Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.
For last week’s picks, please go here.
Installation view at the Phoenix Art Museum, 2021, “Oscar Muñoz, Cortinas de baño [Shower Curtains],” 1985–1986, acrylic on plastic, nine curtains, variable dimensions. Collection of the artist (photo: courtesy of Phoenix Art Museum)
Blanton Museum of Art (Austin)
February 20 – June 6, 2022
From the Blanton:
“Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia is the first retrospective of this Colombian artist’s work in the United States. Beginning with his early charcoal drawings from the late 1970s, the exhibition will include approximately 40 exemplary works from his most evocative series created between then and the present day. Since the late 1980s, Muñoz has sought to reinvent the medium of photography, creating hybrid works that splice photographic processes with drawing, painting, printmaking, installation, video, and sculpture, as well as interactive works.
This project is long overdue. It seeks to elucidate the philosophies and the poetics underlying this seminal artist’s body of work, as well as the unstable imagery he has created, which, nevertheless, becomes indelible in our imaginations.”
taylor barnes, “Shift,” 2021, charcoal on cloth, 59 x 60 inches.
2. taylor barnes: Holding On to Elsewhere
Erin Cluley Gallery (Dallas)
April 2 – May 7, 2022
From Erin Cluley Gallery:
“Using fiber, charcoal, clay, and text, taylor barnes’ work reveals themes of race, identity, and social critique. Heavily informed by history and language, her practice is as equally inspired by oral history and critical writers as it is by visual artists. Charcoal being her primary method of making depicts gestural figures and non-representational forms in rich texture. The lush ephemerality of the dark medium imbues an uncontrollable nature into the works, as the textile substrate concurrently calls to mind past modes of historical record and narration.
In Holding On to Elsewhere, barnes considers the positions of Black women within white spaces. Here, she presents notions of voyeurism, the gaze, and the power of choice. Non-representational forms appear and function as portals, as the figures and vessels become visual metaphors of the spiritual presences and experiences. The ambiguity of the figures and their expressions of refusal contribute to an intentional complication of discrete roles of ‘object and subject’.”
Wendy Red Star, “Winter,” 2006, archival pigment print on Sunset Fiber rag, 21 x 24 inches.
3. Uncovered Spaces
International Museum of Art and Science – IMAS (McAllen)
March 26 – July 10, 2022
From UTRGV:
“Uncovered Spaces is an exhibition and event series centered on female artists, including young women, queer, and non-binary artists, concerning the social structures that mediate our everyday experiences. Uncovered Spaces will articulate ideas through art that relate to women’s cultural expectations and the social norms that challenge or oppress women, as well as ways that protect and support them. This international exhibition includes 13 artists and scholars. Participating artists and scholars have been invited through a curatorial process that values a diversity of perspectives.
The event venues will serve as a space for women, female-identifying artists, non-binary artists, and scholars to discuss their work, research, interests, and strengths regarding gender, identity, and social norms. The project also seeks to reveal connections between the creative process, feminine solidarity, diversity, and shared knowledge while creating a model for a community arts-based research project in south Texas. While our main concern is to examine how art can engage and offer a critical re-thinking of current social and political issues, the broader implications touch upon the foundations of art practice and our many lives’ existential issues. ”
Michael Bise, “Mother Reading to Her Son,” 2022, graphite on paper, 60 x 41 inches.
4. Michael Bise: Afterlife
Moody Gallery (Houston)
March 26 -May 7, 2022
See the video tour here.
From Moody Gallery:
“Moody Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new drawings by Michael Bise. Afterlife marks his ninth solo exhibition with the gallery. Bise’s newest series of drawings continue to maintain a commitment to autobiographical narrative. More than ever, he draws out from these personal narratives broader symbolic and archetypal meanings. Beyond the individual significance
Bise’s images may hold for himself or his loved ones he engages ancient and medieval conceptions of what it means to exist in a family; to be a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a sister, son or brother. Integrating traditional drawing processes with ideas from ancient, medieval and modernist canons of painting, Bise integrates multiple traditions within a style that remains attached to the distant past while engaging with modernist and postmodernist tendencies in image making.”
“Chris Powell: then now,” installation view at The Old Jail Art Center, 2022.
5. Chris Powell: then now
The Old Jail Art Center (Albany)
March 21 – May 14, 2022
From The Old Jail Art Center:
“Simply stated, Chris Powell puts objects together to form relationships that the viewer unravels.
His complex installation relies heavily on his personal collection of found objects and intimate drawings juxtaposed with small scale ceramic sculptures ranging from animals to utilitarian forms positioned atop tile setters from a defunct tile manufacturer in Mineral Wells, Texas. Powell utilizes one gallery—formerly an isolation cell—to be more contemplative, exploring the ongoing theme the artist refers to as “crane and turtle”—referencing a Japanese landscaping principle that places a tall stone in relationship to a short flat stone.”
