Show Listing
PG Contemporary REFRESH and MICHAEL HENDERSON: LABYRINTH
PG Contemporary is pleased to announce two exhibitions:
REFRESH and MICHAEL HENDERSON: LABYRINTH
April 21-May 19
Opening reception: 6:30-9 p.m. Saturday, April 21
In the main gallery, Refresh presents paintings and sculpture by an international mix of artists exploring the rich middle ground between abstraction and representation. Works by Houston-based artists Julon Pinkston, Marzia Faggin and Melanie Crader will be shown in dialogue with works by Alex Blau (Nashville), Frances Goodman (Johannesburg), Ji Yong Kim (Highland Park, N.J.), Lindsey Nobel (New York and Los Angeles) and Micha Patiniott(Amsterdam).
Whether addressing language, geometry, the human figure or landscape and architecture, the intimately scaled works on view balance the associations they raise - sometimes cultural, sometimes poetic - with attention to process and formal concerns.
In the project space, Michael Henderson presents a three-minute video loop incorporating 3-D animation with images of a tunnel, symbolizing the unconscious, and a labyrinth. His exhibit, Labyrinth, will also include stills from the video. Henderson, a cofounder of Box 13 ArtSpace and professor at Sam Houston State University, is featured in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston exhibition Snail Mail, on view through May 20.
Both PG Contemporary exhibitions will open with a reception from 6:30-9 p.m. Saturday, April 21, and continue through May 19.
About the artists in Refresh
First introduced to Houston audiences by Barbara Davis Gallery in 1999, Alex Blau builds up her small geometric paintings by pouring layers of clear acrylic over alternating layers of airbrushed patterning on shaped canvases. Her obsessively worked surfaces and vibrant palette call to mind sources from candy packaging to quilting motifs.
Melanie Crader says her work "examines the notion of culturally constructed signs of 'high femininity' and their relationship to consumerism. Through the use of titles, this work also explores the marketing aspect of language used as an attempt to personalize and romanticize the relationship one should feel about the object and designer." Crader has had solo exhibitions at the University of Houston-Downtown O'Kane Gallery and Gallery Sonja Roesch as well as Women and their Work, Austin.
In her 2011 solo exhibition at Nau-haus Art, Marzia Faggin presented life-size painted cast-plaster sculptural still lifes of such legal yet potentially addictive substances as prescription pills and sugary candies. In her new, more stylized relief sculptures, candies such as jellybeans are depicted as the ammunition fired from handguns or tanks. Faggin holds a bachelor's degree in graphic design from the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan, Italy.
Frances Goodman creates text-based beaded works inspired by everyday issues such as relationships, violence and memories. "Words function in a similar way to my concerns: on the surface they seem simple and clear, and yet they are often full of innuendoes and subtexts," she says. Extensively exhibited throughout South Africa and Europe, she had a solo exhibition in 2003 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and in 2010 was included in Lust and Vice: From Durer to Naumanat the Kunstmuseum Bern.
Growing up in various countries, Ji Yong Kim says his exposure to numerous cultures and landscapes sparked an interest in the "consequences of contestation and dispute, such as desolated landscape and destroyed architecture. But as with any interpretation of history, a certain amount of fabrication and alteration of the landscape takes place in my work." He holds a bachelor's degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and a master's degree from Montclair State University, Montclair, N.J.
"Obsessed with the invisible," Lindsey Nobel says she has developed a drawing language "based on the otherwise invisible connections between humans and machines, effectively manifesting the immense grid of energy that now exists between human, machine, and spiritual consciousness." She earned a bachelor's degree in painting from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and in 2005 was included in the Venice Biennale and the Istanbul Biennale.
The figures in Micha Patiniott's playful, offbeat paintings enact scenarios that spring from his personal experience or imagination, hinting at broader narratives and putting an often fantastical twist on scenes inspired by everyday reality. Patiniott received the Louise Bourgeois Fellowship in 2009 and in 2010 had the solo exhibition Unisono 22: MichaPatiniott. Curiously Human at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam in Schiedam, the Netherlands.
Julon Pinkston presents a selection of abstractions featuring various configurations of red dots - the ubiquitous symbol for artwork sales - and a group of "tape paintings" in which the "tape" is painted by hand. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Houston and a master's degree from the University of North Texas at Denton. He has exhibited at McMurtrey Gallery, Lone Star College - Kingwood and the Art Car Museum, among other venues.
PG Contemporary Gallery
3227 Milam Street
Houston, TX 77006
713-523-7424
Contact: Zoya Tommy, director
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