from the editor
During a short visit to Houston last week, I stopped by CAMH to see curator Toby Kamps’s exhibition, The Old, Weird America, and then popped over to DiverseWorks to visit artist Stephen Vitiello’s installation, Four Color Sound. I was hoping a visit to The Old, Weird America would provide insight into Kamps’s conceptual framework for the exhibition—an exploration of American folk aesthetics and American history in contemporary art. As Scott Webel points out in his review in this issue, the premise of the exhibition depends upon an artificial separation between “contemporary” and “folk.” What criteria, I wanted to know, does Kamps use to distinguish between “contemporary artists exploring folk” and “contemporary folk artists.” Disappointingly, after visiting the exhibition, I've come to the conclusion that Kamps has somewhat complacently accepted the art market’s designations for “contemporary” and “folk” artists. Most of the artists included in the show are represented by important galleries and discussed in the pages of popular contemporary art publications. In other words, Kamps’s exhibition is rather predictable.
Kasper Koenig, (Birthday) AIRMAIL (interior view), 2008, Mixed-media collage. Courtesy the artist.
Despite a lack of discussion of the issues raised by the exhibition’s premise in either the wall text or the exhibition brochure, The Old, Weird America is worth seeing on account of one brilliant curatorial decision: on either side of the entrance to the gallery, Kamps built two darkened rooms, one of which exhibits Kara Walker’s video, 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, A Moving Picture by Kara E. Walker (2005), and the other of which shows Jeremy Blake’s Winchester (2002). Walker’s shadow puppets, through which she tells dark narratives about slaves, masters, sex and violence, are not only dreadfully compelling in and of themselves, but also primed me to apprehend ghostly silhouettes and conjure up perverse histories within Blake’s digital animation. In his review, Scott evokes these and other apparitions that haunt—to use his term—the exhibition.
Haunting seems to be a recurring theme this week. At DiverseWorks, Stephen Vitiello’s Four Color Sound, which closes tomorrow, enveloped a large gallery in smoky, colored light, and surround-sound. Created by ten speakers evenly distributed around all four walls, the sound invited cirucumambulation or motionless meditation along the central axis of the room. Vitiello described the effect to me as that of a haunting: “I like the idea of creating a sound mix in the space so that the sound can haunt the room. I do a lot of location recordings and those sounds then haunt me a bit. I lie in bed and still hear frogs or birds or people even after I've left the original location.” If you can’t make it to DiverseWorks tomorrow, you can listen to excerpts of Vitiello’s other work online. Don’t miss, of course, the NPR piece on the recordings he made of the World Trade Center in 1999, but my personal favorites are Listening to Donald Judd, made in Marfa in 2002, and Cinematic with Crashing Roof, presented at the Kitchen in 2004.
Here at Fluent~Collaborative, we are haunted by our own ghost, as testsite 08.3, a collaboration between Cliff Hengst and Larry Rinder, takes shape within our walls. Cliff is in the midst of creating a site-specific installation that invokes the spectre of Denton Welch, an early 20th century English writer whose journals and novels provided one fulcrum for the collaboration.
Looking ahead, our next issue of ...might be good will include an interview with artist duo Mauricio Dias and Walter Riedweg, who are currently featured in a solo show at Kunstneres Hus in Oslo, as well as a review of BankART’s recent project, Get across Route 16!, in Yokohama. Closer to home, the issue will also feature an interview with Max Neuhaus, who recently created a new sound work, Sound Line, in conjunction with his solo exhibition at the Menil Collection and a review of Francesca Gabbiani at lora reynolds, which opens this weekend and promises to be stunning.
reviews
The Old, Weird America
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
On view through July 20, 2008
By Scott Webel
Kara Walker, Still from 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, A Moving Picture by Kara E. Walker, 2005, DVD video, 15.57 minutes (with sound). Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
The Old, Weird America: Folk Themes in Contemporary Art, at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, through July 20, 2008, bills itself as “the first museum exhibition to explore the widespread resurgence of folk imagery and history in American contemporary art.” Perhaps a better exhibition title would have been The Old, Haunted America.* The exhibition is packed with phantoms, from Cynthia Norton’s whirling, bodiless red and white dresses in Dancing Squared (2004) to at least twenty apparitions of Abraham Lincoln in Barnaby Furnas’s Civil War paintings and Greta Pratt’s photos. Dario Robleto’s funereal The Pause Became Permanence (2005-2006) materializes war’s vast time-span by memorializing the early 21st century deaths of the last three Civil War widows. Jeremy Blake’s video Winchester (2002) floods the celebrated Mystery House in San Jose, California, with luminous ghosts, some of them armed with rifles. Both Blake and Margaret Kilgallen are artists that died far too young, and the inclusion of their work adds to the exhibition’s haunted atmosphere.
