Today I report on Superpresent, a new art & literature magazine from Houston. The editor is Kevin Clement, and I discuss work in Superpresent by Kristy Peet, John Adelman, Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon, R.C. Rice, Brandon Hernsberger, David McClain, and Justin Varner.
Showing posts with label David McClain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David McClain. Show all posts
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Robert Boyd's Book Report: Superpresent
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Zombie Formalist Shootout in Galveston
Robert Boyd

William Powhida and Jade Townsend, Map of the town of New New Berlin
This map greeted visitors to New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair, an installation by William Powhida and Jade Townsend, at the Galveston Artists Residency last weekend. Bill Arning is identified as mayor. Given that this entire installation is a satire of Houston and of the art world, it's not exactly a compliment. But why Arning and not, say, Gary Tinterow? Because back in 2012, the following quote appeared in Art in America:
The installation makes snotty fun of Houston, but isn't very deep. I'll outsource most of my opinions to Bill Davenport's great review in Glasstire, which can be summed up with one phrase: "simplistic carpetbagging."

entryway to New New Berlin
New New Berlin had privatized security, of course.
A saloon/whorehouse (where the warm whiskey was free if you were wearing a cowboy hat). The bartender was artist Brian Piana.
And David McClain played the reactionary newspaperman, who from time to time came out to read what seemed like a completely unhinged rant. It turned out to be from "The Alamo," Michael Bise's passionate but confusing editorial that ran in July in Glasstire.
And naturally there was a money-grubbing church complete with a Dan Flavin-style cross. The preacher was Emily Sloan, who has a lot of relevant experience given her "Southern Naptist Convention" and "Carrie Nation" performances.
William Powhida & Jade Townsend, ABMB Hooverville, 2010, Graphite on paper. 40 x 60 inches
It was the "Flavin" cross that caught my eye. As satirists of Houston, Townsend and Powhida aren't brilliant. But as satirists of the art world, they're quite clever. Their collaborative drawing ABMB Hooverville imagined the glitterati of the art world living in a shanty town on the beach, for example. Much of Powhida's solo work spells out (quite literally) his disgust with the crass Veblen-esque corruption that typifies so much of the upper level, blue chip art world.
Typical of his work is to make a list--"Why You Should Buy Art", "Some Cynical Advice to Artists", "What Can the Art World Teach You", etc.--and then carefully draw it. I don't mean calligraphy (although that is a part of it). What Powhida does is to make a list or piece of text or diagram on a piece of paper and then carefully draw the piece of paper as an object.

William Powhida, What Has the Art World Taught Me
New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair are full of lists and signs.
The newspaper's editorial policy is a satire of corporate media.
The military/police/prison industrial complex gets the works, too.
And here is a map of the Nevada Art Fair.
And you can see Powhida's hand in them. The content is sarcastic and the writing is recognizable. But while the newspaper editorial policies and White Horse Security Services seem obvious and heavy handed, the more art related stuff seems funnier and stronger. Like the fact that you in the floor plan for Nevada (itself a take-off of the NADA art fair), the booth for Non-Profits is completely closed off.
The one building in New New Berlin that really works on this level is the Livery Stable. It reflects a common trajectory of post-industrial structures. First a structure may be a factory or a warehouse--a working building. Then after a while, that function no longer exists (in America, at least). The building becomes derelict until someone has the bright idea of handing it over to artists for studios. The artists move into this shitty but indestructible structure and turn it into a lively space for art. The once derelict neighborhood the building occupied gets a few bars and restaurants and becomes "hip." The owner of what was a white-elephant can now sell out to a developer who will put condos in the old warehouse after giving the artists the boot. It's an old story, and what I like about Townsend and Powhida is that they relate it to the old West (a livery stable being the nastiest building in town, and one devoted to work) and include the whole cycle in a series of overlapping signs--the "Artists Studios" banner that overlaps the "Livery Stable" sign, the "Luxury Condos" sign that is pasted on top of the "For Sale Sign".

Nevada Art Fair shooting gallery
The best part of the installation was the shooting gallery. Several "artworks" were hung on the far wall of the GAR gallery, and visitors had the opportunity to fire paintball guns at them. They were in "booths" for various galleries, such as David Zwirnered and the Joanna Picture Club (to give it a little local flavor).


Participants could fire paint guns at the pictures, which over the evening became encrusted with paintball residue. Shooters were in theory limited to five shots each, but many of these nice, liberal artsy types went hog wild as soon they got a gun in their hands, firing dozens of shots while Jade Townsend yelled "Only five shots per person!" in irritation.

