First, a preview to the preview:

Sam Taylor-Wood
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
through October 5, 2008
This show doesn't technically count as a preview, as it's been open since early August. Taylor-Wood is a mixed bag, and is too heavy on the starfucking for our taste: her shadow-and-gravity-defying photographs are OK; while her portraits of male movie stars crying are asinine... BUT her best videos are very good, and they don't go on forever, and there are several notable ones in this show, including The Last Century and Prelude in Air. Hop on over to the CAM to check them out.

 

And now for the real thing:
GLASSTIRE'S FALL PREVIEW 2008
Caveat, caveat, caveat... here we go!

 

Jesse Amado
Sala Diaz
September 5 - October 5, 2008
Original 95.1 Artpace resident Jesse Amado has been a steady, consistent presence on the San Antonio art scene for nearly two decades. He's made smart, elegant sculptures, text-based monochromatic drawings, playful works on paper and more. This is, surprisingly, his first foray into the cozy, converted house that is Sala Diaz. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with. -RK

 

 

 

RESET/PLAY
Arthouse at the Jones Center
September 6 - November 2, 2008

The corner of 10th and congress will become a 21st Century Dada arcade when RESET/PLAY, Arthouse at the Jones Center's exhibition of video-game inspired work opens on September 5. Guest curated by Spirit Surfers Marcin Ramocki (of Brooklyn's vertexList) and Paul Slocum (of Dallas' And/Or Gallery), this show's roster includes some real heavy-hitters in the new media world: Cory Arcangel, Kristin Lucas, JODI and Michael Bell Smith. UT Austin's own Mike Smith (no Bell here) will probably show all the young whippersnappers that he was doing this shit back in the 80s and once again remind us what a criminally under-appreciated artist he still remains. If Ramocki and Slocum weren't attached to this exhibition, I'd be very concerned about the installation, but with them on board, it will probably show Austin how video/new media is done. NOT TO BE MISSED. -IL

 

 

Paul Kittelson: Modern Conveniences
NauHaus
September 6-28, 2008

This time it's an inside job. No life-sized dinosaurs or latex spaghetti, no feather-weight staircases or giant potato chips.  No stainless steel jellyfish, plaster lollipops, or cement rugs. This time Houston's maestro of monstrosities focuses on images, not objects. He's has created trompe'l'oeil collages in his favorite wood-grained plastic veneers that depict satirical slices of American life. It's even claimed that they'll be in rectangular frames. -BD

 

 

The Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs: Selections from The Atlas Group Archive
Glassell School of Art
September 12 - November 23, 2008

Ever get nostalgic for the glory days of deconstuction? Working as the imaginary Atlas Group, provocative Lebanese-American artist Walid Raad spent fifteen years either collecting or producing a documentary-style archive of the Lebanese Civil Wars of 1975-1990. Through the exhibition of the contrived foundation's archive, Raad confounded commentary and reportage, raising questions about authorship, authenticity, and how we interpret more purportedly factual representations of current and historical events. The upcoming show at Glassell, part of the CORE exhibition series, presents two sets of photographs and two video installations that play on fact, memoir and reportage. -BD

Damaged Romanticism
Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston
September 13–November 15, 2008

The pathetic aesthetic returns? Former Blaffer director Terrie Sultan, critic David Pagel and critical theorist Colin Gardner use the work of fifteen contemporary artists to illustrate "an aftermath aesthetic" and the "recognition that virgin births are fantasies, that blank slates are not found but actually involve lots of often violent erasing, and that starting fresh is more like starting over." With a global spread of artists Including Richard Billingham, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Edward Burtynsky, Sophie Calle, Petah Coyne, Angelo Filomeno, Jesper Just, Florian Maier-Aichen, Mary McCleary, Wangechi Mutu, Anneè Olofsson, Julia Oschatz, David Schnell and Ryan Taber/Cheyenne Weaver, it promises to be an eclectic mishmash of styles and media, filtered through a thick critical sieve. -BD

 

 

Susie Rosmarin: New Work
Texas Gallery
September 16 - October 18, 2008

In an exciting addition to her eye-zapping grid paintings, Susie Rosmarin sublimates her secret passion for lansdcape with never-before-seen photographs of cloudscapes and sunsets, a snapshot of a dicey transition she herself describes as "full of surprises."  The connection has something to do with atmospheric color: like many a  ninteenth-century painter, Rosmarin (not to be confused, now, with Atlanta commercial photographer Susan Rosmarin) enjoyed the "hudson river light" on the New York skyline that she saw from the top of her Brooklyn studio, and between with typical intensity of purpose documented it in over 12,000 photographs between 1999-2006. -BD

 

 

