Betsy Huete’s Top Ten of 2013

Betsy Huete

With a city as large and diverse and bustling with artistic activity as Houston, it’s easy to stumble upon great work. So as anyone can imagine, it was not difficult for me to come up with a top ten list for 2013. To be totally fair, however, I didn’t start writing for The Great God Pan is Dead until June of this year—which doesn’t mean much except that I was probably paying more critical attention in the second half of the year than the first. Therefore, it’s possible that I may be biased toward the latter half of 2013. At any rate, the following are my top ten pieces exhibited in Houston last year.

10. Bryan Forrester, Imogene (2012), The Big Show at Lawndale Art Center 
Imogene didn’t even hit #1 on my Big Show top five list, so it may be surprising to see it crop up here, in the top ten of everything. But sometimes images stay with a person in unpredictable ways, and this nude, vomiting, tattoo-laden man stuck with me. Vile and rich, Forrester’s photography is lush and personal, and Imogene feels equally fearsome and romantic.


Bryan Forrester, Imogene, 2012, C-print, 24 x 36 inches (courtesy Lawndale Art Center)

9. Katrina Moorhead, Trying to describe the way that space wraps itself around an object (2013), The Bird That Never Landscape at Inman Gallery 
Like a free-wheeling toddler, or perhaps the elderly homeless man with a pink tutu that frequents the Heights bike path, Katrina Moorhead’s work harbors an irreverent autonomy, seemingly unphased by its presence within a laser clean contemporary gallery like Inman. Yet strangely enough, it’s as if the work also depends on it being shown there, as if it requires that very platform to appear as autonomous. It is a bizarre and exciting paradox, and in Moorhead’s most recent solo exhibition, Trying to describe the way that space wraps itself around an object does not disappoint. A skeletal, black glittering bottle rack that looks like it came from a goth version of Claire’s, Trying to describe the way that space wraps itself around an object is strikingly, disturbingly, and simultaneously playful and menacing.


Katrina Moorhead, Trying to describe the way that space wraps itself around an object, 2013, antique bottle rack, powder coating, plasticine, bandage, 20”x19”x20” (courtesy Inman Gallery)

8. Geoff Hippenstiel, Untitled (2012), Winter Garden at Devin Borden 
I saw Hippenstiel’s solo show Territorial Pissings at Devin Borden in early 2013. While they were nice and engaging enough, there was something almost absurdly commanding about his Untitled shown this past December in the group show Winter Garden. Following his modus operandi of extremely thick, smudgy brush strokes, here Hippenstiel employs sickly decadent silvers, pinks, and golds melding together, toppling each other. Despite its confinement to the wall, Untitled ensnares the viewer, somehow making her feel as though she’s trudging through sugary magma.


Geoff Hippenstiel, Untitled, 2012, Oil on canvas, 36” x 48" (courtesy Devin Borden Gallery)

7. Jillian Conrad, Bonsai Radio #1 (2013), Ley Lines at Devin Borden 
When I reviewed Ley Lines earlier in the year, I wrote quite a bit about Conrad’s proclivities for drawing sculpturally, for crafting lines that reside in an anxious place between forming linkages elsewhere and existing as its own object. It’s this uncertainty that makes the work so compelling, and Bonsai Radio #1 is the best example of that liminality. A quiet work, Bonsai Radio #1 feels like it is whispering vital and indecipherable information.


Jillian Conrad, Bonsai Radio #1, 2013, Concrete, brass, rubber, 18”x20”12”

6. Romana Schmalisch, Notation of Efficiency (2013), From Here to Afternoon at the Glassell School 
From Here to Afternoon was a cerebral show that required lots of time and attention from the viewer. Schmalisch’s Notation of Efficiency was one such work—but with an enormous payoff. A dry and intentionally tedious slide show of Laban Lawrence diagrams from an old fashioned projector, she infused the work with subtle yet nevertheless effective humor. And by controlling the cadence of the slides demarcated by remotely audible clicks, she was able to manipulate the viewer in and out of a lull while asking fascinating questions about the conflation of movement, labor, and efficiency.