Jade Townsend firing in the shooting gallery

David McClain takes a shot
Hyperallergic editor Hrag Vartanian was there, and he commented that the paintings almost looked like contemporary abstractions one could see at a real art fair. That made me think of"zombie formalism," the term that Jerry Saltz recently applied to so much contemporary abstract painting. So what do you think, readers? Could any of these paintings go toe-to-toe with Lucien Smith, Dan Colen, Parker Ito or Jacob Kassay?
So New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair weren't entirely successful as works of participatory art, but shooting paintballs at canvases was a whole lot of fun. All art fairs should include a paintball firing range.
William Powhida and Jade Townsend, Map of the town of New New Berlin
This map greeted visitors to New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair, an installation by William Powhida and Jade Townsend, at the Galveston Artists Residency last weekend. Bill Arning is identified as mayor. Given that this entire installation is a satire of Houston and of the art world, it's not exactly a compliment. But why Arning and not, say, Gary Tinterow? Because back in 2012, the following quote appeared in Art in America:
“Moving to Houston four years ago I had no idea I would find an art scene so vibrant, international and spirited,” CAMH director Bill Arning told A.i.A. over the weekend. “I keep telling artist friends that it's the new Berlin: cheap rents; great galleries, museums, and collectors; and a regular flow of visits from the best artists working today.” [Paul Laster, Art in America, October 21, 2012]Or maybe they were thinking of this quote:
First off I tell artists it's the new Berlin: cheap rent, a global audience, scores of supportive venues. It's an amazing life for art makers. ["Interview; Bill Arning Director Of The CAMH HOUSTON the `New Berlin`", Maria Chavez, Zip Magazine, August 28, 2013]First Arning is stabbed in the back by an artist he's exhibiting, now this: Arning portrayed as the huckster selling Houston to the art world, not so different in the spirit from the ad the Allen Brothers placed in newspapers across America in 1836.
The installation makes snotty fun of Houston, but isn't very deep. I'll outsource most of my opinions to Bill Davenport's great review in Glasstire, which can be summed up with one phrase: "simplistic carpetbagging."
entryway to New New Berlin
New New Berlin had privatized security, of course.
A saloon/whorehouse (where the warm whiskey was free if you were wearing a cowboy hat). The bartender was artist Brian Piana.
And David McClain played the reactionary newspaperman, who from time to time came out to read what seemed like a completely unhinged rant. It turned out to be from "The Alamo," Michael Bise's passionate but confusing editorial that ran in July in Glasstire.
And naturally there was a money-grubbing church complete with a Dan Flavin-style cross. The preacher was Emily Sloan, who has a lot of relevant experience given her "Southern Naptist Convention" and "Carrie Nation" performances.

William Powhida & Jade Townsend, ABMB Hooverville, 2010, Graphite on paper. 40 x 60 inches
It was the "Flavin" cross that caught my eye. As satirists of Houston, Townsend and Powhida aren't brilliant. But as satirists of the art world, they're quite clever. Their collaborative drawing ABMB Hooverville imagined the glitterati of the art world living in a shanty town on the beach, for example. Much of Powhida's solo work spells out (quite literally) his disgust with the crass Veblen-esque corruption that typifies so much of the upper level, blue chip art world.
Typical of his work is to make a list--"Why You Should Buy Art", "Some Cynical Advice to Artists", "What Can the Art World Teach You", etc.--and then carefully draw it. I don't mean calligraphy (although that is a part of it). What Powhida does is to make a list or piece of text or diagram on a piece of paper and then carefully draw the piece of paper as an object.