Ghosts from the founding traumas of slavery, Civil War schisms and wars against Native Americans loom large in the works brought together by curator Toby Kamps. Kara Walker’s 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of an African-America (2005), a film of shadow puppets, unrolls like an old Disney cartoon’s repressed dreams of menacing racial desires. In addition, given the show's titular reference to the old folk music scavenged by Bob Dylan, Walker’s soundtrack of scratchy string band tunes provides an apt audio presence within the exhibition. Sam Durant’s slowly revolving, two-faced diorama, Pilgrims and Indians, Planting and Reaping, Learning and Teaching (2006), recreates Thanksgiving’s happy myth/genocidal truth out of wax figures, fittingly salvaged from the obsolete Plymouth National Wax Museum. The works of Walker and Durant, along with Aaron Morse’s paintings of Westward expansion and Brad Kuhlhamer’s drawings of bloody battlefields, build up an anti-nostalgic history; landscapes, humans, and animals alike have undergone brutal, supernatural transformations: America as Mystery House, populated by restless phantoms.
The antic history of American aesthetics, which comes giggling out of circus sideshows, roadside attractions, Old West shows and the like, sometimes lightens the exhibition’s haunted feel. Entering the exhibition, you’re confronted by Durants’ wax figure tableau and Kilgallen’s installation of a ramshackle streetscape, Main Drag (2001); it feels a bit like walking into an aged theme park or midway, especially with Kilgallen’s hand-painted signs. Circus imagery jaunts through both the cotton elves in Walker’s film and the uniforms worn by the queer Civil War Zouave soldiers in Allison Smith’s work. Matthew Day Jackson’s fake taxidermy faeries near David McDermott & Peter McGough’s broken urn, San Francisco Earthquake Box 1906 (1988), transform one corner of the exhibition into a sort of dime museum. But the haunting aesthetics of trauma trump the aesthetics of old, weird entertainment in the exhibition, suggesting that “folk themes in contemporary art” are more concerned with confronting ghosts than tinkering with bizarre spectacles.
By gathering artworks together under a “folk theme,” the exhibition evokes the specter of folk/vernacular/outsider/self-trained art worlds that authenticate “contemporary art” through their categorical exclusion (and vice versa). Artworks like those displayed in the John Michael Kohler Arts Center’s 2007 exhibition Sublime Spaces & Visionary Worlds hover around the exhibition in a timeless un-contemporary. In The Old, Weird America, contemporary art is privileged to experience this residual world of the folk without being downscaled to folk art as such. Art environments like the Flower Man’s house, the Orange Show, and others you might discover “wandering the old, weird America” in search of “visionary places and spaces,”** beg questions about who gets to be contemporary and who stays folk in the landscape of galleries, museums and houses haunted by artwork.
Perhaps the lurking spirits of folk art objects are most clearly channeled by Kahlhamer’s Dolls, made of the artist’s hair, rusty nails and scraps of leather and wood. Of all the works in the exhibition, these look most like the un-contemporary folk art you’d imagine finding in somebody’s yard or living room or in the Kohler’s Sublime Spaces & Visionary Worlds. The dolls are jailed in a chicken pen, far from Kahlhamer’s works on paper, a separation that unfortunately dampens the menace that the bloody drawings might lend the cute fetishes. Looking at the dolls, an art-goer remarked, “they should either be caged like that or put next to a candle and worshipped.” Thanks to the exhibition, they get to be simultaneously locked up in the time of the contemporary and worshipped for their residual, resurgent folk spirit.
* Didn’t I warn you about being haunted by our Ghosts exhibition in my last feature for …might be good?
