Our best guesses for Fall 2009…
Leah DeVun's diamonds
Levi Dugat & Leah DeVun: Your Heart is not a Museum
Domy Books
September 12th – October 22, 2009
Domy has found its Austin groove, and it feels damn good. If summer sizzled here with Mexican trannies and wrestlers, then fall will shine in the cozy exhibition space with this cool gem of a show. Levi Dugat is more or less a new name to the Austin art community, but if you haven’t encountered Leah DeVun‘s work in the past year she’s been in Austin, you have been seriously missing out. "Traditional craftmaking, romance novels, daytime television and Southern kitsch" are the focus of this collaborative exhibition – what perfectly apropos themes as we yearn for cooler temperatures and shake off the brutal dog-days of this endless summer. And while you’re there, make sure to check out Austin homegirl Jade Walker‘s Trophy Room in the project space, up until October 17th. – Kate Watson
Still from Eve Sussman's The Rape of the Sabine Women
Arthouse Presents…Eve Sussman: The Rape of the Sabine Women
Film screening and artist talk
The Paramount Theatre
September 21, 7:00 pm
Despite being in semi-hibernation during majorly exciting renovations this fall, Arthouse is bringing quite a show-stopping parade of special events to Austin these days. Choicest amongst these sweet autumn delicacies is 2004 Whitney Biennial darling Eve Sussman‘s 2007 film featuring "140 hours of video footage and 6,000 photographs, a score composed by Jonathan Bepler recorded live on site and incorporating a bouzouki ensemble, a Pergamon coughing choir (?!) and a chorus of 800 voices." The film is an eighty-minute mythological romp reimagined in a sort of post-Mad Men era context. Roman sexiness plus mid-century modern sensibilities? Holler. Check out the trailer here. – KW
Mads Lynnerup...Untitled Pink (from the series Time is Money, Money is Time), 2009...Ink on paper, 10-1/4 x 14-1/4 inches
Ms. Reynolds pulls out the big guns for this fall group exhibition. Kehinde Wiley is the clear art star included here, but our personal favorites are the young and dashing New York-based Mads Lynnerup and Colby Bird. Lynnerup is perhaps best remembered in these parts for his stellar 2008 solo show, If You See Anything Interesting Please Let Someone Know Immediately, a mad romp that featured the artist performing as a live hood ornament riding through downtown Austin. Hopefully you caught Austin-bred Colby Bird’s excellent solo show Cold End this summer at Okay Mountain. Between these two philosophical pranksters, this show is sure to be a treat. – KW
Teresita Fernandez...Drawn Waters (Borrowdale), 2009...Natural and machined graphite on steel, 121 3/16 x 43 1/2 x 86 in...Courtesy of the artists and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NYC
Teresita Fernandez: Blind Landscape
Blanton Museum
November 1, 2009 – January 3, 2010
Teresita Fernandez has already singlehandedly altered the entire visual experience of visiting the Blanton with her epically charming 2009 piece, Stacked Waters, a semi-permanent installation in the museum’s atrium. Thanks, Teresita-the cold, nude space was kind of embarrassing before you showed up. We can’t wait to see what she does next with this traveling exhibition. Fernandez’s work is slick and undeniably sexy: sometimes too much so. No matter what, these massive sculptural installations that draw upon themes of the natural world are sure to entertain and delight us. Just don’t drink too much of the magical Fernandez syrup or you may end up frolicking about this exhibition like a little kid on a sugar high. – KW
Remembering the Alamo, 1836-2009
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum
October 10, 2009 – March 12, 2010
The Panhandle-Plains reliably makes it into our previews of the best upcoming shows, and there’s a reason for that: it’s one of the most remote museums in Texas, yet it always has a variety of wonderful, kooky exhibits on view. (They also have a great website and produce nice photography, which doesn’t hurt.) This fall they’re showing early fashion made from petrochemical fibers, 50s American furniture, and a collection of Will James ephemera. But this show of Alamo kitsch dating from the 1880s stands out. Culled from the personal collection of PPHM’s Curator of History, Bill Green, the show traces the evolution of Alamo souvenirs from late 19th century German porcelain to the cheaper plaster and metal items that became popular during the Depression, and on through present-day Frisbees and foam cutouts. Interestingly, the objects produced before the 1950s are relatively serious, almost religious in nature, compared with the "Remember the Alamo" toys made popular by the Disney movies and TV shows about Davy Crockett. This show reminds us that "Texans always move them"– if not through military maneuvering, then through savvy merchandising after the fact. – Rainey Knudson
Eloy Torrez...It's a Brown World After All, 2006...Oil on canvas, 60 x 60
Menudo: Chicano Art from the Cheech Marin Collection
Art Museum of South Texas
September 17, 2009 – January 10, 2010
We know: you’re thinking "geez, Cheech’s collection has been, like, SEEN, people!!" But the good folks in Corpus Christi promise that this show, while including some of the favorite standbys of the collection, will also feature some recent acquisitions, some of which have never been seen publicly. It also won’t be too much to digest: there are a manageable 27 works in the exhibit, including some from artists with Texas ties. Look for Kill the Pachuco Bastard by Vincent Valdez, Owl Woman by Alex Rubio, and Noches de la Frontera by Benito Huerta alongside works from icons of the LA art scene John Valadez and Eloy Torrez. [NB this is not the giclée print traveling show that went around a few years back, but a new compilation of the original artworks.] – RK
Anna Zemankova
By Magical Means: Drawings by Anna Zemankova
Pollock Gallery at SMU
August 31 – October 10, 2009
The Pollock Gallery is hard to get to within the SMU student center, but well worth the effort because director Philip Van Keuren brings in such great shows year after year. This fall season starts with drawings from self-taught Czech artist Anna Zemankova (1908-1986). She began making her unique floral-like compositions at the age of 52. Philip describes her work as "using an idiosyncratic and highly individualized lyrical language of bio-morphic abstraction."
