Christina Rees and Brandon Zech make a case for a road trip to Beaumont, plus a show that keeps one artist’s legacy alive, and some annihilation and rebirth in San Antonio.
“There’s a lot of art that has become… accidentally very relevant right now.”
To watch last week’s episode in which Christopher Blay and Brandon Zech run down a list of the best ongoing online programming from Texas museums, please go here.
1. a.) Patrick Turk: Higher Planes
Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont
March 21 – September 13, 2020
Via AMSET:
“Patrick Turk explores traditional histories and ancient mythologies viewed through a psychedelic lens. By combining historical illustrations with concepts from science fiction such as time travel, sentient planets, and hypothetical biology, he creates kaleidoscopic depictions of religious, mythological, and mystical allegories.
“The exhibition features an immersive site-specific installation as well as hand-cut paper assemblages which are often materially sourced from science-fiction novels, encyclopedias, history, and scientific diagrams. Says Turk, “The intense levels of detail become a microcosm, forming a reflection of the human relationship to the plasticity of time and space, and to the process of self-unfolding.”
1. b.) Kana Harada: Celestial Garden
Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont
March 21 – September 13, 2020
Via AMSET:
“This exhibition features paintings and sculptures by Dallas-based artist Kana Harada, who works with hand-cut foam sheets, along with watercolor, paper, and natural materials to create pieces that embody a wish for peace, a love for humanity, mother earth, and the universe. This artwork evokes the serenity of the “Fuji Sanctuary,” a peace gathering site at the foot of Mt. Fuji in Japan, near the artist’s birthplace of Tokyo, Japan. A peace ceremony will be held at the opening reception, inviting visitors to take part in a spiritual gathering, aiming to spread peace to all of the earth. Celestial Garden will include a site-specific installation, suspended sculptures, and two-dimensional cut paper and watercolor paintings.”
Taihu Rock, nocturnal view, with Pavilion building (not part of the original brewery complex), SAMA. Photograph by Ruben C. Cordova.
2. Taihu Rock
San Antonio Museum of Art
November 6 – November 6, 2021
Via SAMA:
“On April 22, 2019, a six-and-a-half-ton Taihu rock was loaded onto a truck near Wuxi, China, then shipped from Shanghai on the container ship Cosco Santos for a month-long ocean voyage to Houston. It then traveled by truck to the San Antonio Museum of Art and arrived May 30. This gift to the City of San Antonio from its Sister City Wuxi will be installed at the San Antonio Museum of Art.”
Read Ruben Cordova’s recent piece on Taihu Rock here.
3. Through an African Lens: Sub-Saharan Photography from the Museum’s Collection
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
February 27 – November 8
VIA the MFAH:
“The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents Through an African Lens: Sub-Saharan Photography from the Museum’s Collection. Featuring a dynamic range of work by 20 artists from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, this exhibition of 70 photographs explores a variety of artistic styles and expression from the 1950s to the present.”
4. Artists-in-Residence Exhibitions
Artpace, San Antonio
Through August 23
In a review of the exhibitions, Glasstire’s Neil Fauerso writes:
“Colombian artist Carlos Castro Arias’ literally incendiary I Came To Set The World On Fire, And I Wish It Were Already Kindled is a hallucinogenic, terrifying and exhilarating baptism of flames. Castro’s show works with simple elemental symbols and images — churches, fire, ashes, and flames.”
“Milagros de la Torre is a Peruvian-born artist working in New York whose work combines sculpture, video, photography, and installation. In Systems and Constellations she explores the mysteries of the human face. De la Torre has the memory condition prosopagnosia, or face blindness, which makes remembering a human face very difficult, and so Systems and Constellations ponders the measure of a face, and the tools used throughout time to map it”
“Daniel Ramos’ The Land of Illustrious Men takes an earlier art book he’s created and transforms it into an affecting, immersive personal epic. The shows chronicles Ramos’ family journey — his father paying a coyote to take him across the border, growing up in inner-city Chicago, and spending summers with his grandmother in Lampazos De Naranjo, a small town in Nuevo León, Mexico, to avoid falling in with gangs.”
5. David McManaway: Cult of the Commonplace
Grace Museum, Abilene
March 7 – January 9, 2021
Via the Grace:
“The art of David McManaway (1927-2010) has an underground cult following. Research for this exhibition and numerous conversations with his friends and colleagues tells me that he would be pleased by this state of affairs. But, many McManaway collectors and former colleagues lament the apparent lack of credit his work has received since his passing in 2010. The mission to spotlight McManaway’s life and work in a solo exhibition has officially become a cause célèbre.
“This exhibition presents a long overdue review of important work from his prodigious 50 year career to reexamine his role as a major artist and influencer in Texas and beyond.”
