Top Five: November 26, 2020

by Glasstire November 25, 2020

Brandon Zech and Christina Rees on an Englishman’s take on Texas, the ruin of Trump’s Taj Mahal, and an online show of short videos that caters to corona brain.

“It’s not gonna take up a lot of your time. It’s really good for your Covid attention span.”

To watch last week’s Top Five in which Christina Rees and artist Emily Peacock bring you a horse show in Albany, a vision for a Latinx museum, and the grand opening of the MFAH’s long-awaited new building, please go here.

Blind Alley Projects

Fraser Stables at Blind Alley Projects, Fort Worth

1. Fraser Stables: removed name Taj Mahal
November 22 – December 20, 2020
Blind Alley Projects ( Fort Worth)

From Blind Alley:

“Blind Alley projects is pleased to announce Fraser Stables: removed name Taj Mahal and proud to host such a carefully considered and boldly presented exhibition.

“From Frazer Ward, an art historian and critic working with Stables on an expanded book project that thinks through the implications of the artist’s Taj Mahal images:

“Build a casino, go way over budget but never actually pay construction costs, get it up and running, receive tax relief, go bankrupt, sell at a discount. Rinse and repeat. Fraser Stables photographed the former Trump Taj Mahal in 2017—everything being sold off after bankruptcy and money-laundering fines—before it reopened as the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in 2018. Ruins, it’s clear, have come down in the world, the husk of the casino stands for nothing more than developers’ shell games. Seen through a scrim of fragmented language describing the enterprise’s temporary demise, Stables’ photographs of the building’s interiors precisely describe the quick shift from the illusion of luxury to the bloom of mold. You can practically taste the bad air.”

Suzi Davidoff- Vanishing Avians at Flatbed Press in Austin November 14 20202. Suzi Davidoff: Vanishing Avians
October 24 – November 30, 2020
Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking (Austin)

From Flatbed:

“Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking is proud to present Vanishing Avians, an exhibition of drawings and monotypes by Suzi Davidoff. Davidoff, a native of El Paso, Texas, is widely known for her lush drawings and prints that explore the almost mystical presence of flora and fauna. Her recent work has turned toward endangered birdlife. During the pandemic months, her monoprints created at Flatbed began to be filled with silhouettes of the endangered birds that she studied. The resulting work is layered and nuanced with the avian shapes that are both present and disappearing.”

To read the Glasstire review, please go here.

Hillary Holsonback- tan series streamed online by Dallas Contemporary in Dallas November 2020

3. Hillary Holsonback: tan series
November 18 – December 15, 2020
Dallas Contemporary (Online exhibition)

An online presentation of digital video by Hillary Holsonback. To view the exhibition online, go here.

From Dallas Contemporary:

“Hillary Holsonback’s films and photographs centre in on identity in a social media obsessed world. Holsonback’s art reclaims a non-utopian view of the future while fostering an unflagging belief in the beauty of classic portraiture, a beauty integral to the unlimited characteristics of storytelling.

“With the new series of video’s presented and their subsequent positioning in her current practice, Holsonback’s work involves a kind of mise-en-scene in which the attitude of the viewer is paramount. Just as film director Dziga Vertov films often seems as crude and intentionally provocative, so can Holsonback’s imagery be seen as simple or easy. The use of these cinematic points and characteristics allow her work to expand, to become more complex, to push the viewer beyond an initial stance of taking things for granted. Working with brief clips of time and length, always the actress, her videos carry the spirit of a post-Cindy Sherman narcissism for a social media set. There is no real beginning or end to her current work, just fragments of engagement.”

4. Tom Jean Webb: These Whispering Winds 
October 23 – November 28, 2020
Ivestor Contemporary (Austin)

From a Glasstire review of the exhibition by Lauren Moya Ford:

“These Whispering Winds at Ivester Contemporary in Austin gathers Webb’s recent large-scale paintings and found-object sculptures. The exhibition’s title is the stuff of a Marty Robbins song, and Webb’s pastel desert landscapes do indeed conjure up a romantic Southwestern vision. Influenced heavily by the lure and the lore of The West, Webb’s work gives us a glimpse of what these lands look like to someone who comes from so far away.”

To read the Glasstire review, please go here.

Bumin Kim at Ro2 Art, Dallas

5. Bumin Kim: Coalescence
October 24 through November 28, 2020
Ro2 Art Gallery (Dallas — Cedars location)

From Ro2:

Bumin Kim continues her exploration on the nature of the line in her newest exhibition, Coalescence. The artist is inspired by the manner in which natural scenes in everyday life and memories can change in color, texture, and form through the progression of time and seasons. Capturing the vibrational energy of texture and playing on the shimmering illusions manifested by the collection of lines en masse, Kim’s work emphasizes a personification of painting. Brush strokes become thread and string, and the flat surface is liberated to breathe into three-dimensional space. In Coalescence, shattered memories and separated entities culminate together to form something altogether whole, and new.”

To read the Glasstire review, please go here.

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