Also, later in the year, the Gallery will also host a related show of Eugene Andolsek. Neither one of these artist’s work has ever been exhibited in Texas and yet both are known worldwide as being self-taught masters. – Chris Jagers
The Art of Architecture: Foster + Partners
Nasher Sculpture Center
September 26, 2009 – January 10, 2010
For architecture enthusiasts, this is a MUST see. Foster + Partners are internationally recognized for their highly designed environments which are beautiful from a sculptural and practical point of view. This exhibit will coordinate with the opening of the Winspear Opera House in downtown Dallas, and will include models, videos, drawings, videos, photos, etc – four decades of work. If their website is any indication of their presentation skills, this is going to be a GREAT show! – CJ
Dan McPharlin
Jill Foley: The Mountain
Project Room: Dan McPharlin
Conduit Gallery
September 12 – October 10, 2009
Grim art market be damned, Conduit Gallery isn’t playing it safe. They’re kicking off their fall season with The Mountain, an epic, 500-square foot installation by Dallas artist Jill Foley. From early installation shots, it looks like a multi-chambered grotto crafted from torn cardboard scraps. The funky environment will house the artist’s strangely tragic puppet-like stuffed sculptures and, beginning with an open-mic poetry slam on September 17, the space will host a series of Thursday evening happenings from 6:30 to 8:30, through October 1.
Dan McPharlin is presenting his exquisitely crafted but patently absurd sculptures in Conduit’s Project Space. The palm-sized objects, made from foam core, construction paper and paint are convincingly executed models of imaginary analog synthesizers. Why small? Why analog? Why imaginary? I have no idea, but I want one. – Kelly Klaasmeyer
Snagged: Tom Leader Studio
Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, University of Texas at El Paso
October 8 – December 12, 2009
Snagged continues UTEP’s tradition of mounting interesting architecture shows, but it marks the first time they’ve brought landscape architects to the school. The environmentally-focused Tom Leader Studio has done some very cool projects involving landscape, water and light (including, currently, a 150-foot long Rain Bench at Rice University that promises "cool bottoms" during hot Houston summers). Members of Leader’s studio have made multiple trips to El Paso over the summer and have settled on a project exploring the Rio Grande, specifically how man and Mother Nature have changed it over time. Snagged will involve the usual maps, photographs and other didactic material; it will also feature a large suspended sculpture that mirrors the concrete-lined channel of the river (thank you, Army Corps of Engineers!). Leader Studio alumna Sarah Cowles will speak at the opening on October 8, and Tom Leader himself will give an auditorium lecture on the 29th. Should be good. – RK
Susan Rothenberg...Red, 2008...oil on canvas, 55 x 57 1/2 inches, Private Collection
Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place
The Fort Worth Modern
October 18, 2009 – January 3, 2010
Curator Michael Auping worked together with Susan Rothenberg to select 25 paintings that represent the span of her career. He comments: "Rather than focusing on Rothenberg’s famous early horse paintings as the beginning of a symbolic, figurative evolution, we are looking at the artist’s work from a more holistic, formal standpoint, identifying her unusual way of organizing pictorial space, regardless of the figurative content." Perfect!
