guys, Any of These Locations Would Be An Excellent Place to Begin a Drawing, 2008, graphite on paper

The Art Guys Art Fairat The Art Guys Convention Center (aka the Art Guys Headquarters), 1–7 pm. What's this all about? Well, it looks a lot like a studio sale, with a pretty excellent selection of pieces available, including one of my faves (the drawing above).


Dick Wray, untitled, ~2000

Lives Played Out on Canvas: Paintings by Otis Huband, Richard Stout, and Dick Wray at William Reaves Fine Art, 3 to 6 pm. Three of Houston's earliest abstractionists, Otis Huband, Richard Stout, and the late Dick Wray, share a show.


Dorothy Hood, Red Hill

Dorothy Hood, The Lost Paintings at New Gallery, 3 to 5 pm. This is a show of works from Hood's estate that have not been exhibited for at least 14 years. Saturday has shaped up to be a good day for looking at the work of pioneering Houston artists like Dorothy Hood, Wray and Stout.

WEDNESDAY


Karen Finley at DiverseWorks, 6 – 8 pm. As part of the Eleventh Hour, DiverseWorks' retrospective exhibit, Karen Finley will read selections from We Keep Our Victims Ready, which she first performed at DiverseWorks in 1989 (the year before she gained unwanted membership in the group the "NEA 4," four performance artists who had their NEA grants vetoed because of their controversial content). Expect a SRO event!

Anne Ferrer's Kandy-Kolored Confections

September 14, 2013, 9:28 am

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Robert Boyd


Anne Ferrer, Unicorn Pink, Pink and Pink Strip, ripstop fabric, 2013

This giant pink confection is what you see when you walk into Gallery Longnecker. You see superbright pink colors, a whipped-cream-like form, and a soft semi-inflated lack of solidity. This object is actually three sculptures by Anne Ferrer kind of stacked on top of one another. Pull the plugs on them and they'll deflate.

This is art for your sweet-tooth. These are empty calories. Your mind won't be terribly taxed looking at these works of art. They remind me a bit of Sharon Engelstein'sinflatable sculptures, but Engelstein's intersecting geometries feel much more enigmatic than Ferrer's giant merengues.


Anne Ferrer, Swirl Trench Coat, 12 v fan on a timer, 2013

These pieces are inflated using fans--the description says the fan is on a timer, so one can expect the pieces to periodically deflate. Unlike Engelstein's inflatables, the fans don't fully inflate Ferrer's objects. They droop a little and lack firmness. Many of them, like Swirl Trench Coat, incorporate striped conical shapes that might remind one of emergency roadwork markers, but seem more like festive banners.


Anne Ferrer, Pink Dots Trench Coat, 12 v fan on a timer, 2013

I like them. I used the metaphor of empty calories. Obviously empty calories are bad for you to eat (as anyone who knows me can deduce). But are they bad to see? My feeling is probably not. I like to be engaged by a work, but if a work pleases me but has no greater resonance, it would be an act of puritanical self-abnegation to look away. Ferrer's inflatable coats and objects are fun, silly, likable works.


Anne Ferrer, Raincoat Tongue, 12 v fan on a timer, 2013

Not all of them are completely successful. Raincoat Tongue, by literally depicting lips, teeth and tongue, crosses into the realm of Pop, recalling the famous Rolling Stones logo --and the infamous performance at the VMA by Miley Cyrus. But the thing about Pop is that the artworks competed in a way with the pop-culture images depicted. And the best Pop art wins this competition--but Raincoat Tongue feels like a pale reflection of Mick Jagger's lips or Miley Cyrus's tongue.


Anne Ferrer, Rain Flower, 12 v fan on a timer, 2013

That's why I prefer the more abstract pieces, although even in their abstraction, they are meant to recall real things--like a flower in Rain Flower. Flowers are a good comparison. They're often garish and meaningless but beautiful. The best flower you get is one you get for no reason at all.


Anne Ferrer, Blood and Gold and Red ripstop fabric, 2013


Anne Ferrer, Blood and Gold and Red ripstop fabric, 2013

When I look at Blood and Gold and Red, I think of circus tents. And more generally, I feel like I am in a festive environment. I think of Candyland (not to mention California Gurls); it's bubblegum art, kandy-kolored confections of pleasure. If you want tortured art, go see the Wols retrospective at the Menil. It's excellent and will reward multiple viewings. But if you want some pure visual hedonism, check out Anne Ferrer.