** Quotation from Erika Doss, “Wandering the Old, Weird America: Poetic Musings and Pilgrimage Perspectives on Vernacular Art Environments” in Sublimes Spaces & Visionary Worlds: Build Environments of Vernacular Artists, edited by Leslie Umberger (New York: Princeton Architectural Pres; Sheboygan: John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2007), 24-45.
Scott Webel is a Ph.D. student in the Folkore/Public Culture program at The University of Texas at Austin. With Jen Hirt, he co-curates Austin's Museum of Natural & Artificial Ephemerata.
On Kawara: 10 Tableaux and 16,952 Pages
Dallas Museum of Art
On view through August 24, 2008
By Charissa N. Terranova
On Kawara, The One Million Years Project, detail. © On Kawara, courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, New York.
The Japanese artist On Kawara uses time as a medium in his art. Kawara is not interested in the narrative passage of time—say, as in a story that has a beginning, middle and end--but rather in time as a series of almost arbitrary blips in a vast and interminable infinity. So, in a sense, his date paintings are at once temporal and spatial. The three moon landing paintings—July 16, 1969 “Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., Michael Collins,” July 20, 1969 “Man Walks on the Moon,” July 21, 1969 “Apollo 11 at the Distance of 238,857 Miles from the Earth"—document historical dates within the very material space of canvas stretched on wood. Kawara painted the dates, each on a separate canvas, in a sans-serif font in white acrylic paint on a black matte surface. Accompanying the paintings are three shallow boxes containing newspapers from each day. Time is all but unhinged from the warp and woof of chronological order as moments exist without attachment to before and after. In the mind’s eye, they tumble through space like flat black asteroids.
The greater goal of Kawara’s documentation of days, months and years is to reinforce the minute role of human beings in the larger passage of time. The One Million Years Project is a list of numbers: dates originally typed on loose leaf paper and placed in grey three-ring binders, then published on onion paper in small, limited edition books, and finally recorded in spoken form and realized as an audio installation. The project begins with the year 9998031 B.C. and ends in 1001992 A.D. All three forms can be experienced, seen, held and heard at the Dallas Museum of Art. Arbitrary blips, we humans are like atoms and our events are but the movement of freefall in perpetuity. There was something before humans and there will be something after.
Aesthetically speaking, obsessive-compulsive mania couples with tedium in Kawara’s will to document. In ink on silkscreen, One Hundred Years Calendar 23,928 Days (1998) is a grid of months and numbers. Yellow lines are carefully delineated and separated from black dots, as though made by an anonymous automaton rather than an individual artist. The piece has the feel of a technocratic document from the early days of HAL and IBM in the 1960s.
Located under the barrel vault and in the quadrant galleries and concourse, the exhibition, curated by Charles Wylie, is stark and contemplative—superbly befitting of Kawara’s smart quiet Conceptualism.
Charissa N. Terranova is Assistant Professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, Director of Centraltrak: The UT Dallas Artists Residency and a freelance critic. Her writing appears regularly in the Dallas Morning News, Art Lies, Art Papers, Sculpture Magazine and Art News.
2008 Whitney Biennial
Whitney Museum
Select floors on view through June 22, 2008
By Rebecca S. Cohen
Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, Still from Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out, 2006, Digital video, color, sound; 26 minutes. Collection of the artists; courtesy Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York.
I prefer boutiques. Forget about Neiman Marcus or Macy’s and point me to a little hole-in-the-wall store and a shop owner with a great eye. No doubt this preference for a finely tuned selection of goods explains, to some extent, why I have trouble digesting survey exhibitions like the 2008 Whitney Biennial, let alone writing about them. In a short online video, the curators, Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin, observe, “more and more artists work in a kind of project-based [rather than object-based] nature.” Accordingly, Huldisch and Momin have skewed their choices to reflect this trend by presenting a high percentage of installation, video and performance art. Each entry vies mightily for attention and, on occasion, deserves it. Certainly, I concede that there is value in hosting the noisy yet thoughtful conversations that occur when diverse objects, installations and performances are thrown together. But the experience tends to confuse and frustrate, leaving me longing for a more focused, in-depth exploration of fewer artists and their work. Perhaps I would have been mollified had I been able to discern an installation strategy that indicated where to find the artists in whom I was particularly interested: William Codova, Leslie Hewitt and Michael Smith. The three comprise this year’s Texas contingent, although each also lists New York, and in Cordova’s case, New York and Miami, as home.
