Top Five: June 13, 2024

Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.

For last week’s picks, please go here.

1. Soy de Tejas: A Statewide Survey of Latinx Art
Arts Fort Worth
April 5 – June 23, 2024
Performance: June 15, 3 p.m.

From Arts Fort Worth:

“Arts Fort Worth welcomes the highly anticipated Fort Worth debut of Soy de Tejas: A Statewide Survey of Latinx Art. This dynamic exhibition, curated by Rigoberto Luna, features over 90 works by nearly 40 contemporary native Texas and Texas-based Latinx artists.

​Soy de Tejas showcases the diverse talents and perspectives of Latinx creatives across the state. From multimedia installations to performance art, paintings, drawings, sculpture, and fiber art, the exhibition invites viewers to explore themes of identity, migration, mythmaking, displacement, and indigeneity while also celebrating the rich cultural traditions that unite these communities.”

Read a review of the exhibition by Jessica Fuentes.

2. DELITA MARTIN: WHAT THE NIGHT KNEW
Nicole Longnecker Gallery (Houston)
May 16 – July 6, 2024

From Nicole Longnecker Gallery:

“Delita Martin: What the Night Knew features new works from the heralded printmaker/artist. ‘Delita Martin captures audiences with her powerful imagery,’ said gallery owner Nicole Longnecker. ‘Since we first exhibited her work in 2017, her career has continued an upward trajectory around the world. Her narrative portraits of black women combine historical and spiritual elements that empower the viewer.’”

3. Surroundings: Works from the Permanent Collection
Tyler Museum of Art
April 26 – August 4, 2024

From the Tyler Museum of Art:

“Organized by the Tyler Museum of Art, Surroundings: Works from the Permanent Collection presents a variety of artistically captured landscapes and cityscapes as well as other observations from daily life. The selected works offer unique perspectives on everyday objects and places, transforming the mundane into the noteworthy.

From paintings to photographs, the featured works include recent acquisitions being exhibited for the first time.”

4. Adrian Aguirre: Rostros en la Encrucijada
La Mecha Contemporary (El Paso)
May 30 – June 22, 2024

From La Mecha Contemporary:

“The exhibition Rostros en la Encrucijada by Juarez-born artist, Adrián Aguirre, includes a series of portraits of refugees and scenes of border agents blocking entry. In these charcoal drawings and oil paintings, some sections are meticulously rendered, providing a tangible sense of presence, while others feature intentional loose strokes or are deliberately left open. This technique serves to emphasize movement, activate the space, and, most importantly, express an emotional connection to the individuals depicted in the work. Fundamentally, the work is about connecting the viewer emotionally to those who have risked everything to come to this country.”

5. Lex Gjurasic: A Flowery Forever
Yard Dog (Austin)
May 31 – June 29, 2024

From Yard Dog Art:

“As a child, I spent weeks at a time hospitalized with lung disease. Through spells of sickness, I took solace in my imagination, drawing and redrawing hundreds of versions of the same subject—each act of repetition pulling me deeper into a realm where sickness could not find me. In spring 2020, quarantining with my family, first subconsciously and then consciously, I found myself reaching for the same comfort — the comfort of repetition — that I had decades earlier. I disappeared into other worlds — amalgamations of imagery existing somewhere between memory and imagination.

The result, Flower Mounds, is a cohesive series of verdant, undulating, biomorphic work. The series is an expression of my own exuberance for life and a love letter to the natural world, borne of a coping mechanism from early adolescence. Flower Mounds offers an escape into soft, surreal landscapes: a safe place to land.”