Top Five: Sept. 2, 2021

Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas this week. For last week’s picks, please go here.

1. 2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon
September 1 – January 31, 2022
Multiple locations (San Antonio and Houston)

From Big Medium:

“Big Medium is pleased to announce the 51 participating artists and five museum partners of the 2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon, co‑organized by curators and artistic directors Ryan N. Dennis and Evan Garza. For the seventh iteration of the Biennial and for the first time in its history, the project will be distributed across several Texas museums, featuring exhibitions, programs, and works of public art in San Antonio and Houston from September 1, 2021, through January 31, 2022.

In addition to artists living and working in Texas, the Biennial curators have broadened the scope of the project to include ‘Texpats,’ i.e. Texas natives and artists with deep connections to the Lone Star State working in any part of the world. In another first, the 2021 Texas Biennial will also feature international artists for whom Texas and its history are subject matter.”

2. Repercussions II: Recent Works by Alicia Henry
September 4 – October 2, 2021
Liliana Bloch Gallery (Dallas)

From Liliana Bloch Gallery:

“Alicia Henry, Professor of Art at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee is interested in all aspects of human interactions.  A recurring theme in her work is familial Relationships. The figure in isolation and the figure interacting with others.  Her current work explores these ideas, addressing the process through which individuals (specifically females) navigate these issues. The work in this exhibition explores aspects of physical and psychological devastation.

“A native of Illinois, Alicia Henry received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. She is currently a Professor of Art at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.”

3 . Carlos Cruz-Diez: Chromointerferent Environment
September 2 – October 16, 2021
Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino (Houston)

From Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino:

“The artist’s iconic chromatic environments have featured notably across Houston, from the inclusion of Cromosaturación in his landmark retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2011 and the site-specific installation Spatial Chromointerference at the Buffalo Bayou Cistern from 2018-2019 to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s commission Cromosaturación MFAH for the underground tunnel leading to their new Nancy and Rich Kinder building open to the public now. These works ‘create a situation in space involving the dematerialization, transfiguration, and ambiguity of color through movement. By projecting moving chromatic interference modules on objects and people, these become transparent and virtually change condition and form. The spectator becomes both actor and author of a complex chromatic event, which evolves through space. When we look at the shadows on the walls, we experience the sensation of moving in the opposite direction to the colored lines. A dialogue is thus initiated between the ‘variable’ nature of the chromatic interference and the ‘constant’ character of the shadows on the wall.'”

4.a. En Masse
September 3 – November 15, 2021
Spellerberg Projects (Lockhart)

From ICOSA Collective (Austin) and Spellerberg Projects:

“ICOSA Collective and Spellerberg Projects are pleased to announce a collaborative partnership linking the art communities of Austin and Lockart, Texas. Throughout the fall 2021 season, ICOSA presents a program at the Spellerberg Projects exhibition spaces in Lockhart’s historic district. This program kicks off with opening festivities on September 3, 2021, part of the city’s First Friday events.

“This collaboration features a group exhibition involving ICOSA Collective members, which will be on display from September through December 2021. In addition, the program involves four exhibitions of invited artists who work regionally and nationally. These exhibitions include San Antonio artist, curator, and zinester Suzy González in September; photographers Rana Young and Zora J Murff in October; and painter Loc Huynh in November.”

4.b. Suzy González: Together with the Earth
September 3 – 25, 2021
Spellerberg Projects (Lockhart)

From Spellerberg Projects:

“Suzy González is an artist, curator, and zinester based in Yanaguana, aka San Antonio, TX. She has had solo exhibits at Presa House Gallery, Hello Studio, Palo Alto College, and two-person exhibits at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi and the University of Connecticut. She’s currently exhibiting at The Biennial of the Americas’s COVID-19 Memorial Exhibit at Museo de las Americas in Denver and recently completed a community mural at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

“Together with the Earth is a collection of solitary figures existing at the crossroads of human rights, environmental concerns, and mental health. The figures are meaningfully positioned, offering a still of their current emotional state. The corn husks represent the skin of the figures, recalling Mesoamerican beliefs that our very beings are created from maíz. These ‘mestiza media’ works reclaim the ‘mestizo’ colonial caste label.”

5. EVERYDAY
September 4 – November 7, 2021
Texas Tech University Landmark Arts Gallery (Lubbock)

Curated by Chad Dawkins.

From Texas Tech University:

“Everyday is a survey of contemporary painting in Texas. The exhibition aims to present paintings made through divergent methods and with a variety of subject matter to highlight current tendencies within the discipline. The included artists represent a diverse group from across Texas who use painting in different modes, with different conceptual concerns, and in response to different historical trajectories. The term ‘everyday’ is understood as the routine or  commonplace practices of life, but as we’ve experienced, the idea of the everyday is far from stable. Everyday is recognizable, but not universal—it is the process of existence that we somehow share, but made up of radically different events and sequences.”