William Powhida, What Has the Art World Taught Me
New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair are full of lists and signs.
The newspaper's editorial policy is a satire of corporate media.
The military/police/prison industrial complex gets the works, too.
And here is a map of the Nevada Art Fair.
And you can see Powhida's hand in them. The content is sarcastic and the writing is recognizable. But while the newspaper editorial policies and White Horse Security Services seem obvious and heavy handed, the more art related stuff seems funnier and stronger. Like the fact that you in the floor plan for Nevada (itself a take-off of the NADA art fair), the booth for Non-Profits is completely closed off.
The one building in New New Berlin that really works on this level is the Livery Stable. It reflects a common trajectory of post-industrial structures. First a structure may be a factory or a warehouse--a working building. Then after a while, that function no longer exists (in America, at least). The building becomes derelict until someone has the bright idea of handing it over to artists for studios. The artists move into this shitty but indestructible structure and turn it into a lively space for art. The once derelict neighborhood the building occupied gets a few bars and restaurants and becomes "hip." The owner of what was a white-elephant can now sell out to a developer who will put condos in the old warehouse after giving the artists the boot. It's an old story, and what I like about Townsend and Powhida is that they relate it to the old West (a livery stable being the nastiest building in town, and one devoted to work) and include the whole cycle in a series of overlapping signs--the "Artists Studios" banner that overlaps the "Livery Stable" sign, the "Luxury Condos" sign that is pasted on top of the "For Sale Sign".

Nevada Art Fair shooting gallery
The best part of the installation was the shooting gallery. Several "artworks" were hung on the far wall of the GAR gallery, and visitors had the opportunity to fire paintball guns at them. They were in "booths" for various galleries, such as David Zwirnered and the Joanna Picture Club (to give it a little local flavor).
Participants could fire paint guns at the pictures, which over the evening became encrusted with paintball residue. Shooters were in theory limited to five shots each, but many of these nice, liberal artsy types went hog wild as soon they got a gun in their hands, firing dozens of shots while Jade Townsend yelled "Only five shots per person!" in irritation.
Jade Townsend firing in the shooting gallery
David McClain takes a shot
Hyperallergic editor Hrag Vartanian was there, and he commented that the paintings almost looked like contemporary abstractions one could see at a real art fair. That made me think of"zombie formalism," the term that Jerry Saltz recently applied to so much contemporary abstract painting. So what do you think, readers? Could any of these paintings go toe-to-toe with Lucien Smith, Dan Colen, Parker Ito or Jacob Kassay?
So New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair weren't entirely successful as works of participatory art, but shooting paintballs at canvases was a whole lot of fun. All art fairs should include a paintball firing range.
Monday, August 26, 2013
A Certain Voluntary Association of Artists
Robert Boyd
Someone, often an artist, owns or has access to a space that can be subdivided into studios. Maybe it was a warehouse once upon a time. The space is rented out to other artists. These artists need space to do their work. You end up with buildings devoted to the production of art. These buildings come into being for awhile, are inhabited by artists, then go away. If you own one of these buildings, artists renting it is just a way to keep cash flowing in after the building has outlived its original industrial/warehouse use but before the neighborhood gets gentrified. The building's occupation by artists is just a part of its journey. But for the artists who work there (and sometimes surreptitiously live there), this building can become the site of a community where ideas evolve and are traded, where work is critiqued by one's peers, where collaborative works can be initiated.
Commerce Street Artist Warehouse was a legendary space founded by Rick Lowe, Wes Hicks, Kevin Cunningham, Deborah Moore and Robert Campbell in 1985. If a certain era of Houston's art history can be said to have culminated with the Fresh Paint show in 1985, then another era can be said to have begun with the establishment of CSAW that same year. Many of Houston's best artists worked there at one time or another, and the energy seems to have been tremendous. But that ended in 2008 when artists were forced to move out. (The story is told here, here and here.) Some of the artists who left were Michael Henderson, Kathy Kelley, Whitney Riley, Teresa O’Connor, Elaine Bradford and Young Min Kang. They quickly found a new space, where they hoped to avoid the latter-day mistakes of CSAW. In February 2008, they moved into an old storefront on Harrisburg at Cesar Chavez. This new space was Box 13.

Box 13 in 2010
I first encountered the Box in 2009, right when I was starting this blog. As a studio space, it has its problems. The A/C apparently is never very cool in some studio spaces. The studios didn't have doors initially. It's a bit off the beaten path. And there are lots of other studio spaces in town--artists are not starved for choice. There's Winter Street, Spring Street, Summer Street, Hardy & Nance, the Houston Foundry, Independence Studios, Mother Dog Studios, El Rincón Social, and probably others I'm blanking on. A friend of mine was looking around for studio space and checked out Spring Street Studios. He was tempted by its spacious hallways--ideal for exhibiting work--and efficient air-conditioning. It was clean and nice. But he chose Box 13. Because in the end, a studio is not a building. It's a group of artists. And Box 13 was where the artists he wanted to share space with were.
Therefore, it makes sense that Art League would be interested in hosting a Box 13 show. It's not like the Box 13 artists are a collective, nor could it be said that they have much in common with each other, except perhaps for a certain conceptual approach. And their membership is continually in flux. But perhaps more than any other studio in town, except for maybe El Rincón Social, Box 13 has an adventurous, exciting program of exhibits, including exhibits of its own members' work.
The Trojan Box, the show of Box 13 artists at The Art League, is uncurated. Essentially artists were told to bring in work and that's what got shown. While there is work in the show that I would never have thought about exhibiting together (David McClain's painting and Quinn Hagood's objects, for example), overall my impression is that it works. There is an overall high level of quality that strikes one and helps paper over the occasionally conflicting aesthetic values of the individual pieces.