Romana Schmalisch, Notation of Efficiency, 2013, Slide projection and model (bamboo sphere)

5. Wols, Oui, Oui, Oui (1946-7), Wols: Retrospective at the Menil Collection 
In a recent review I compared Wols’ Oui, Oui, Oui to spelunking into a cave. What makes this painting so enrapturing is not only Wols’ ability to fervently convey a deeply interior language, but also his scrawling attempt to link the work back to an exterior world.

Wols, Oui, oui, oui, 1946/7, Oil, grattage and tube marks on canvas, 31.7”x25.3”

4. Jamal Cyrus, Texas Fried Tenor (2012), Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art at CAMH
I didn’t see the actual performance; instead I saw the remnants in the Valerie Cassel Oliver curated Radical Presence. And quite honestly, I don’t care about the performance and would even go as far to say that it doesn’t need it. A fried saxophone, it is voluptuous and grotesque, indicative and inviting of performative elements from the artist and viewer alike. It invokes scathing sensations of crunching and the taste of bitter metal while debilitating one form of expression to create another. And without a hint of didacticism, it poignantly and very tangibly lets the viewer in on the beautifully varied and layered complexities of blackness.


Jamal Cyrus, Texas Fried Tenor, 2012, Fried saxophone, taken from www.studiomuseum.org


Jamal Cyrus, Texas Fried Tenor, November 29, 2012, performance

3. Joan Jonas, Good Night Good Morning (1976), Parallel Practices: Joan Jonas & Gina Pane at CAMH 
Jonas is a pioneer of feminine performance and video art, and Good Night Good Morning is a seminal work from the art historical canon. A largely conceptual work, at the CAMH it was exhibited as an elderly video piece emanating from an outdated TV set—yet it still felt contemporary for both intentional reasons and not. While using repetition in all art, not to mention conceptual works, is thoroughly tread and fully utilized territory, it still feels fresh here: one can pick up on miniscule though revealing nuances as Jonas consistently greets the camera each morning and night. Also, due to glitches in the then-new technology, the camera created faded double images as Jonas would traverse the room. A happy accident, the work is fraught with ghost images of Jonas haunting herself.

2. Leslie Hewitt and Bradford Young, Untitled (Structures) (2012) at the Menil Collection 
Speaking of hauntings, Untitled (Structures) is a cinematic recounting of present day architecture that inhabited various critical moments within the civil rights movement. Long time collaborators Hewitt and Young formally captured the innards of these spaces with barely detectable movement, providing mere glimpses or suggestions of history. These lush cinematic shots fuel an air of mystery, leaving the viewer craving more information, with no choice but to fill in the blanks herself.


Leslie Hewitt and Bradford Young, Untitled (Structures), 2012, Dual channel video

1. Soo Sunny Park, Unwoven Light (2013) at Rice Gallery 
No one can argue against Unwoven Light’s airy and dynamic pulchritude. A weaving structure filling the installation space at Rice Gallery, Unwoven Light contains thousands of lightly tinted acrylic panels continually refracting light, constantly changing color throughout the day. But the real game changer for me was its unexpected commanding, and really demanding, movement from the viewer. Using tons of winding chain link fence, Park builds an armature that in some places hugs the viewer in like a vortex while spewing him out in others.


So Sunny Park, Unwoven Light, 2013, Chain-link fence, Plexiglas, acrylic film, dimensions variable 

Betsy Huete: Five Pieces from the Big Show

Betsy Huete

The Big Show, Lawndale Art Center’s annual juried exhibition, is a platform to showcase some of the year’s most exciting and innovative work coming from artists residing in or near the Houston area. Duncan MacKenzie, writer and co-founder of Bad at Sports out of Chicago, IL, was this year’s juror. His selections had an over-arching tone of irony—a way of thinking about art and curating that, quite frankly, I find to be played out and irritating. But to be fair, this is coming from someone who hasn’t seen all the submissions (although I believe we will all be able to soon at BLUEorange Gallery). Thematics aside, out of the eighty-three works by sixty-seven artists, there was a broad spectrum of media and subject matter, making it easy to find a handful of work that was exceptional. With that being said, here are my top five picks.


