Andrew Jeffrey Wright: Do You Believe in Art?

Domy Books

March 21, 2009, 6-9pm

In this exhibit, Philadelphia artist Andrew Wright presents paintings, drawings, videos, collage, photography, and screen prints. The opening also includes the artist's special presentation of art jokes and performances by Sweatheart and narwhalz (of sound).

Tom Molloy

Lora Reynolds Gallery

Through April 25

Intense. For each of the six graphite drawings in Lucid, from which the show takes its title, Tom Molloy has interwoven recognized war imagery with pornography. Sex, death, torture, exploitation. Talk about the ethics of representation.

Lisi Raskin

Blanton Museum of Art

Through June 21

Lisi Raskin explores our culture of anxiety, which is rooted in the Cold War and resonates with our current cultural and political climate, in Armada. This exhibit includes sculptures based on the forms she found at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), a storage facility for military airplanes and aerospace crafts located at Davis–Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona.

Otis Lucas

SOFA Gallery

Through April 5, 2009

The collaborative artist duo, Otis Lucas (Patrick Xavier Bresnan and Ivete Lucas), documents in a multitude of media the recuperative efforts to rebuild a community after the devastation of catastrophe. The artists spent a month in Cameron, Louisiana working with the Mennonite Disaster Service to rebuild homes for victims of Hurricane Ike. The photographs, sound pieces, and videos detail with startling frankness the post-disaster landscape, and provide an intimate view into a Mennonite community of rebuilding volunteers.

Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury

The Blanton Museum of Art

Through May 17

The Blanton Museum of Art presents Birth of the Cool, a blockbuster show encompassing the painting, architecture, furniture design, decorative and graphic arts, film, and music that launched mid–century modernism in the United States and established Los Angeles as a major American cultural center.

Lordy Rodriguez: States of America

Austin Museum of Art

Through May 17, 2009

Take a road trip with Lordy Rodriguez and witness his remapping of America. Rodriguez's decade-long project explores the addition of five new states that have saturated our geography--the Internet, Hollywood, Monopoly, Disney, and Territory. States of America is curated by Eva Buttacavoli, Director of Exhibitions and Education at the Austin Museum of Art.

Texas Biennial Solo Shows: William Cannings, Lee Baxter Davis, Jayne Lawrence, Kelli Vance

Okay Mountain, Big Medium, Pump Project & MASS Gallery

Through April 11

William Cannings explores the effects of compressed air on permanent materials, such as aluminum and steel in his sensuous sculptures at Okay Mountain. Lee Baxter Davis's prints and drawings are intricate explorations of, to use his words, "the conflict between observed biological facts and certain metaphysical models of paradise, or the reality of death and concept of immortality." Jayne Lawrence's creatures at MASS are somehow magical in quality. And Kelli Vance's oils on canvas are erotically forboding.

PLUS go see the temporary outdoor projects installed around town.

Texas Biennial: Wide Open Group Show

Women and Their Work

Through April 11

Thirty-one artists present an array of artworks, from installations to paintings, for the Texas Biennial. Exciting and Eclectic.

Texas Biennial: Big Tall Group Show

Mexican American Cultural Center

Through April 11

Also eclectic.

Leslie Mutchler & Naomi Schlinke

d berman gallery

Through April 11

Leslie Mutchler's collages, digital drawings, recycled paper and coroplast installations investigate consumer desire for an organized lifestyle. Using catalogue glossies from Crate & Barrel, Ikea, Pottery Barn, and others, she creates a hybrid-form of organization.

Naomi Schlinke describes her ink clayboard work, “My work celebrates the flux of living form and the patterns that underpin reality … Momentary and unique in the way that process-based art can be, these are images of ‘formation in progress’, equally legible at the micro or macro levels … Some aspects of an image can be found in a flash; others reveal themselves slowly and methodically.”

Claire Fontaine: Call + 972 2 5 839 749

galería perdida

On view until March 22, 2009

Claire Fontaine is a politically-charged Paris-based art collective who claims that love, love as found in a collective, allows us to unite and rise against fear and governmental terror. Through Claire Fontaine's works of appropriated and altered found objects and visual culture, they hope to simultaneously subvert and call attention to these cultural and political realities of today.

Mike Osborne: On Location Beijing

Holly Johnson Gallery

On view until March 21, 2009

Mike Osborne’s new photographs present Beijing’s transformation in almost theatrical terms focusing on the city in the final months before the Olympic Games.

Todd Eberle: America

Light & Sie

On view until April 4, 2009

The exhibition begins with the American flag and presents an image of Eberle’s grandparents next to a full scale mock-up of the Oval Office created for the Clinton Library in Little Rock, AR and a picture of a lunch plate from inside Air Force One. The exhibition ends with three images: a pastoral landscape from Connecticut, a bronze statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse and Wynton Marsalis playing his horn with a surreal New York City Landscape as a backdrop. How does Eberle get from here to there? You'll have to go find out.

Olin Travis: People, Places and Vision

The McKinney Avenue Contemporary

On view until March 28, 2009

People, Places and Visions explores four decades of Olin Travis' paintings beginning in 1916. Olin Travis, who was Dallas’ first artist to complete his degree at a major art institute and founded two art schools, made artworks that investigate nature and the self through a variety of mediums and genres.

Richard Patterson

Goss-Michael Foundation

On view until April 30, 2009

YBA Richard Patterson currently lives and works in Dallas. While it's beyond us why anyone would move from London to Dallas, we feel blessed to have Patterson around.

Dennis Harper, David Waddel & Kelly Ulcak, and Tim Brown

Lawndale Art Center

March 13, 2009, 6:30-8:30pm

This multi-exhibition opening includes artist Dennis Harper's sculptural and video installations, David Waddell's and Kelly Ulcak's collaborative artworks inspired by escaped prisoner encounters in "Allegory of the Cave" from Plato’s Republic and Austin's own Tim Brown's installation investigating the relationship developed in call centers.

Solution

Diverse Works

On view until April 18, 2009

In this group show, artists present artworks that interpret the warning signs that signaled the demise of previous cilizations, addressing our relationships with process and change.

Paul Villinski: Emergency Response Studio

Ballroom Marfa

March 14, 2009, 3-6pm

Finding inspiration from the post-Katrina New Orleans environment, Villinski transformed a FEMA-style trailer into a sustainable solar-powered and green work space. First traveling througout New Orleans, this trailer, the Emergency Response Studio, makes its way to Marfa and demonstrates the artists attempt to assist the ravaged New Orleans region through creative means.

Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar

Artpace

On view until May 3, 2009

In The World Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar, Artpace showcases nine paintings by Kehinda Wiley that place everyday people into pictorial conventions found in Western art history. Wiley represents persons in poses based on public sculptures that celebrate Nigerian and Senegalese independence from colonial rule and uses patterns based on traditional clothing worn by West African women.

Apparatus

UTSA Satellite Space @ Blue Star

On view until March 22, 2009

Apparatus brings together the work of three artists, Dylan Collins, Andries Fourie and Donald Henson, who explore the correspondences between mechanical systems and the human body's operations.

Alyson Fox, Misako Inaoka, and Mimi Kato: WHAT ISN'T IS

Texas State University Gallery

On view until April 7, 2009

Alyson Fox, Mimi Kato and Misako Inaoka, three artists whose work addresses issues of identity and culture, come together to exhibit sculpture, drawings, paintings and photographs that artfully blur the lines between their artistic studio practices. The gallery doesn't have a website, but you can find it on campus in the Joann Cole Mitte building.