Five-Minute Tours: Chad Rea at Presa House, San Antonio

Note: the following is part of Glasstire’s series of short videos, Five-Minute Tours, for which commercial galleries, museums, nonprofits and artist-run spaces across the state of Texas send us video walk-throughs of their current exhibitions. This will continue while the coronavirus situation hinders public access to exhibitions. Let’s get your show in front of an audience.

See other Five-Minute Tours here.

Chad Rea: #TheGunShow at Presa House, San Antonio. Dates: May 8 – May 29, 2021.

From Presa House:

“Austin-based multidisciplinary artist Chad Rea’s #TheGunShow is collection of paintings, sculptures, and digital artworks. The solo exhibition is a culmination of Rea’s lifetime of exposure to firearms and the questions surrounding guns’ political and ethical issues.

“Gun culture was an inescapable part of Rea’s upbringing, from vivid childhood memories of killing a rabbit with a shotgun and shooting cans with his grandfathers’ stockpile of firearms. Rea was still in High School when “going postal” entered the mainstream vernacular and has since watched the steady rise in daily coverage of mass shootings and senseless gun violence on the evening news.

“Chad Rea was born in Inglewood, California, and raised in Texas by conservative, working-class parents. Rea’s limited worldview exposure remained constant throughout his childhood moving between Texas towns where guns, oil, bigotry, and right-wing Christian values surrounded him. Moving to a different city remained continuous throughout Rea’s adult life, totaling 11 cities across three countries. With each stop came seemingly more varied and enlightened locales with entirely new philosophies.’