Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.
For last week’s picks, please go here.
An image from “Vast is the Sea” at Co-Lab Projects.
1. Vast is the Sea
Co-Lab Projects (Austin)
January 20 – February 24, 2024
From Co-Lab Projects:
“Vast is the Sea is a series of presentations from eight artists whose diverse works are united by their explorations of images and sound. The title comes from a translation of the composer and film theorist Michel Chion’s analysis of the relationship between sound and image in cinema. In their presentations, each artist constructs new oceans through live performances, video, and sound processing. Viewers are invited to gaze at visions projected on the ceiling and swim among the sounds in real time.”
Bettina Landgrebe, “Beaten with a Hammer,” installation with audio, dimensions variable. El Paso Museum of Art, Gift from the Estate of Lineaus Hooper Lorette, 2023.7.165
2. Beaten with a Hammer
El Paso Museum of Art
December 15, 2023 – June 2, 2024
From El Paso Museum of Art:
“In Beaten with a Hammer, Marfa-based artist Bettina Landgrebe uses over 500 hearts to bear testimony to the war against the female body. Her haunting installation composed of suspended hearts confronts audiences with the issue of femicides. The work highlights the reach violence on gender can have in a community and how it can disrupt a culture.”
An image from the exhibition “XZZX: There Is No Alternative.”
3. XZZX: There Is No Alternative
Tank Space at Spring Street Studio (Houston)
December 9, 2023 – February 10, 2024
“The installation shows us a symbol of the phenomenon of degradation that links the implication of the dominant economic system with the already evident contemporary ecological disaster. The title phrase, ‘there is no alternative’ alludes to the axiom of the 1980s that prioritized a global system based on financial benefit without due protection from the consequences and ecological damage.
There Is No Alternative is a site-specific installation founded on two elements: water and money. The water is presented in the form of a hanging block of ice slowly melting which reveals money inside. The degradation, latent from the melting process, also relates the gravity of the hanging structure with the functioning of the economic system that flows from ‘top to bottom’ or from north to south, exposing the historical power relationship of domination projects.”
Du Chau, “Silence,” 2017, porcelain on wire, 40 x 85 x 6 inches.
4. Du Chau: The Silence that Speaks
Texas A&M Commerce University Gallery
January 8 – February 22, 2024
From Du Chau:
“Join the University Gallery and Department of Art as we celebrate the 25-year career of artist Du Chau. Chau’s poetic ceramic and multimedia work resides in a liminal space between past and present but with the emphasis on reaching a state of positive reconciliation with the past.”
A work by Ariana Heinzman
5. Ariana Heinzman: Stack.Loop.Shift
Rockport Center for the Arts
January 9 – February 11, 2024
From the Rockport Center for the Arts:
“Stack.Loop.Shift, featuring a unique collection of ceramic sculptures, wall works, and functional objects by artist Ariana Heinzman, will kick off the New Year at Rockport Center for the Arts (RCA), joining fellow artists, sculptor Greg Reuter and photographer Ansen Seale, as the first RCA exhibitions of 2024.
Heinzman creates quickly and intuitively, keeping her hand in her work, a direct process that captures the urgency and joy of making and acknowledges the agency of the materials. The raw clay retains memory and reacts to Heinzman’s touch. Forms are coil-built and smoothed by hand with each layer in turn defining the path of the next. Pigmented slip is applied in layers with brushes in gestural strokes forming bold lines and patterns. Form and surface are used to build illusion. There is a contrast between the naked clay body — soft and imperfect — and the bold, graphic finishing adornments.”
