Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas this week. For last week’s picks — Our Fall Preview edition with an accompanying video— please go here.
1. Three exhibitions opening Sept. 17: Bria Lauren: Gold Was Made Fa’ Her; Emily Peacock: die laughing; David McGee: The Sankofa Project
September 17 – January 15, 2022
Lawndale Art Center (Houston)
From Lawndale Art Center:
On Bria Lauren’s exhibition:
“A visual poem dedicated to Black hood women in the South, Gold Was Made Fa’ Her encompasses the artist’s ongoing body of work in photography and community building. The project celebrates women of the South Side, Houston, to center and amplify their voices and the voices of Black women across generations who have been impacted by structural inequity, generational narratives, and respectability politics. Bria Lauren (b. 1993) is a Texas native, born and raised in Third Ward, Houston. The south is a sacred and integral part of her work as a visual storyteller, healer, and queer Black woman utilizing ancestral healing as a tool to navigate intersectionality as an act of resistance.”
On Emily Peacock’s exhibition:
“Through photography, video, sculpture, performance, and installation, this exhibition explores humor and levity as coping mechanisms for tragedy. For nearly a decade, Peacock has used comedy to confront essential yet challenging aspects of the human condition. Emily Peacock is a Houston-based artist whose work explores her familial and personal experiences. She received her MFA in Photography/Digital Media from the University of Houston and is an Assistant Professor of Art at Sam Houston State University.”
On David McGee’s project:
“Derived from the Ghanian word ‘sankofa,’ meaning ‘one must acknowledge the past in order to move forward,’ The Sankofa Project is a multi-year curatorial project examining the historical events leading up to our current moment of social unrest and racial reckoning. Artwork curated by Tierney Malone will be presented on Lawndale’s east-facing windows off of Main Street and accompanied by programming to inspire dialogue within our community.”
Mike A. Lopez
2. Mike A. Lopez: Combustion, Release, Light
September 18, 2021
Dang Good Candy (Fort Worth)
New space; inaugural exhibition. From Dang Good Candy:
“When asked about his choice of selecting Mike A. Lopez as one of the inaugural artists to be featured in his new space, Jay Wilkson said, ‘We created DANG GOOD CANDY to be a space that opens its doors to talented artists who have something important to say in North Texas. Mike is someone I have known for a long time and have been waiting for an opportunity to work with him on something creative. When we were selecting artists to showcase this fall, I knew his incredible work had to be one of the first we put on the walls.’ Born in Mexico City, Mexico, Mike A. Lopez’s family immigrated to North Texas when he was only eight years old. His work often explores the immigrant experience and draws on themes and imagery that coalesce his birthplace and current home while exploring and challenging ideas of identity, place, and space.”
3. Two shows opening Sept. 16: Gaku Tsutaja: ENOLA’S HEAD; Chico MacMurtrie: Border Crossers
September 16 – December 10, 2021
Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at UTEP (El Paso)
From the Rubin Center:
On Gaku Tsutaja’s exhibition:
“The Rubin Center is proud to announce the commissioning of a site-specific piece in fall of 2021 by Japanese artist Gaku Tsutaja. Gaku uses drawing, sculpture, performance, animation and a deeply personal research process to explore the material culture and living history of the atomic bomb. Her drawings and animations create complex constellations of people, objects and events, shifting our understanding of complicity and victimhood and challenging traditional historic accounts based on nationalist frameworks.”
On Chico MacMurtrie’s exhibition:
“Border Crossers is a large-scale performance and participatory procession involving several lightweight robotic sculptures and the trans-border communities in El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico. Border Crossers will perform a peaceful, symbolic, ‘crossing’ of the U.S.- Mexico border using the combined power of art, technology and community to create a radically positive and inclusive view of border culture. The project will culminate in a series of coordinated public ‘activations’ at multiple sites in the El Paso, Texas/Juarez, Mexico area in collaboration with the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso.”
4. Escape Artists: Henry Ray Clark, Lester Davis, Ike Morgan
September 18 – 26, 2021
Intuitive Eye Annex (Houston)
From the organizers:
“This exhibition, organized by Jay Wehnert of Intuitive Eye, examines how conditions of incarceration and institutionalization contribute to the creative lives of these outsider artists. Grounded in their African-American culture, history and experience, the artists inhabit inner creative realms, where art is a means of refuge, protection and ultimately, escape from a harsh unforgiving world.”
Denise Prince
5. Denise Prince: The Conceptual Still Life
September 18 – October 23, 2021
Ivester Contemporary (Austin)
From Ivester:
“Ivester Contemporary is pleased to presen new works by Denise Prince which include photography and painting that considers the way food and flowers have been used as signifiers throughout history. This playful appreciation brings together the sensibilities of vintage cookbooks with the visual language of advertising. It nods towards indulgence, symbolism and the Platonic ideal. A vivid, unabashedly feminine take on polished sureness and pleasure to speak about how life is lived by people who make their own pretends. Denise Prince is an Austin-based, American artist concentrating in photography and film. She is known for using the visual language of advertising to play with and reveal the ways we take pretends as real and to explore being in relation to Desire.”