Leslie Hewitt’s three pale digital chromogenic prints in 5-x-7 foot ash frames rest on the floor, sharing a common wall with Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn’s video, Can’t Swallow It, Can’t Spit it Out (2006), which features a loud-talking Vallyrie wearing horned helmet, with blood streaming down her face. Vallyrie directs viewers who part the curtain and enter the darkened cubicle that features Can't Swallow It on a noisy tour of lesser sites in Los Angeles. And yet, Make it Plain (2006), Hewitt’s thoughtful assembly of images, manages to grab and hold attention with its subtle insinuation of race and the surprising relationship between the gallery space and the large photographs, which rest on the floor and lean against the wall.
Michael Smith’s Class Portrait, an annual series begun in 1999, depicts the artist’s alter-ego, Mike, posing each year with a new group of graduating seniors. Mike’s fuzzy black caterpillar eye brows, receding hairline and perpetually bemused expression seem more off-kilter than usual because a cacophony of clucks and mournful moos emanates from Mika Rottenberg’s nearby video installation, Cheese (2007). Smith’s video, Portal Excursion (2006), fares better because it was screened daily in the second floor film and video gallery, mercifully free of direct competition, allowing the viewer to enter into Mike’s own unusual universe.
William Cordova’s installation, The House that Frank Lloyd Wright built 4 Fred Hampton and Mark Clark (2006), suffers, I believe, for being wedged into a small gallery. It is easy to avoid, it appears claustrophobic and its meaning remains opaque. This skeleton structure made of wooden studs sits sullen and mute while glitzier objects mingle more easily with passers by. I anticipate that the work that results from the artist’s current residency at Artpace (the corresponding exhibition begins July 10) will speak more eloquently. And, in San Antonio’s most exclusive “art boutique” visitors will be able to concentrate their attention on a finely tuned selection of artists. I can’t wait.
Rebecca S. Cohen is an Austin-based writer and author of Art Guide Texas, published by UT Press.
announcements: news
Austin News
Austin Art Scene Garners Attention in NY Arts Magazine
In the July/August issue of NY Arts Magazine, Justin Brunelle adds to the recent buzz about Austin's art scene. After running through the usual list of spaces alternative spaces--Arthouse, Women and Their Work, Art Palace and Okay Mountain--Brunelle suggests that what makes the Austin art scene unique is our sense of humor: "In the land where football is king and cheerleading is practically a doctoral program, my guess is that the Austin artist develops a little tongue-in-cheek to remain the maverick."
San Antonio News
Artpace Announces 2008 Travel Grant Recipients
Artpace San Antonio recently announced that Ricky Armendariz, Jessica Halonen, Julia Barbosa Landois and upcoming testsite collaborator Justin Boyd were the recipients of the 2008 Travel Grant for San Antonio-Area Artists. The $5,000 prize will support the four artists as they undertake travel related to their creative growth and career development. The award is given annually to encourage an on-going dialogue between local artists and the international arts community in keeping with Artpace’s mission to advance contemporary art while enriching our community.
announcements: exhibitions
Austin On View
Montrosities
The Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephemerata
Opening Reception: Friday, June 13 from 7:00-10:00 pm
An EXTRAVAGANZA of GENETIC MIS-ENGINEERING! A GUIDED TOUR through the UNCANNY VALLEY. SEE GMO CORN - with Suicide Genes! BEFORE it goes EXTINCT. SEE PATCHES the TWO HEADED COW! Feet chewed off by rats. UV REACTIVE CAT FUR, Straight from the Laboratory! BALL of HAIR from a COW's STOMACH! Bovine Whig Factory? Think the FEEJEE MERMAID was FAKE? THINK AGAIN! LEARNED LECTURES. AIR CONDITIONED. No Mutant Hormones: GUARANTEED
Austin Openings
Francesca Gabbiani: Once We Were Trees
lora reynolds gallery
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 14 from 6:00-8:00 pm; Artist's talk at 6:30 pm
In Once We Were Trees, Francesca Gabbiani's second solo exhibition at Lora Reynolds Gallery, the artist has created wallpaper made from an intricate graphite drawing of leafless trees with a density that evokes woods. Installed upon the wallpaper and surrounding walls will be decadent interiors Gabbiani has created by meticulously building layers of cut paper. Hidden beasts, birds of prey, cherubs and spider webs found among the intricacies in her interiors correspond to the layered texture of the bark in her trees. A group of collaged paper poppies titled Heresie et Sorcellerie add to the enchanted feel of these unfolding spaces.
