Katy Horan

Domy Books

Opening Reception: Saturday March 20, 7-9pm

Lady Monsters is the title of Katy Horan's opening at Domy Books. Her work gives birth to fantastical creatures made of pattern and lace. Referring to ideas of femininity, Horan derives much of her inspiration from archetypes of folklore and history.

Jeremy Fish

Okay Mountain Gallery

Opening reception: March 13, 2010, 7-10pm

Jeremy Fish's artwork deals with the relationship of all things cute and creepy, and the balance between the two. The work tends to be narrative stories designed with a library of symbols and characters. In 2007 Mr Fish started a new brand called Superfishal, with the help of his loyal team of hard working gnomes.

Click here for information about the show.

Roy McMakin

Lora Reynolds Gallery

Opening reception: Wednesday, March 24, 6-8pm

Lora Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce our second solo exhibition of new sculptures and photography by Seattle-based artist, Roy McMakin. The artist will give a public talk in the gallery on Wednesday, March 24th, at 7pm.

For this exhibition, In and On, Roy McMakin conceived four pieces that meticulously intermingle elements of sculpture and furniture. Each work imbues the artists distinctly minimalist tradition. Two pieces espouse found furniture with McMakin's own sculptures, a more prevalent practice by the artist in recent years. His photographic series, Net Making, also included in the exhibition, skillfully illustrates McMakins relentless attention to detail.

"THURIBLE" and "The The The"

Domy Books

Screening: Tuesday, March 16, 8pm

Domy Books presents two short films. THURIBLE is a film by Rusty Kelley that follows a young girl in her preparation and performance of an ancient family ritual. The The The is Austin-based Ryan Beltrán's feature film debut, co-produced by Ben Aqua and OK! FRESH. Click here for showtimes.

Desire

Blanton Museum of Art

Through April 25

See Claire Ruud's review in Issue #141.

Luke Savisky

Austin Museum of Art

Through May 9

AMOA's New Works exhibition series introduces fresh contemporary art by innovative Austin artists. The upcoming show will feature installation artist, Luke Savisky, who uses light and projection to explores ideas of perception, exposure, surveillance, and perspective. Click here for a video of a previous installation in downtown Austin.

Elizabeth Chiles

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Through March 28

Taking compositions found within the landscape as a starting place, Elizabeth Chiles builds syntax out of the formal and affective relationships between darkness and natural light. Her photographs endow light with temporal and spatial presence—a visible presence that nonetheless gestures toward the imperceptible and ineffable. This handling of light transforms the everyday into something to be revered. In this way, the works in Book of Praise become an ode to a presence akin to that of an altar or inspired text, or what may be the aura of the sacred.

Kathryn Kelley

Women and their Work

Through April 15

Houston based artist Kathryn Kelley up-cycles and reanimates objects of urban refuse into large fleshy sculptures that often stand in the place of the self. The impressive scale of these pieces creates a theatrical position for viewers who are confronted with gregarious forms, or intimations of the shadowed self. Remnant inner tubes, doors, frames & windows morph & mingle in these ambitious works. Click here for more information about the show.

Over

MASS Gallery

Through March 27th

MASS Gallery is pleased to present Over, a new collaborative installation created by Austin-based artists, Ilea Avalos, Andrea Bonin, and Megan Kincheloe. Over is the group's collective process of reconciliation between the desire to hold on to time, to remember, and time as an impersonal force. The artists use handmade plaster bricks to create larger structures that represent units of counting and the building blocks of memory. Avalos, Bonin, and Kincheloe share an aesthetic that involves both a sense of structuring as well as collapsing. The project is a meditation on the human process of resolving what ultimately might be loss.

Mark Johnson & Debra Broz

Pump Project

Through March 13

New mixed media work by Mark Johnson & Debra Broz. Fifth Business, definition: Those roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villian, but which were none the less essential to bring about the Recognition were called the Fifth Business in drama and opera companies organized according to the old style. This exhibition draws on the idea of the "cabinet of curiosities" - these two Austin artists use text and found objects to make intriguing work.

Denny McCoy

D Berman Gallery

Through March 27

Release features Denny McCoy as he continues his exploration of visual perception and the emotional and physical effects of color and spatial relationships.

