Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.
For last week’s picks, please go here.
Michael J. Love and Ariel René Jackson
1. Ariel René Jackson and Michael J. Love: We are the [Hackers], Baby, [Hackers] are we
Big Medium (Austin)
October 23, 2021 – January 8, 2022
From Big Medium:
“In We are the [Hackers], Baby, [Hackers] are we, Ariel René Jackson and Michael J. Love perform as their alter egos, Confuserella and Babé, and illustrate a Black futuristic location where wormholes serve as conduits between the present and past. The two hack a method for traversing time and imagining new sites for planting their loved ones’ histories. This is embedded in the work’s namesake, a hack of the debut single title from Real People, Chic’s 1980 album. We are the [Hackers], Baby, [Hackers] are we is made up of three components linked together through Jackson and Love’s collaborative process: personal and visual research become part of a live rhythm tap dance performance which is then captured and archived through a multi-camera setup.
In their previous video and performance work, Jackson and Love have ruminated on the relationship between cultural memory and familial legacy. In Descendance (2020), The Future Is A Constant Wake (2019), All I See Is Blue (2017-2018), and other works, soil continues to be featured as a significant medium for the artists’ performance-based practice of transforming generational knowledge into landscapes. Jackson and Love’s theoretical framework is largely inspired by Katherine McKittrick’s analysis of Black geographies and Saidiya Hartman’s method of ‘critical fabulation’—two Black feminist approaches for redressing the insufficiencies of institutional and cultural archives.”
Joe Mancuso, “Chandelier,” 2014, Steel, roses, concrete, Approximately 84 x 48 inches. Image: Barbara Davis Gallery
2. Joe Mancuso: Get Back / 1985 – Present
Barbara Davis Gallery (Houston)
November 13, 2021 – January 8, 2022
From Barbara Davis Gallery:
“Barbara Davis Gallery is pleased to announce Get Back / 1985 – Present, a retrospective and solo-exhibition by Houston-based artist Joe Mancuso. Houston-based artist Joe Mancuso present paintings, sculpture, and a site-specific installation in Get Back. In this exhibition, Mancuso is highlighting concepts and themes throughout his practice. His work exemplifies a contemporary perspective on still-life subject matters and abstraction, which places them in a very unique art historical context. Mancuso approaches these subject matters using non-traditional materials such as newsprint, concrete, poured latex paint, and graphite. The content provides a common thread between the paintings, yet each illustrates a distinct methodology as the forms evolve from one work to the next. Among all the works that are part of this retrospective, Mancuso revisits his Chandelier installation which is a large-scale site-specific suspended sculpture comprised of dried roses coated with concrete that delicately hangs from a cascading wire structure like a dimensional drawing.”
A painting Gwen Meharg
3. Gwen Meharg: Marking Time
Dang Good Candy (Fort Worth)
December 12, 2021 – January 15, 2022
A solo exhibition featuring paintings by Gwen Meharg.
From the artist:
“The lines are like what we do every day, marking time. We don’t value the beauty in the everyday things, we can’t see it. The show invites people to come in closer, because the marks are multiple layers, and each one is different. You can step back and see how it all works together. Each stroke influences but nothing controls the next mark we make.”
Robbie Austin, “Installation,” 2020-2021, Gouache, ink, colored pencil on paper, wood
4. Robbie Austin: Cargo
Front Gallery (Houston)
December 4, 2021 – January 8, 2022
From Front Gallery:
“Robbie Austin marks his return to Houston with Cargo, a new body of work exploring color, line, form, and pattern. Each wall-mounted drawing is created on found field book paper and carefully assembled in a three-dimensional open-faced frame.
Austin began working with field books after a hurricane blew his tree and treehouse onto a neighbor’s property, exposing a trove of material. ‘She had boxes and boxes of these old books. I was enchanted and she was done with them,’ says Austin. ‘The paper is stormproof. It’s infused with resin and has an inherent object-ness. The original code-like markings make for a dynamic and romantic springboard of compositional play. I react to it. My son tells me these works are treasure maps. I say treasure chests.'”
Ken Waterstreet, “Opening V,” 1980, Oil on canvas. Gift of John F. Fitzgibbon
5. West Coast Sensibilities
Art Museum of South Texas (Corpus Christi)
June 11, 2021 – January 16, 2022
From the Art Museum of South Texas:
“Born in Los Angeles, California John Fitz Gibbon (1934-2009) was an art critic, professor of art history, radio broadcaster, and collector of postwar California art. From the 1960s on, he was in the art scene both socially and as a contributor to writing on significant artists of the moment that continue today, including these California-based artists and one who relocated to Texas, Don Hazlitt. This facet of the permanent collection came to be donated into the permanent collection after a visit from John Fitz Gibbon who came to the Art Museum of South Texas to attend the opening of Representing L.A. -California Narrative Painting in 2001.
This selection of work depicts the fascination with human beings with culture and beauty exemplified in a myriad of forms on the picture plane, with the artist’s considerations, conveying how a work of art communicates by way of techniques employed by these west-coast artists use of the building blocks of art-making.
This is one facet of the permanent collection that together as a body of work presents what moved a collector, what they responded to pictorially, and what ultimately came to live here, in this collection, for museum visitors to consider as representing a way of living and art-making.”