New American Talent: The 23rd Exhibition
Arthouse
Opens Saturday, June 14; Talking Art with Nato Thompson at 4:00 pm
The twenty-third in a series of annual juried exhibitions, New American Talent features the work of emerging artists working in a variety of mediums including sculpture, painting, photography and new media. Each work on view was selected by New American Talent juror Nato Thompson, curator and producer, Creative Time, New York, NY. This year’s New American Talent showcases the work of 43 artists from the United States—16 of whom currently live and work in Texas.
J.Derrick Durham/Josh Rios
Mass Gallery (916 Springdale Road)
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 14 from 7:00-11:00 pm
Ping-Pong is a site-specific multi-media installation resulting from a two-week improvisational collaborative between Josh Rios and J. Derrick Durham. Building upon symbols and visual cues of an imagined ecumenically established religion, Americanism, J. Derrick Durham utilizes wall painting, video, and sound to create a test space for a future liturgical experience. Using downloadable textures designed for "do-it-yourself" 3-D animators and desktop background, Josh Rios generates a series of low-resolution, improbable landscapes.
WorkSpace: Fabian Bercic
The Blanton
Third Thursday Reception: Thursday, June 19 from 5:00-9:00 pm; On view through September 21,2008
Argentine artist Fabian Bercic provides a contemporary reinterpretation of the traditional Zen Garden in his site-specific installation for Workspace. As a critique of consumerism and the commercialization of culture, Bercic transforms the usually sacred rock garden, replacing its natural and organic elements with synthetic, Day-glow, plastic materials. The work reflects the artist’s interest in product design, medieval manuscript illustrations and his own imagination, asking how one can create a meaningful Zen Garden with the materials of a late-capitalist society.
The Longest Day of the Year
Art Palace
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 21 from 8:00-10:00 pm
Art Palace's summer show, Longest Day of the Year, features new work by Jonathan Marshall, as well as three additions to the Art Palace roster, Erin Curtis, Jules Buck Jones and Erick Michaud.
Reality Show
Women and Their Work
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 26 from 6:00-8:00 pm
Organized by the Jill Pangallo, this exhibition features video installations by artists Anna Krachey, Cecelia Phillips, Laura Turner and Jaime Wentz.
Austin on View
Off-Register
okay mountain
On view through June 21, 2008
Foundation Projects presents Off-Register, a traveling group exhibition of experimental printmaking.The Off-Register exhibition will showcase prints by a collection of international artists and graphic designers associated through the professional practice of commercial print design, but that do not consider themselves printmakers. This exhibition explores the relationship these artists and graphic designers have to printing and how commercial processes may inform more traditional methods of fine art print making.
Allison Hunter: Slower Still
Women & Their Work
On view through June 21, 2008 Women & Their Work proudly presents Slower Still, a solo photography exhibition by Houston-based artist Allison Hunter. In Hunter’s digitally manipulated photographs, zoo animals are shown divested of their everyday settings and recontextualized in surreal surroundings. Removed from their enclosures yet still ‘caught,’ framed in abstract washes of light and color, Hunter’s eerily prescient animals are far from pastoral. With background details missing, the photographer’s gaze feels heightened and hyperreal—and Hunter’s zoological subjects reciprocate that gaze from lushly captured moments slowed down, halted, frozen in time.
PictureBox Blacklight Series
Domy Books
On view through July 25, 2008
The prints featured in the exhibition were curated by PictureBox specifically for The Dark Fair, a subversive and experimental miniature art fair that took place without the use of natural or electric light during this year's Armory Show. Artists include The prints featured in the gallery were curated by Picturebox specifically for The Dark Fair, a subversive and experimental miniature art fair that took place without the use of natural or electric light during this year's Armory Show.