University of Texas-Austin 2010 Senior Art Exhibition

CRL Gallery

Through March 13, 2010

CRL is proud to present an all-inclusive, salon-style exhibition introducing seniors from the undergraduate Studio Art and Visual Art Studies programs of the Department of Art and Art History. Come celebrate the art of these emerging visual artists as they launch themselves into the contemporary art world and beyond. Work on display will showcase the full range of media cultivated in the department, including ceramics, digital-time arts, drawing, metals, painting, printmaking, performance art, sculpture, and video art.

Demetrius Oliver

Inman Gallery

Opening reception: Friday, March 12th, 6-8pm

In a series of photographs, an installation, and a sculpture, Demetrius Oliver explores the effects and potential meanings of reflected light. "Albedo", the title of both the exhibition and the sculpture, refers to the measure of how strongly an object reflects electromagnetic rays. Oliver transforms common objects (light bulbs, coal, a suitcase, and photographs) to evoke phenomena and metaphors of illumination. Both introspective and expansive, Oliver's practice investigates the cosmos, and our knowledge of the universal, from the vantage points of the artist's studio and the gallery space.

2010 Core Exhibition and Yearbook

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Opening reception: Friday, March 5, 6:30 - 8:30pm

The 2010 Core Exhibition features the work of current artists-in-residence Nick Barbee, Natasha Bowdoin, Jillian Conrad, Lily Cox-Richard, Steffani Jemison, Julie Ann Nagle, Kelly Sears, and James Sham II. Published in conjunction with the exhibition, the 2010 Core Yearbook includes essays by this year´s critical studies residents Regan Golden-McNerney, Kurt Mueller, and Wendy Vogel.

Anders Oinonen and Philip Vanderhyden

CTRL

Opening Reception: Friday, March 12, 6-8pm

CTRL gallery is pleased to present solo exhibitions of new paintings by Anders Oinonen & Philip Vanderhyden. Canadian artist Anders Oinonen is back for his third exhibition at CTRL with a new series of dynamic color-saturated paintings. The title of his exhibition, Sundogs, comes from the atmospheric phenomenon of the same name. New York painter Philip Vanderhyden is known for his seductive process-based color field paintings that hang like veils and appear like mirages of indeterminable depth. Gallery talks with both artists on Saturday, March 13 at 1pm)

MANUAL (Ed Hill and Suzanne Bloom)

Moody Gallery

Opening reception: Saturday, March 27, 6 - 8pm

Moody Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by MANUAL (Ed Hill and Suzanne Bloom), their first major collaborative exhibition since their retrospective was shown at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2004. MANUAL on books is a large selection of photographs from MANUAL's extended Book Project, a celebration, paean or praise of the "book." The exhibition is in conjunction with the FotoFest 2010 Biennial.

Eileen Maxson

Domy Books, Houston

Opening reception: March 13, 2010, 7-9pm

"Last summer, there was an ad on Craigslist offering a free, taxidermy wolverine. The catch was that the current owner considered it haunted, and stipulated "No questions asked." I started thinking, maybe there was some thing I could get rid of — some bitter toy stewing with bad vibes in the attic. Maybe this thing was the problem, and maybe I could pass on that thing to someone stronger.

So, buyer beware. I've scoured the closets, hard drives, pre-teen poetry, firefox history, and my best guess — is 1993.

The entire year of 1993.

Coincidentally or not, 2010 is a recycled, identical calendar to 1993. My Quantum Leap, Back to the Future fandom is saying that this is a cracked door, a chance for renewal.

Then, what I'm advertising is a haunted house, with the expectation of spontaneous healing :-S" —Eileen Maxson

Click here for more information about the show.

Allison Hunter and Kelly Richardson

DiverseWorks Art Space

Opening reception: March 12, 2010, 6-8pm

Installations by Allison Hunter and Kelly Richardson will be opening this week in Houston at DiverseWorks.

Hunter's Zoosphere is a transcendent installation of image and sound investigating humankind's relationship to the natural world. In her first ever immersive video installation, Hunter upends the power dynamic between the human and non-human animal within a dark, mazelike environment in which the man and beast co-mingle.

Richardson's flickerlounge: Twilight Avenger is equal parts sci-fi myth and forest fable, dreamy nocturne and dazzling special effect, Twilight Avenger begins with a fairytale-worthy image of a misty, moonlit forest clearing, inhabited by a majestic stag who emanates a luminous green vapor. Quietly grazing amidst the ambient chatter of other forest dwellers, our protagonist occasionally rears his head, shifting his gaze towards us.

