Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.
For last week’s picks, please go here.
(Detail image) Andrea Tosten, “Epistolary Paper Quilt (Rising Action I),” 2017, ink on paper and thread, 32 x 32 inches. Photo by Gerardo Robles.
1. Andrea Tosten: GRIFFE
Cluley Projects (Dallas)
February 12 – March 19, 2022
From Cluley Projects:
“In GRIFFE, Dallas-based artist Andrea Tosten references her Creole-Jamaican heritage and identity as a Black woman with European and Indigenous roots. The artist uses letterforms, paper, and sewing to ‘recontextualize and conceptualize my Catholic upbringing, background, and my place in history.’
Tosten explores the history of social constructs through technical mastery. A series of drawings reflect detailed descriptions of the categories of people that result from different combinations of miscegenation. ‘I am fascinated by the individual words that are used as names for these categories because they point to a strange type of ‘math.’”
Clara Hoag, “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme,” 2022, fired clay, glaze, epoxy, silver leaf, 38 x 5 x 4.5 inches.
2. Clara Hoag: Re/Construct
Hooks-Epstein Galleries (Houston)
March 12 – April 14, 2022
From Hooks-Epstein Galleries:
“Re/Construct is an exhibition of ceramic pieces and drawings by Clara Hoag that reflect the human condition and the lived urban experience. She integrates construction motifs into human forms and assembles her sculptures from multiple clay parts. In her drawings, layers of gestural ink—in addition to rusty, organic colors that are juxtaposed with the bright blue, yellow, and white colors seen on the siding of new buildings—further immerse the viewer into the cityscape. Ultimately, Hoag uses the visual language of architecture to describe the complexity of the human existence; the landscape looks fragile, but it holds; vulnerability and resilience fight, constantly seeking balance.”
Installation view of Christopher Blay: Future Power: Traps and Targets.
3. Christopher Blay: Future Power: Traps and Targets
Hotel St. George (Marfa)
March 4 – May 8, 2022
From the artist:
“Future Power is the newest iteration of Blay’s solo exhibition featuring five new works in the continuing Power Lines series of sculpture/drawings. This body of work, described as Police brut, is inspired by printed shooting targets, and the ready-made Black Power fist Afro Pick. Police brut is a double entendre that references both the style pioneered by Jean Dubuffet and the acts of violence meted out against Black people. The language of Future Power: Traps and Targets incorporates codes and symbols as a way of talking about police violence against Black People.
Binary code, morse code, and sound graphs encode the works even as the symbols, such as the Nitien, or Kru Money, place the artist’s own narrative in these stories. ‘Nitien,’ ‘Tien,’ or ‘Dwin’ is from the Kru and Grebo tribes of Liberia and respectively the tribes the artist’s father and mother were born into. Although there is no definitive scholarship on the use of Nitien, one of the common accounts describes it as a symbol of protection, which is how it is used in these works.”
Installation view of work by Jennifer Ling Datchuk in Mystic Toolkit at Artpace.
4. Mystic Toolkit
Artpace (San Antonio)
January 6 – April 24, 2022
From Artpace:
“On view in the Hudson Showroom, Mystic Toolkit brings together the work of seven artists working across a variety of mediums ranging from sculpture, painting, photography, and performance to celebrate daily rituals of coping, healing, and grieving that have become indispensable in recent times. The first iteration of Mystic Toolkit was presented in January 2020 at Stewart Hall Art Gallery in Pointe-Claire (Quebec), a few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to life as we knew it.
The exhibition was informed by the spiritual renaissance of the late 2010s and meant to shed light on the potential that lies therein to influence the practice of working artists. Two years later, Mystic Toolkit picks up that conversation again. Anaïs Castro, who curated the exhibition, told Artpace:
‘The exhibition conceptualizes the home as a sanctuary, a place of recollection and refuge. Our home is at once a haven of comfort and self-care, but during lockdown, it has also held us captive… Despite the variety approaches, all of the artists participating in Mystic Toolkit attempt to navigate through what is unquestionably one of the most disruptive crises in modern history via a genuine recognition of the mysterious forces that orchestrate the world.’”
Sam Tippett, “Eight,” 2021, acrylic on canvas, 30 × 48 × 1 1/2 inches.
5. Be Kind, Rewind
Sí Gallery (Austin)
February 19 – April 18, 2022
From the Dab Art Co.:
“Twelve artists have been selected for a gratuitously eccentric exhibition of 80’s and 90’s pop culture inspired artwork. BE KIND, REWIND is a surprising collection of sculpture, photographs, abstracts and more amusing genres keeping in the spirit of keeping Austin weird.
Featuring: Pablo Alfredo de la Peña, Ash Margaret, Geist Topping, Paul Acevedo Gomez, Elizabeth Yarosz-Ash, Alec Aita, Risa Culbertson, Terri Lloyd, Maidy Morhous, Sam Tippett, Jason Egitto, Lenny Gerard.”