Sol LeWitt x 2
Austin Museum of Art
On view through August 17, 2008
This two part exhibition focuses both on the artworks of Sol LeWitt and on his personal collection of contemporary art. Sol LeWitt: Structure and Line documents the full arc of the artist's career. Throughout his career critics have admired how his work synthesizes left and right brain creativity and provokes both intellectual and emotional responses. Selections from the LeWitt Collection showcases works by an exciting array of national and international artists including Alice Aycock, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Alighiero Boetti, Chuck Close, Gilbert & George, Hans Haacke, Eva Hesse, On Kawara, Shirin Neshat, and Robert Ryman.
Benito Huerta: Intermezzo
The Mexican American Cultural Center (600 River Street)
On view through August 31, 2008
In this exhibition, the artist Benito Huerta uses the intermezzo—a short movement separating the major section of a symphonic work—to confront contemporary issues such as the economy, immigration, and natural disasters, either directly or in a more poetic form. A recipient of the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art’s 2002 Legend of the Year Award, Huerta's work is in several museum and corporate collections through the United Stated and Huerta's work was recently presented in Soundings: Benito Huerta 1992 – 2005 at the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi and the El Paso Museum.
San Antonio Openings
Joey Fauerso & Michael Velliquette: Binocular Rivalry
Sala Diaz
Opening Reception: Friday, June 27 from 7:00-11:00 pm
Artists Joey Fauerso and Michael Velliquette present a new body of work based on a shared interest in variations in consciousness, and a recent road trip around Iceland.
San Antonio On View
Julia Barbosa Landois: Veiled in Flesh
Cactus Bra Gallery
On view through June 20, 2008
Veiled in Flesh takes place within an installation that includes artist-crafted objects, photographs and video stills. The artist will be on view in a plexiglass vitrine and available for subtle audience interaction. The exhibition references Catholic aesthetics of body display while examining the role of ritual in the face of acculturation, all with a feminist subtext. The performance component of Veiled in Flesh debuted last year in Philadelphia at Ice Box Project Space.
Oliver Lutz: Paint It Black
Artpace
On view through August 17, 2008
The video installations, wall paintings and performances by New York-based artist Oliver Lutz deal with transcending desires of power, control and disintegration through a complex deconstruction of the artist’s mental model. His works are an unraveling of personal mythologies, explored and revealed through various conflations of artistic mediums.
Ann-Michéle Morales: WindowWorks
Artpace
On view through September 14, 2008
Presented in artpace's Main Avenue Windows, Ann-Michéle Morales’ drawings and sculptures comically delineate societal patterns, fixations, and customs, ultimately presenting contemporary issues through what the artist calls her “humor goggles."
American Art Since 1945: In a New Light
McNay Art Museum
On view through August 24, 2008
Opening in the new Jane and Arthur Stieren Center for Exhibitions, American Art Since 1945: In a New Light presents works from the McNay’s ever-growing collection of late modern and contemporary art. For the first time in the museum’s history, the postwar collection of American art is fully featured, including several significant new acquisitions.
Houston On View
The Old, Weird America
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
On View through July 20, 2008
See Scott Webel's review in this issue.
Learning by Doing: 25 Years of the Core Program
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Audrey Jones Beck Building
On view through June 29, 2008
Launched in 1982 by the Glassell School of Art at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Core Program was conceived as a laboratory for young artists, offering studio space in which residents could spend up to two years devoting themselves to research and development. Learning by Doing: 25 Years of the Core Program charts the program's evolution through the production of its artists. Curated by the MFAH´s Alison de Lima Greene, the exhibition features Mark Allen, David Aylsworth, Amy Blakemore, Danny Yahav-Brown, Sharon Engelstein, Francesca Fuchs, David Fulton, DeWitt Godfrey, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Michael Miller, Katrina Moorhead, Demetrius Oliver, Karyn Olivier, Shazia Sikander, and Robert Ziebell.
Sarah Green Reed: a lotta bit
Moody Gallery
On view through July 5, 2008
The title of this exhibition references artist Sarah Greene Reed's "more is more with philosophy." To create her digital collages, Reed works extensively with layers, loading her image with scanned objects, patterns and photographic source material and then edits, rearranges and shapes the collage into its final state.
Jason Salavon: Annex and Catalogue
Inman Gallery
On view through July 5, 2008
A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, Jason Salavon is an internationally recognized artist represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York. In this exhibition Salavon examines the marketing of the ideal modern lifestyle, as seen in glossy catalogues of upscale home furnishings.