Scott Anderson: Rendezvous Point
Light & Sie
September 18 - November 1, 2008
Light & Sie keeps mining the deep artist ranks in Chicago. Painter Scott Anderson was included in a group show last year at Road Agent, but he's given L & S's entire monster space to combat this September. Part of a new wave of figurative painting coming out of Chi-Town (see even his compatriots at Kavi Gupta Gallery), his ambitious pictures are strange lurid landscapes depicting a new kind of subconscious, with colors and imagery so intense and bizarre they resemble the fever dreams of a video-game addict, as painted by Wayne Thiebaud. They remind me of the post-post maneuvers of a Neo Rauch or Fiona Rae, but seem distinctly in a more American grain, without all the fussy Euro-baggáge.  - TO'B

 

 

pachacuti pachacuti pachacuti
Okay Mountain
September 27 - November 1, 2008

Fresh off his Artpace residency, Whitney Biennialist and former MFAH Core Resident (among other accolades) William Cordova brings his elegant brand of involved ethnographic art and "uncanny interpretive spirals" to Okay Mountain. A sculptural installation and a series of prints will surely make us question a bunch of preconceived cultural "truths" we have naturalized into our psyches and consider webs of meaning and racial relations. Or maybe it will just be really beautiful, stark, elegant and meditative. Probably a little of both. Skip the opening though, it will probably feel like getting wasted at the library. - IL

 

 

Texas In My Soul: A.C. Cook and the Hock Shop Collection
Tyler Museum of Art
through October 26, 2008
San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts
November 20- January 18, 2009

A traveling exhibit of one of the storied collections of early Texas art, the Hock Shop collection of former pawnshop proprietor-turned-ice cream parlor magnate A.C. "Ace" Cook includes major paintings by scores of early Texas artists. Highlights include Frank Reaugh's Margaret's Peak (1909), Douglas Chandor's intimate portrait of Alfonso Harrison (1933), Dawson Dawson-Watson's signature image of a Texas prickly pear in full bloom, Flowers of Silk (1928), and the earliest known painting of the Texas state capitol, Julius Stockfleth's State Capitol, Austin (1888). This is the first museum exhibit of the collection since the Panhandle-Plains' 1997 survey. - RK 

 

  

Future Prologues: The Compression of Post-Pop Narratives into Non-Space and Pre-Time
Creative Research Laboratory
October 18 - November 8, 2008

Finally, these damn kids with their thirft-store finds and ridiculously complex metanarratives get a show. From their previous incarnations Totally Wreck to Omnibeast to Neo Arcadia, Ben Aqua (aka ASSACRE, MVSCLZ), Johnny Cisneros (aka V C CHLDKRFT), Mark P. Hensel (aka Mizzard), Mike Ruiz (aka Mikeyawesome), David Salinas (aka D.A. Deseret), Eli Wellbourne and Lanneau White (plus a gaggle of collaborators, probably) take us into an unguided and probably unmanned trip into their Omniverse of HyperCubes, tape delays, neon fabrics, cathode tubes, wizardry and Bucky Fuller wet dreams in this quasi-historical show chronicling an artist collective few people actually know but no one forgets. Art people in Austin will be talking about these artists, their work and the community they have created for themselves and their friends over the last half a decade or so (has it been that long?) for many years to come. Co-curated by Jade Walker and Risa Puleo, this show will probably feel like stepping into a Tangerine Dream album color with the saturation turned ALL THE WAY UP. - IL
 

 

Olafur Eliasson: Take Your Time
Dallas Museum of Art
November 9, 2008 – March 15, 2009

"Take Your Time" is the single safest bet in North Texas this season. Eliasson is probably the most original and important artist of the new century, successfully embodying a new paradigm of creativity and artistic practice. The Icelandic master of the elements, and surprise, brings his retrospective to the Dallas Museum of Art after lauded stints at MoMA and SFMoMA. Leave your art cynicism at the door, and your exhausted hermeneutical faculties. Little interpretation is necessary – just give in to childlike wonder at steam, ice, light and temperature. Make the long drive if you need to. Don't miss this one. - TO'B

  

 

Mary Lucier: The Plains of Sweet Regret
Amon Carter Museum
November 15, 2008 –February 15, 2009
The Amon Carter gets its first-ever video show, a melancholy 5-channel ode to rapid depopulation of the Great Plains. Originally commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art, Sweet Regret follows the Amon Carter's tradition of examining the American West. Lucier's work has been featured as part of Creative Time's 59th Minute in Times Square. Should be extremely beautiful. -RK

 

 

Honorable Mention

Low-Fi No-Brow Folk Show
ArtStorm
September 20- October 18, 2008
Folk art-inspired works by Houston artists Jon Read and Glen Gips. This show gets honorable mention because a) we're excited to see the new wave of Houston grassroots art; and b) we had lowish expectations for the last Artstorm show, but it was great. 

The African Presence in Mexico
Museo Alameda
November 12, 2008 - February 22, 2008
The largest and most comprehensive project ever to examine the so-called "third root" of the Mexican population. Not everyone is mestizo, as a growing Afro-Mexican movement demonstrates. This show gets honorable mention because it's probably more sociological than anything, though it will contain photography and artwork.  

Contributors to this article: Bill Davenport, Rainey Knudson, Ivan Lozano and Titus O'Brien.