Kari Breitigam, Horn Head, 2012, Stretched embroidery, 12 x 24 inches


5. Kari Breitigam, Horn Head (2012)

As I ascended the stairs, I noticed at the top a spritely, youngish embroidered man floating mid-canvas, although we are led to believe he is firmly lying on top of something. With a bright orange shirt and appropriately titled conical head, this piece is obviously whimsical. But the refreshingly rigid line work gives the character a strange feel, as if Breitigam ripped him out of some fantastical instruction manual. His candy-colored horn head falls somewhere between a hardened weapon and TCBY soft serve, conjuring an image that lies in the transitory phase of fantasy to nightmare. Yet there’s something all-American and trusty about this guy: after a long day of swimming, hiking, and horseback riding, he’s the man a tampon ad girl’s dreams are made of. He looks like a Jeff.


Melinda Laszczynski, Hold On, 2013, Watercolor, acrylic, tape, wax, beads, 16 x 16 inches

4. Melinda Laszczynski, Hold On (2013)

Melinda Laszczynski clearly follows the mantra “less is more” in her piece Hold On. A framed work on paper, there isn’t much going on with the surface except in the bottom right corner, where she abstractly applied watercolor, acrylic, and glitter, to name a few materials. But for all of its abstraction, the work is surprisingly narrative-driven. The lava-esque pool of watercolor bumping up against the lower edge of the frame reeks of isolation, like a tectonic plate floating off into oblivion. Laszczynski cleverly uses blue painter’s tape to clamp what appears to be a peeled off scrap of glitter-laden acrylic to the right edge of the paper—a quiet gesture that transforms a potentially glazed-over two-dimensional work to a striking three-dimensional object. The sharp reds and decadent glitter read as a material hangover, shamefully trying to hide itself as it desperately clings to the side.

 
Eva Martinez, Shapeshifter, 2012, Fabric, stuffing, and plastic notion, 9 x 15 x 9 inches

3. Eva Martinez, Shapeshifter (2012)

I would hate to be Eva Martinez’s child. I could see her sneaking into my bedroom at night, stealing my teddy bear (creatively named Teddy), and restitching it into a figure that’s completely drained of all of its anthropomorphic qualities. But it’s this kind of perverse removal (except the eyes) that makes the piece as compelling as it is. The title Shapeshifter may be a little dramatic, but there is something oddly sinister about the unassuming figure. And on the other hand, it somehow feels wildly optimistic—as if Martinez is advocating for the tactility of the material—instead of hitting us over the head with the personified facial features that typically come along with a stuffed animal.


Bryan Forrester, Imogene, 2012, C-print, 24 x 36 inches (courtesy Lawndale Art Center)

2. Bryan Forrester, Imogene (2012)

There’s a reason Bryan Forrester was one of three to win the Big Show juror’s award: the work is excellent. Imogene is a fairly straightforward image of a run-of-the-mill Heights or Montrose area bungalow kitchen. But the framing of the shot enhances the kitchen to a narrow, claustrophobic corridor, and the lighting makes every banal object in the shot seem dense and luxurious. Unless Forrester can vomit on cue and is quick with the camera, the shot is clearly staged. Nevertheless, between his vulnerability and girlfriend/wife/overly comfortable roommate Kerry’s tenderness, the image feels overwhelmingly sincere. The butterflies are heavy-handed, and I wish they would return to the springtime floral wonderland from whence they came. Regardless, this is a photograph I could stare at for hours, although I might feel a little pervy for doing so.


Chantal M. Wnuk, The Six Pound Weight in the Pit of My Stomach, 2012, Charcoal, graphite, and colored pencil on paper, 22 x 30 inches

1. Chantal M. Wnuk, The Six Pound Weight in the Pit of My Stomach (2012)

Ambling clumsily through the dense and increasingly drunken crowd opening night, I was immediately magnetized to this charcoal drawing hanging near the base of the stairs in the John M. O’Quinn Gallery. The loose gestural lines of charcoal coalesce centrally into a ghastly, aggressively scrawled face. The smeared ball of fleshy Pepto Bismol hue wholly embodies the sense of dread and anxiety that the title probably too literally explains. While the date written somewhere near the top right of the blob seems redundant and unnecessary, the tight graphite drawings interwoven with the charcoal are formally dynamic and incredibly satisfying to look at. They read as abstracted ears and stubby fingers, simultaneously being ripped off in a whirlwind and compressing the head into unbearable density.