Max Neuhaus: Circumscription Drawings and a New Sound Installation
Menil Collection
On view through August 4, 2008
A pioneer in the use of sound in contemporary art, Neuhaus coined the term “sound installation” to describe his practice based on the creation of unique sounds for specific locations. In addition to his work with sound, Neuhaus has long been engaged in drawing, producing visual counterparts to the sound pieces both as proposals for ideas to be executed later and as responses to existing sound works. Neuhaus calls this latter type “circumscription drawings.” The exhibition will bring together a selection of these drawings executed between 1992 and 2007, responses to sound works from as early as 1968, many of which have never been displayed in the U.S. The exhibition will coincide with the inauguration of the new sound work, Sound Line commissioned from Neuhaus for a location just outside the building’s north entrance.
Defending Democracy
Station Museum of Contemporary Art
On view through Sepember 14, 2008
Defending Democracy features the work of two collectives — Otabenga Jones & Associates (Houston) and Emory Douglas, ASARO (Oaxaca, Mexico) — both of which use art to interrogate the concept of a participatory democracy.
Dallas Opening
Party at the Moontower
Road Agent
Opening Reception: Friday, June 13 from 6:00-8:00 pm
Road Agent's summer group exhibition, Party at the Moontower, features new work by Celia Eberle, M, Margaret Meehan, Raychael Stine, Ludwig Schwarz, Kevin Todora, Vance Wingate, Sean Dower, and more.
Dallas On View
I-35 Biennial Invitational 2008
Dunn and Brown Contemporary
On view through July 12, 2008
I-35 Biennial Invitational 2008 features the work of eight artists under the age of 35. Austinites will be familiar with the work of Austin-based artists Nathan Green, Jonathan Marshall and Jill Pangallo, and will be interested in the chance to see the video work of current CORE Artist Resident Kara Hearn, a collection of collage-based works by Bulgarian Iva Gueorguieva, an installation by Philadelphia-based Elissa Collier, drawings and animation by Philadelphia-based Garrett Davis and sculpture by John Frost.
Show #17: Cory Arcangel + Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied
and/or gallery
On View through July 19, 2008
This exhibition features work by some of new media arts' most established figures: Olia Lialina + Dragan Espenschied (creators of Zombie and Mummy) and Corey Arcangel.
announcements: events
Austin Events
Domy Books
Saturday, June 14 from 6:00-8:00 pm
Gary Panter has been one of the most influential figures in visual culture since the mid-1970s. From his era-defining punk graphics to his cartoon icon Jimbo to his visionary design for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, he has left his mark on every medium he’s touched. Working in close collaboration with the artist, PictureBox has assembled the definitive volume on Panter’s work from the early 1970s to the present.
Plaza of The Harry Ransom Center
Friday, June 20 at 9:00 pm
The artist and former testsite collaborator Luke Savisky the composer Graham Reynolds present Film Action 7, an outdoor projection, dance and music performance in the plaza, using the Ransom Center's building as the canvas.
Houston Events
Cinematexas Eulogy: The Living Whale
Aurora Picture Show
Friday, June 13 from 8:00-10:00 pm; Saturday, June 14 from 3:00-5:00 pm
After an 11-year stint as one of the most pioneering film festivals in the country, Austin's dearly departed Cinematexas International Shorts Film Festival will have one last hurrah at the Aurora Picture Show. This will be two days of odd, subversive and avant-garde Cinematexas quality shorts programming. Please join co-founder Bryan Poyser and curator-at-large Spencer Parsons as they deliver a eulogy to this University of Texas student-run festival that started as a part-time hobby and became an internationally renowned festival. For further information and to reserve tickets, please click here.
Catastrophic Theatre Presents: The Splasher
Diverseworks
June 12-14 at 8:00 pm
Admission: $15
Based on true, recent events, The Splasher is a funny, intriguing and visually dynamic exploration of art, crime and punishment, by Troy Schulze, the award-winning writer/adapter/director of Me-sci-ah, Jerry's World and Actual Air.
Keiji Haino: Solo Acoustic Performance
Menil Collection : Richmond Hall
Saturday, June 21 at 7:30 pm
Co-presented with Nameless Sound, Japanese vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Kejii Haino's performances are his first in the Southwest and the only American stops on this tour.
