The exhibition In the Interest of Time presents three projects by the Brooklyn collaborative Smudge Studio, comprised of artists Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse. Their primary subject is the landscape, and their approach includes embodying the roles of scientist, historian, anthropologist and, of course, artist. Their process is a performative journey, navigating, investigating and documenting [...]
Julieta Aranda, Hills Snyder and Regine Basha at Sala Diaz Regine Basha was recently appointed Executive Director of Artpace, San Antonio, a position she’ll assume less than a month from now on March 1, 2012. In anticipation of her return to Texas, Claire Ruud caught up with her to ask about her plans. Claire Ruud [...]
W.E.B. Du Bois created the term “double consciousness” in 1897 to describe the way African Americans split themselves into two personas, one for each side of the color line. The persona that existed in the white world was subservient and informed by the images and stereotypes of racism. Du Bois saw this doubling as a [...]
“The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991” on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston through April 15 is a rare opportunity to see some of the most important and underrecognized artists of the late twentieth century. The exhibition assembles a group of women who were making art in the 1970s [...]
My former landlord in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—a sphinx-like Teutonic manchild who sublet me one of the ad-hoc drywall sleeping lofts in the colossal warehouse he leased near the Bedford Avenue subway stop—still owes me $1200. It was my security deposit from 2008 and I don’t expect to get it back. I don’t mean this story as revenge [...]
El Anatsui has been a superstar in the art world ever since the 2007 Venice Biennale, where he received international acclaim for his large-scale sculptures made from thousands of discarded metal liquor bottle tops. In these pieces, the tops are flattened and stitched together with copper wire to form lush, shimmering canvases of intricate pattern [...]
I was prepared to hate the Gaultier exhibition at the DMA. I have a complicated relationship to fashion. I studied fashion design and merchandising at Pratt Institute in New York. When I realized that instead of designing couture under my own fashion label, I’d most likely end up designing underwear for plus-size women, I switched [...]
Gold is on people’s minds a lot lately—more than usual, what with inflation worries, “End the Fed” protests and calls to return to a gold standard. People fear their dollar bills may soon be worth less than the paper they are printed on. As overhyped as these concerns may or may not be, food prices [...]
Composed of wall-mounted sculptures, sound and film, Reel to Reel, Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher’s current installation at McClain Gallery, holds small revelations about the nature of machinery, art, music—and technology itself. Walking into the dark gallery space, I found my attention drawn to the many different aspects of the installation. Wire-ridden sculptures with jittery [...]
Glasstire’s contributors suss out the season’s most promising shows. AUSTIN Evidence of Houdini’s Return Arthouse/AMOA January 4 – March 4, 2012 Arthouse and AMOA are officially conjoined twins and, as such, will be mounting an abstraction exhibition, Evidence of Houdini’s Return. While the title is slightly obscure (it’s also the title of a painting by [...]
Back in 2001, our founder Rainey Knudson named this site in honor of Robert Rauschenberg’s cast glass tire sculptures. The glass tires were made at UrbanGlass, a nonprofit glass center in Brooklyn, where critic, curator, poet and artist John Perreault was the Executive Director. He has graciously let Glasstire reprint his 1998 article,”Don’t Tread [...]
When art people ask, “Where did you grow up?” and I answer, “Arkansas,” there is, invariably, an awkward pause. It is usually followed by “Oh.” or “Oh. Really?” and occasionally, “Well, um, I hear it’s really pretty there.” East coasters are the worst. It’s like they asked what your father does and you said, “He’s [...]
Video exhibitions tend to be hit or miss. As someone who makes, curates and writes about video, I have seen my share of mediocre video work. Most recently I wrote about the Memery exhibition at Mass MoCA, in which nine primarily video artists explore Internet memes and memory in visual culture. (A meme is a [...]
Three years ago when I returned to Houston from art school, I went to a talk for Project Row Houses’ Summer Studios. While there, I saw this tortilla press for tortillas in the shape of cartoon white bread and it made me happy to be back home and excited about the art being made here. [...]
Every writer has her biases and I’m no exception. If someone were to ask me if Abstract Expressionism were my favorite art genre, I would vehemently shake my head “no.” So it surprises me that I’m having such a lovefest with the expressive work of L.A. artist Mark Bradford at the DMA. In fact, this [...]
I stand staring up at Solar Arrangement, Dave Muller’s sprawling mural at Cowboys Stadium. It’s 21 feet tall by 131 feet wide and extends over the bathrooms and the adjacent concession stands with their digital menus touting lipids and libations. Kanye West’s “Power” pulsates in the background. I’m trying to look at the art but [...]
My husband is like the other 99.5% of Americans who go to the movies to be entertained, not to think. So it is with some trepidation that I asked him to accompany me to the Contemplative Cinema event at the Texas Theater earlier this month. The short 45-minute screening and beer allowed in the theater [...]
This last April I attended a curators’ symposium in Austin during the Texas Biennial. It was a day-long series of panel discussions and presentations hosted by Arthouse, right around the time Arthouse was enduring some serious criticism over its censorious and/or irresponsible treatment of two prime exhibitions and of its own confused and confusing treatment [...]
Wherever we go in Texas, we always make time for the museum gift shops. Our museum shops reliably have some of the most fun, unique and affordable gifts (for yourself and others) to be found. We’ve rounded up some of the best of them this year. For more shopping delight, be sure to check our [...]
Seriality, curated by John Pomara, presents the work of ten primarily North Texas artists who embrace seriality through form, process and content. A few of the knock-your-socks-off pieces are works by Patrick Murphy, Gregg Biermann and Ruben Nieto. Using a Polaroid camera and film, artist Patrick Murphy’s work both defies and incorporates seriality. The series [...]