Unfortunately, the Modern’s website uses a horse painting to promote the exhibition (with no other images available). So, I have taken an image from Rotherberg’s gallery Sperone Westwater. I have no idea whether this painting is actually in the exhibition, but it represents a very different kind of work that many are unfamiliar with. – CJ
Ludwig Schwarz
Death of a Propane Salesman: Anxiety and the Texas Artist
Fort Worth Contemporary Arts
October 23 -November 29
The neurotics aren’t just in New York; Texas has its own brand of anxiety and it’s rich fodder for the artists in "Death of a Propane Salesman: Anxiety and the Texas Artist." Christina Rees, the new curator of the galleries at TCU (and a Glasstire columnist!) is putting together the show. Her exhibition title, one of the best in recent memory, was inspired by a "King of the Hill" episode. The artist list was still evolving at the preview deadline but Ludwig Schwarz, Matthew Bourbon, Jeff Zilm and Terri Thornton are among the anxious. Former curator Gavin Morrison did some great stuff at FWCA and it looks like Rees is following suit – an unabashed love of Mike Judge bodes well. – KK
Wayne White
Wayne White: BIG LECTRIC FAN TO KEEP ME COOL WHILE I SLEEP
Rice Gallery
September 10 – October 18
Puppeteer, cartoonist and virtuoso defacer of banal thrift store paintings Wayne White is fixing to receive the respect he so richly deserves at the Rice University Art Gallery this fall. He hopes to get it with what he calls a "big, weird toy still in its box," a fifteen-foot disembodied head of country singer George Jones, who’s lyric "Big lectric fan to keep me cool while I sleep" gives the show its title. In addition to his Rice gig, White also has a new new book out, "Wayne White: Maybe Now I’ll Get the Respect I So Richly Deserve." – Bill Davenport
Andrew Masullo
Andrew Masullo
Texas Gallery
September 10 – October 24, 2009
Opening Reception:Thursday, September 10, 6:00 – 8: p.m.
One of the easiest things about showing new works by a painter is that everyone knows what to expect, without having any idea what they’re going to get. Andrew Masullo‘s upcoming show, described by Texas Gallery as "a whole slew of new paintings," tells it all, yet tells nothing. Charming, verdant, naive eccentric, dapper; if Masullo’s new slew runs true to form, it’s likely to conjure other shamanic jokesters like Paul Klee, Forrest Bess and Mary Heilmann. I’m looking forward to it. – BD
Jon Pylypchuk...cut the act you phony cripple / you try living with your legs bent up, 2005...Mixed media, 21 x 30 x 16 inches
Jon Pylypchuk
Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston
September 12 – November 14, 2009
Opening Reception: September 11, 6 – 8 p.m.
Former Royal Art Lodger and staunch Canadian numbskull Jon Pylypchuk‘s first solo museum show in the US (if you don’t count his other first solo museum show in Cleveland, 2006)* is at the University of Houston’s Blaffer Gallery this September. The sprawling survey of smirking weasels and hapless beavers hand-crafted from junk (with drawings of the same) was curated by Blaffer Director Claudia Schmuckli, who says that the creatures that populate Pylpychuk’s playland are "endearing in their furry cuteness," yet "speak to the pathetic banality, stubborn determination and relentless optimism that define many of our paths through life." On September 23, Professor Robert Enright of the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada will give a lecture entitled "The Junkman Cometh: Jon Pylypchuk and the Saving Art of Impoverishment." Jason Villegas, look out! – BD
Michael Bise...Happiest Place on Earth, 2009...graphite on paper, 40 x 36 inches
Michael Bise: Holy Ghosts!
Moody Gallery
October 24 – November 28, 2009
Holy Ghosts!, the latest cycle of obsessively worked pencil drawings by UH graduate and Glasstire columnist Michael Bise opens at Moody Gallery just in time for Halloween. As before, Bise draws on his personal experiences growing up in a fundamentalist, Pentacostal-style religious home, brewing a cocktail of restrictive religion, adolescent sexual exploration and Disney characters. – BD
MARFA
Re-opening of Donald Judd’s Freestanding Works in Concrete
Chinati Foundation
October 9 – 11, 2009
It should be noted that Chinati no longer calls the second weekend in October the "Open House." Let’s face it: they can’t be expected to feed and booze up a bunch of visitors who, in recent years, had begun to resemble a mini-Burning Man throng. So they’ve scaled back, and what with the crummy economy, it should actually be a manageable, even pleasant, experience this year. The big news is the careful restoration of Donald Judd‘s 15 concrete boxes that sit in a large pasture next to Chinati. The sculptures frame the Davis Mountains in a way that disarms even the most jaded Judd skeptic, and with their recent spiffing-up, they’ll be looking better than they have in years. There will also be a temporary exhibit of Judd’s drawings for the concrete works, and nine of his "progression" wall sculptures from 1979-80 will be on view as well. If you have avoided the Open House weekend in recent years, this fall will be a nice time to return. -RK
ROCKPORT
still from Stefan Petranek's video Keuka
(un)natural worlds
Rockport Center for the Arts
September 9 – October 10, 2009
Reception & Gallery Talk, September 12 4:30 pm
If you don’t get to Rockport much (presumably because you don’t enjoy wade fishing on the Texas coast, which nobody in their right mind does), you might want to consider making a special trip for this show. Curated by the Rockport Center for the Art’s John Aäsp, (un)natural worlds presents seven artists who use nature as a springboard for their work in photography and video. This broad premise allows for considerably diverse approaches, but all of the participating artists’ work shares a sense of lush beauty and simplicity. One of the nicest things about (un)natural worlds, other than the strength of the artists themselves, is the low-key way Aäsp has combined familiar local names with people rarely seen in Texas. Alongside Texans Dornith Doherty, Susan Dunkerley, Ansen Seale and Trish Simonite will be Charles Lindsay, Stefan Petranek and Sterz. Throw in a Gulf Coast seafood supper (caught by someone else), and it’ll be well worth the trip. -RK
SAN ANTONIO
Jacques Goudstikker in his gallery...Courtesy Marei von Saher, the heir of Jacques Goudstikker.
Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker
McNay Art Museum
October 7, 2009 – January 10, 2010
A small black notebook found in the breast pocket of Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940) after he died in a shipboard accident while fleeing the Nazis proved the key to settling one of the largest claims to art looted during World War II. Goudstikker recorded his inventory of some 1,400 works in the notebook, which his family used in a nearly 8-year long legal fight with the Dutch government to reclaim 200 of his paintings in 2006. Nearly 40 of the best examples of the recovered art are featured in this exhibit, including Jan van der Heyden‘s painting of the 12th-century Nyenrode castle where Goudstikker lived and threw lavish parties before Hermann Göring looted his collection. Highlights include Italian Renaissance and Netherlandish paintings by artists such as Jan Steen, Jan van Goyen, Pieter Lastman, Hieronymus Galle and Ferdinand Bol. One of the best paintings in the show, Salomon van Ruysdael‘s River Landscape with Ferry (1649) , was acquired from the Goudstikker family by the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. – Dan R. Goddard
Rebekah Bogard...Distract Me, 2006...17 x 30 x 17 inches, Animals; 27 x 37 x 31 inches, Animals on green base...Materials: Earthenware, underglaze, resin
The Familiar Unknown
Blue Star Contemporary Art Center
December 3, 2009 – February 14, 2010
Ovidio Gilberga, who heads up the ceramics department at the University of Texas at San Antonio, rounded up four nationally known artists for a survey of what’s happening in clay. Rebekah Bogard, an assistant professor in ceramics at the University of Nevada Reno, creates fictional animals to reveal secrets about the narrative of her own life. Rebecca Hutchinson, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, builds site-specific clay and fibrous sculptural works based on organic structures and deformities found in nature. Anne Drew Potter, currently an artist in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, manipulates anatomical signifiers of gender, race, age and other characteristics in her figurative works. Susan Beiner of Arizona State University has an opulent style rooted in 18th-century European porcelains, but recently she has been concerned with transforming the organic into the synthetic. – DRG
Peter Sowiski...Stealth Service, 2005...180 x 720 inches, handmade paper with colored pulps, screen printing
Combat Paper Project
John Risseeuw: The Paper Landmine Print Project
Peter Sowiski: Stealth Service
The Art of Pulp Painting
Southwest School of Art & Craft
November 19, 2009 – January 24, 2010
Politics mixes with pulp in these exhibits with the collective title "Paper Engaged, Pager Fragmented" devoted to contemporary papermaking. Collaborative artists Drew Cameron and Drew Matott enlist members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War to use their uniforms worn in combat to create pulp for making handmade paper. John Risseeuw has collected articles of clothing from landmine victims, fibrous plants from mine locations and the currencies of nations that make or have made landmines to pulp for works on paper documenting images, facts and stories of survivors and victims of the some 100 million mines deployed in 62 nations. Pete Sowiski uses handmade paper to create a mural-sized silhouette of a stealth bomber. Also, 18 artists who use paper pulp as a painting medium, and a project by Eric Avery of Galveston working with victims of post-traumatic stress disorder titled Do Unto Others. – DRG
installation view at the Thailand Creative Design Center, Bangkok, 2008
4 Salvaged Boxes: Sustainable Creative Design
Tyler Museum of Art
October 10, 2009 – February 21, 2010
This is a traveling show from wHY ARCHITECTURE, the firm that is designing the Tyler Museum’s new building. They’re shooting for LEED certification, which wHY recently pulled off with the Grand Rapids Art Museum. If they get it, Tyler will be the first museum in Texas to be LEED-certified and one of only a handful of museums in the country with the demanding environmental rating. Kulapat Yantrasast, the "Y" in wHY (which stands for Workshop Hakomori Yantrasast), was a project architect on the Tadao Ando-designed Fort Worth Modern Art Museum, so we can hope to see something equally great in Tyler. As for this exhibit, the four boxes of the show’s title are each "cabinets of curiosities" salvaged from the Grand Rapids project, and designed to "tell the story of sustainable design." Looks like Tyler is singlehandedly keeping the flame of cool new museum architecture in Texas alive. -RK
