Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.
For last week’s picks, please go here.
Dana Robinson, “Does She… Or Doesn’t She,” 2020, acrylic on wooden panel, 16 x 20 inches
1. Dana Robinson: I’ll Tell You This for Free
Spellerberg Projects (Lockhart)
April 1 – 30, 2022
From Spellerberg Projects:
“Curated by Caroline Frost, I’ll Tell You This for Free features six works exemplary of Dana Robinson’s practice. Four works on panel from her Ebony Reprinted series embody Robinson’s commentary on the role that visual media plays in promoting impossible standards for Black excellence, which have been molded by white-dominated social calibers and have substituted the extraordinary with the bare minimum.
Using vintage Black media from Ebony Magazine as source material, Robinson uses transparencies to trace and transfer the images in paint onto wood panels. The fragmentation of the figures that occur in the monoprint process shatters the stylization of the figures in their original commercial context, cracking the enforced standard of Black excellence that such publications advertise, to reveal nuanced emotions that more accurately reflect the Black experience in the United States.”
Tintype photography by Keliy Anderson Staley
2. Keliy Anderson-Staley: Fifteen Years of Portraits
Wright Gallery (College Station)
March 14 – May 13, 2022
From Wright Gallery:
“Wright Gallery at Texas A&M University presents a solo exhibition of photographic portraits by Keliy Anderson-Staley, an Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Media at the University of Houston. The exhibition features over 150 tintype portraits created using a historic wet-collodian photography process. Created using a wooden camera and hand mixed chemicals, the artist’s process results in photographs developed on tin with high contrast, captivating warm tones, soft light and shadow.
Appearing like historic black and white photographs, contemporary people seem timeless with relaxed facial expressions and gazes pointing directly at the viewer. The artist states that, ‘it is rare for a portrait of a stranger to arrest our attention, but [her] aim is to make us stop and look.’ Many young people engage with digital portraits on social media daily, however, rarely spend time viewing photographic objects. Located on Texas A&M’s College Station campus, the exhibition will naturally welcome many young student visitors who may not know a time before the term ‘selfie’ became popular, heavily filtered portraits became ubiquitous on Instagram and quick rehearsed scenes were the norm on TikTok.”
View of the Rio Grande River from the Boquillas Canyon Trail, near Big Bend National Park along the US/Mexico Border. Photo by Ashley DeHoyos, taken on a research trip to West Texas, August 2021
3. Overlapping Territories
DiverseWorks (Houston)
April 1 – 23, 2022
From DiverseWorks:
“DiverseWorks is proud to present Overlapping Territories, a curatorial initiative and Knowledge-Building Research Lab led by Curator Ashley DeHoyos. Overlapping Territories is an interdisciplinary, experimental space for six artists to engage, discover, and reimagine what it means to be in relationship to the land. DeHoyos begins the project with a Houston-centered approach as a way of understanding what conversations around land already exist within the city. Artists Liyen Chong, Catherine Davila-Martinez, Angel Lartigue, Matt Manalo, Jenah Maravilla, and Monica Villarreal will create multidisciplinary projects that reflect the breadth of the investigations and interrogations into land-centered politics and the issues attached to particular geographies and histories.”
Artwork by Adrianna Touch
4. Adrianna Touch: Come Home, Heroine
TCU Moudy Fine Arts Building (Fort Worth)
April 4 – 9, 2022
From the Art Galleries at TCU:
“Come Home, Heroine by Adrianna Touch focuses on a heroine’s journey from her real home to her fantastical home existing in a different realm. Showcasing sculptures, ceramics, drawings, and found objects, the exhibition centers on three realms: home, traveling, and fantasy. Based on Touch’s background as the daughter of Cambodian immigrants who experienced the brutalities of the Khmer Rouge, Come Home, Heroine engages with ideas on healing from generational trauma, overlapping identities, and discovering self-love.”
Installation view of “Foreign Body: Danielle Becknell and Jayné Valverde,” at Rojo Gallery
5. Danielle Becknell and Jayné Valverde: Foreign Body
Rojo Gallery (San Antonio)
March 11 – April 9, 2022
Read our review here.
From Rojo Gallery:
“Now exhibiting at Rojo is Foreign Body: Works on Navigation by Danielle Becknell and Jayne Valverde. Becknell and Valverde are both multimedia artists living and working in San Antonio who explore themes revolving around the discomfort of existing in a corporeal form. Influenced by their own histories and niche medical experiences, their respective work is both deeply personal and oddly relatable.”