Panta Rei

Box 13 ArtSpace

Opening reception: March 13, 7-9:30pm

In conjunction with FotoFest, Panta Rei is an exhibition featuring eleven photographers from Austin, Texas who meet regularly to share and discuss images. Panta rei, translated from the Greek, means "everything flows." Thought to be first uttered by Heraclitus, Panta Rei describes a worldview of things in constant flux, famously positing that one can never step in the same river twice.

Artists in the exhibition include: Ben Ruggiero, Susan Scafati Shahan, Leigh Brodie, Jason Reed, Mike Osborne, Barry Stone, Adam Schreiber, Jessica Mallios, Sarah Murphy, Anna Krachey, and Elizabeth Chiles. These artists utilize a diverse set of methodologies bound by their exploration of contemporary and historical practices of photography. All the artists live and work in Austin.

Click here to learn more about the artists.

Barkley L. Hendricks

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Through April 18

Best known for his life-sized portraits of ordinary people living in his urban northeast community of Connecticut, Barkley L. Hendricks’s bold portrayal of his subject’s attitude and style elevates the common man and woman to celebrity status. Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool is the first painting retrospective of the American artist, and includes over 50 works from 1964 to the present

In Lieu of Unity / En lugar de la unidad

Ballroom Marfa

Opening reception: Friday, March 26th, 2010, 7-9pm

In Lieu of Unity brings together artists from Mexico – citizens, residents and emigrants – who have sustained a curiosity about social relations in their art practices. Their focus demonstrates that the nature of existence is contingent not merely on the cognizance of being, but more so on the relationships between individuals and the collectives they form. Through varied perspectives on what it means to be together, these artists relinquish utopian ideas of unity. Instead they favor their own explorations of the underlying systems that influence everyday encounters, such as language, commerce, architecture, citizenship and social mores. The exhibition as a whole can be seen as a collection of responses to social dynamics as they play out in specific locations in Mexico, within the context of Marfa, Texas, and throughout their shared geographic and conceptual borderlands.

Participating Artists: Eduardo Abaroa, Margarita Cabrera; Livia Corona; Minerva Cuevas; Mario García Torres, Máximo González, Paulina Lasa, Teresa Margolles, Pedro Reyes and Tercerunquinto.

Make-up

Unit B Gallery

Opening reception: Friday, March 26, 6:30 - 10pm

Make-up is defined as a substance used to enhance the appearance of the body or the effect created by the application of such substances. The artists included in the exhibition all use makeup similarly as a tool of exaggeration, whether their subject is sculptural, environmental or the body. They share an oversaturated color palette, often times indulging in elaborate pattern, decoration, and costume. Characteristic to these works is an undeniable handmade aesthetic where tape, poster board, house paint and cardboard all make their way into the adornment of their respective subjects or characters. Make-Up iscurated by Okay Mountain.

IAIR New Works: 10.1

Artpace

Opening Reception: March 18

Artpace's International Artists-in-Residence program 10.1 presents new work by Buster Graybill (Huntsville, TX), Klara Liden (Berlin, Germany), and Ulrike Müller (New York, NY).

Malaquias Montoya

UTSA Art Gallery

Opening reception: Wednesday, March 24, 6-8pm

Globalization & War -- The Aftermath, works by Malaquias Montoya, creates a dialogue between viewer and painter, conveying the universal story of the consequences of power and war, which includes peoples of all cultures. This exhibition presents a mirror for viewers to see themselves in portraits that focus on the destruction of people's existence resulting in the uprooting of their lives, the result of displacement, and the loss of culture caused by corporate globalization and the tragedies of war. In each image, we see the human spirit at its most vulnerable point, in the shadows between obliteration, devastation and survival.

John Smith

Sala Diaz Gallery

Through March 28

For Contemporary Art Month 2010, Sala Diaz welcomes London film and video artist John Smith. John will screen three different 90 minute programs anthologizing 20 films spanning his work from the seventies to the present, including his recently completed Hotel Diaries series.

Feliz-Gonzales Torres

Artpace

Through December 31

In celebration of its 15th anniversary, Artpace presents the first-ever U.S. survey of 95.1 Artpace alum Felix Gonzalez-Torres' billboards in a yearlong, state-wide exhibition of 13 seminal works sited in Dallas, El Paso, Houston, and San Antonio. Major underwriting for this special exhibition is provided by the Linda Pace Foundation, with generous in-kind support from Clear Channel Outdoor.