Your Mom, Your Stuff, Your Friends and Their Stuff at Box 13

by Robert Boyd

Box 13 is doing its part for FotoFest with four lens-based shows. The one that hit me the hardest was Identified and Objectified: A Study of the Ephemeral, featuring work by Shannon Duncan, Brittney Connelly and Bryan Forrester. Of these three artist, the one whose work I found least interesting was Brittney Connelly. Her video of her stuff being tossed onto her prone body struck me as an obvious metaphor (our stuff, our accumulative natures, weighing us down). I see this as relating to a certain romantic notion that if we could just free ourselves of material concerns, we'd be free! Perhaps I'm misinterpreting her work, but what I saw didn't impress me.


Shannon Duncan, Eu-phemera photo installation, 2011-2012

Shannon Duncan's take on a similar subject, Eu-phemera, was far better. She had friends pose with things (including clothes) that were meaningful to them. They are posed against a blank white background. Their faces are always covered. I interpret this as Duncan taking identity away from the face--the way we recognize people and consequently the primary source of their visual identity--and placing identity in the stuff itself.


Shannon Duncan, Eu-phemera photo installation detail, 2011-2012

This guy, for example, tells us with his stuff that he's an athlete, a musician, a reader of mythology and African-American history.


Shannon Duncan, Eu-phemera photo installation detail, 2011-2012

With her miniskirt and boots, she seems like she stepped out of the 60s, a perception that is reinforced with the cheap portable record player and knit rug. On the other hand, the Pink Floyd record and predominance of orange and brown say "70s." But oddest is the raccoon skin on her face. On of the pleasures of these photos is that they invite you to try to "figure out" the subject. Does all this stuff actually add up to one real person, after all?


Shannon Duncan, Eu-phemera photo installation detail, 2011-2012

But sometimes the interpretation of the stuff is delightfully easy. This boy in his Darth Vader mask may serve to remind us how early our life-long relationship with stuff begins, but it's also funny and delightful. I thought this group of photos communicated pleasure--these things that people were posed with were important because they loved them. Their pleasure comes through. It's infectious.

It's nice that Shannon Duncan was able to make me smile, because Bryan Forrester's installation, Every Woman Is My Mother, was not such a happy story. The piece consists of photos and paper ephemera. I noticed the photos first, which I think was Forrester's intent. They were photos of different women (different ages, races, and body types) all dressed alike.


Bryan Forrester, from Every Woman Is My Mother


Bryan Forrester, from Every Woman Is My Mother

I am assuming that the wig and outfit come from some memory or photograph of Forrester's mother. By themselves, they are an unsettling series of images--the emotional content of the photos seems progressively more powerful and fraught. Then when we get to the back wall, where the ephemera is pinned up, the viewer gets a second punch in the gut.


Bryan Forrester, from Every Woman Is My Mother


Bryan Forrester, from Every Woman Is My Mother

(The images above have been color-corrected to make them more readable.)

Forrester's mother, a nurse, had a mental illness that caused him to become estranged from her. I assume her early death is related to this illness. This installation, which includes both his imaginings of Mary Ellen along with Mary Ellen's own notes and writing appears to be an attempt to reconnect with her posthumously. The pink tank top and jeans must be for Forrester important memory objects--perhaps this exhibit is an attempt to connect the woman in these disjointed, disturbing writings with his own memories. Possibly the jeans and tank top represent a good memory for Forrester that he is trying to latch onto. But as viewers, we can't be sure.

Every Woman Is My Mother is powerful. It made me angry at Forrester for allowing himself to become estranged from his mother, a person who obviously needed help and looking after. I realize this is unfair--but it's a response made possible by the photos and objects that Forrester puts out for us to see. The work exudes guilt and sadness. We see that Mary Ellen, whatever her problems, had goals and a desire to express herself. She is someone we can feel sympathy for--Forrester wants us to feel sympathy. The choice of documents seems to have been made in part with this goal.

A lot of art I see is dry, clever, intellectual, beautiful to look at--and I value all those things. But it's rare these days to see art that has this kind of emotional power. I still don't know what I think--feel--about it. Sadness, anger, pity. Head out to the East End and spend some time with this exceptional work.