Christina Rees and Bill Davenport lose count of this week’s top five art events in Texas, and actually include nine. But if you read the list carefully, you’ll see there are actually ten:
1. For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
March 7 – July 12
Film: March 13, 7–9 pm: Funeral Parade Of Roses (Dir. Toshi Matsumoto, Japan, 1969, 107 min.)
After Gutai comes the revolution! Little known works –photographs, photo books, paintings, sculpture, and film-based installations– from a period of counterculture ferment in Japan, many of them never before seen in the U.S.
2. Lawndale Lawndale Lawndale Lawndale!
Lawndale Art Center, Houston
March 13 – April 18
Openings March 13, 6:30–8:30 pm
Some possibly extra-good offerings this time around, incuding Anthony Sonnenberg, wild indulgence; an uncanny vinyl parquet floor installation by Dallas’ Erin Stafford; objects and images by artists Adam Crosson, Jonas Hart, and James Scheuren; James Flowers‘ cassete deck symphony, and a new mural by Jonathan Leach. Whew!
3a. Gilad Efrat: Sandwalk & 3b. Brad Tucker: Wobbles
Inman Gallery, Houston
February 28 – April 4
Opening March 14, 5–7:30 pm. Noah Simblist (Associate Professor of Art, SMU) leads an exhibition walk-through with the artists beginning at 5.
Efrat’s hashed and rehashed palette knife virtuosity reveals and obscures photo imagery relating to Darwin. Meanwhile, in the other room, Austin’s Brad Tucker shows wobbles: curious, unassuming silkscreens made using window screens in a twofer of solo exhibitions.
4. Josh Reams and Amber Renaye: #COED
Oliver Francis Gallery, Dallas
March 14 – April 4
Opening: March 14, 7–10 pm
The re-emergence of OFGXXX features a couple of artists who appear to combine housplants and paintings perhaps in homage to a late 70’s dorm aesthetic?
5. James Cobb: Tooky Jelly
Sala Diaz, San Antonio
March 6 – April 5
A small collection of labor-intensive digital prints on metal, untouched by human hands, by longtime SA mail artist, tattoo fancier and counterculturist James Cobb.