Eclectic Menagerie Revisited

September 15, 2013, 9:48 am

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Robert Boyd

I was driving around aimlessly on Friday and decided to go down 288 to see Eclectic Menagerie Park. I have written about this place before--a strange sculpture garden off the freeway at Belfort, created by Texas Pipe and Supply, a major pipe distribution company. I complained that the company's site didn't identify the artists, but that has been partially corrected. A burly bearded fellow named Ron Lee made a few of the sculptures there.


Eclectic Menagerie Park (spider sculpture by Ron Lee)


Eclectic Menagerie Park

The style is roadside kitsch, but that genre admits certain modernist tropes, as can be seen in the saluting man on the right and the column in the center.


Eclectic Menagerie Park


Eclectic Menagerie Park

There's a pretty thin line between this stuff and the sculpture of, say, Jim Love (whose plane sculpture Call Ernie is quite close to Eclectic Menagerie Park at Hobby Airport).


Jim Love, Call Ernie, 1985, paint on steel

I don't think parsing a distinction between "high art" or serious art and the kind of art at Eclectic Menagerie Park is very important. Particularly if such a distinction keeps me from enjoying Eclectic Menagerie. This place exists, it's fun, and it makes the drive down 288 a little less bleak.

Sittin Round Drunk in Houston

September 15, 2013, 1:37 pm

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Robert Boyd

When a band comes to your town, they always do a little shout out--"Hello Cleveland!"--even though from their point of view, this is just another bus-hotel-limo-arena-etc., just like the last one and all the ones before. But it means something to us. I still remember the little thrill I got when the Talking Heads replaced "El Paso" with "Houston" in the lyrics when they played "Cities" at the Sam Houston Coliseum in 1983.

So bands, sure. But painters? Take a look at what Wayne White did.


Wayne White, Sittin Round Drunk In Houston, 2013, acrylic on found offset lithograph, 28 x 52 inches

It makes you wonder if he paints a new "Sittin Round Drunk In ___________" for every city he has a new exhibit in. That said, White does have a history with Houston. We hosted his amazing installation Big Lectric Fan to Keep Me Cool While I Sleep at the Rice Gallery in 2009. I don't know if he spent any of the time he was here building it sittin round drunk, but who knows? Or maybe it's a tribute to the hundreds (thousands?) of people in Houston who, on any given night, are sittin round drunk. (I imagine tonight, when the Texans meet the Titans for the season opener, that number may be in the tens of thousands--especially if we lose.)

In any case, White's show Dunno at the David Shelton Gallery was pretty much what one expects from a Wayne White exhibit--words and phrases painted more-or-less seamlessly as three-dimensional objects into old mass-produced landscapes.


Wayne White, Dorkus, 2009, acrylic on found offset lithograph, 29 1/2 x 41 1/2 inches

These paintings have something to please everyone. White displays exceptional painting and skill and craft, for those who value it. But he also engages in appropriation and the use of found objects, for viewers who prefer a little pomo in their art. The enormous floating words have a surreal presence, being bizarrely juztaposed with the banal landscapes. But the landscapes, cheap lithograph reproductions that some of us might recall seeing at our grandparents' houses, are pieces of cozy working class nostalgia. But wait, such mass produced pieces of "art" are perfect examples of the "culture industry," the way that capitalism co-opted art to psyche out the working class according to Theodor Adorno and Clement Greenberg. So White heightens the contradictions a bit with a little détournment. Oh, and don't forget that they're funny.


Wayne White, Took the Bad Acid by the River and Watched the Meaningless Water, 2013, acrylic on found offset lithograph, 30 x 66 inches

It's the last part that's important. If these paintings had a different vibe--for example, if they chided you instead of making you laugh--no one would like them. On the other hand, they might be taken more seriously. Which would be tragic.


Wayne White, UH HUH, 2013, acrylic on found offset lithograph, 25 x 31 1/2 inches

The problem with jokes is that they are only funny the first hundred times or so. That's why it's hard to imagine owning a Wayne White painting. (It's also hard to imagine because they range from fourteen to twenty-two thousand dollars.) You hang it on the wall of your home and it's funny for a while but after awhile the joke might start to wear on you. Maybe you take it down and put it in a closet. Then you forget about it. But maybe five, 10 years later you find it again. It makes you laugh anew. That's my advice to collectors for the display of Wayne White paintings.