Meet and Greet The Real Art World Residents: Maria Guzman, Tina Kotrla, Kia Neill and Eric Zapata
Diverseworks
Thursday, July 10 from 6:00-8:00 pm
As part of this year's The Real (Art) World Residency, Diverswork is partnering with ArtLies to host this meet and greet to meet this year's residents: Maria Guzman, Tina Kotrla, Kia Neill and Eric Zapata.
announcements: opportunities
Employment
Donor Circle Coordinator
Dallas Museum of Art
Application Deadline: Sunday, June 22
The primary responsibility of the Donor Circle Coordinator is to contribute in a professional and meaningful way to the execution of clearly defined Donor Circle objectives which are tied directly to the stated financial revenue objectives of the Museum’s Donor Circle Program. This includes, but is not limited specifically to, solicitation/acquisition, stewardship/retention, cultivation, billing/acknowledgment and programming for all patrons, falling within the Donor Circle parameters. Reporting to the Program Manager, Donor Circle Membership (PM/DCM), the Donor Circle Coordinator works collaboratively with the PM/DCM and other Development staff members. For complete job description and application details, please click here.
Executive Director
Art League Houston
Application Deadline: June 30, 2008
Art League Houston is currently seeking applicants for the Executive Director position. Art League Houston cultivates awareness, appreciation and accessibility of contemporary visual art within the community for its cultural enrichment. The Executive Director implements the strategic goals of the organization and is responsible for organization, direction, and administration of the agency, including its policies, programs and services. To view position announcement and job description, click here.
Exhibit Fabricator/Facility Supervisor
Austin Children's Museum
Application Deadline: Open until filled
The Exhibit Fabricator/Facility Supervisor provides building maintenance and acts as liaison with outside maintenance service providers. In addition, the position assists with exhibit fabrication building high quality, hands-on exhibit components, props, and furnishings for Museum galleries, exhibits, and traveling exhibits. For further information and application instructions, please click here.
Special Events Manager
Dallas Museum of Art
Application Deadline: Open until filled
The Dallas Museum of Art is seeking a Special Events Manager to provide management, coordination and guidance to annual, high-profile Museum fundraisers, including the Art Ball. The primary responsibility of the position is to manage the overall planning and execution of the event, including the expectations of trustees and volunteer leadership. For more information, please click here.
Call for Entries
Harvestworks Video Art Festival #003
Harvestworks Digital Media Center
Deadline: June 16, 2008
The Harvest Digital Media Center invites artists to submit videos of all types of video (experimental, animation, music video, documentary, silent, short, etc) for a guest curated video art festival. Works selected from this call, as well as by private invitation, will be featured in a series of themed screenings in September 2008. The festival’s main objective is to highlight inventive and visually rich video created in the twenty-first century. Though this solicitation is truly broad, they are especially interested in work exploring the notion of façade (i.e. architecturally or in the sense of superficial appearance or illusion), work exploring food, agriculture and/or the environment, audiovisual collaborations, silent videos and videos created especially for web-viewing. For more information and submission guidelines, click here.
Chicago Underground Film Festival Accepting Entries
Deadline: Monday, June 16
Entries are now being accepted for the Chicago Underground Film Festival. For further information and entry details, please click here.
Erotica 2008: Open Call for Art
Gallery Lombardi
Deadline to Enter: Wednesday, June 18
Gallery Lombardi seeks drawing, performance, video, mixed media, painting, sculpture and print projects for this all media exhibition that celebrates the human form and the long tradition of figurative art. For further details and entry form, please click here.
The Big Show: The Call for Entries
Lawndale Art Center
Hand Deliver Work between June 25-June 26 from 10:00 am-5:00 pm
Artists living within 100 miles of Houston are invited to submit their artwork for a chance to be included in the show and a shot at one of three cash prizes. For further details and application form, please click here.
Texas Biennial 2009
Texas Biennial 2009
Group Exhibition Deadline: Monday, June 30, 2008
The 2009 Texas Biennial is accepting submissions from artists living and working in Texas via the website, www.texasbiennial.com. All submissions will be digitally submitted online and artists of all medias are encouraged to submit. The 2009 Biennial website will provide all information on the Call for Entry process. The Temporary Outdoor Project will be funded by the City of Austin and will award budgets for complete projects ranging from $3,000 to $10,000.