Daniel Bertalot, Maps for Ghost Limb Project (detail), 18 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches
Daniel Bertalot hand drew maps and hand lettered little statements in pencil on newsprint, which were given away at the opening. The work involved in creating these giveaways must have been tremendous. I thought the statement was a little over-determining. It explained too much. But it was beautifully lettered. The map was drawn do small I had to use a magnifying glass to read it. (This probably says more about my old eyes than anything else.) But aside from that, it was a perfectly useful if eccentric map. The day after the opening, I followed it to where it lead, over in the Second Ward.

Daniel Bertalot, one of the Ghost Limbs
This is what I found. He had taken a tree branch, stripped it of leaves and painted it white, and attached it to a telephone pole. The title Ghost Limbs was literal. A ghostly white limb was reattached to a thing that had once been a tree. Clever and beautiful. In addition to what Bertalot wrote in his explanation, I was also reminded of "ghost bikes," the white painted bicycles left in spots where a cyclist was killed by a car. The idea that a place or object is "haunted" by its history is given a kind of literal representation in this piece. Also, I liked that the piece wasn't "complete" until the viewer went on a little exploration. How many recipients of the map (which were all given away on opening night) followed through? If you got one of these maps, did you follow it to the end? Let me know in the comments.
Michele Chen Dubose, Labyrinth, 2013, oil on canvas
I don't understand the title of Michelle Chen Dubose's Labyrinth, but the subject matter is clear enough--a blurred landscape, as if from a photo taken from of swiftly moving car. The image of the landscape takes the top two thirds of the canvas. The bottom third is left white. The white area is an area of absence, including an absence of motion, which placed under the landscape portion makes it seem as if it is speeding by all the faster. When you see a "blurred" painting, you are likely to think of Gerhard Richter. But in Michelle Chen's case, I think more of Italian futurist painters like Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni, who tried so hard to depict motion early in the 20th century. For them, the blur had not yet become a universal shorthand for motion. Now, anyone looking at Labyrinth will see a depiction of speed.

Jonathan Leach. "W.F.", 2013, acrylic on plexiglass, 43 x 37 x 5 inches
Describing the materials in Jonathan Leach's "W.F." as "acrylic on plexiglass" isn't the whole story. A lot of the lines on the surface of "W.F." are inscribed or etched into the surface of the plexiglass. They make a visible line on the surface and cast a shadow on the wall behind. And the shadow itself is a big part of what you see. Looking at it, I wonder if Leach had control over the lighting. Did he place the track light in just the right spot to cast just the right shadows? "W.F." is kind of a barely-there painting. The thin painted lines and thin inscribed lines cover a minimal part of the surface of the plexiglass. Leach is heading into Larry Bell territory here. "W.F." is an ethereal art machine.

David McClain, Untitled, 2013, acrylic, saliva, semen, graphite, 36 x 48 inches
The extreme opposite of "W.F." is David McClain's painting. I was impressed when I saw it--the raw Baselitz-like painting felt like the real thing and not a pastiche of earlier expressionist work. I make this distinction because I think it's hard to make convincing work that has the ability to shock. But I was startled by this, even before I noticed the giant angry red cock. (In fact, I don't think the cock was necessary, really.) This muscular animal strides out of the sky into your nightmare. It is a very strong image. But then reading the materials made me go "ew." There are no circumstances where it is OK for David McClain's jiz to enter my conscious awareness, even in passing. Thanks a lot, McClain.

Quinn Hagood, untitled, 2013, mixed media and found objects, 9 x 7 x 31 inches
Perhaps the horror of McClain's painting make it the right piece to hang next to Quinn Hagood's ultra-disturbing installation. It consists of our labeled jars filled with liquid and some chicken-like flesh.
Quinn Hagood, untitled (detail), 2013, mixed media and found objects, 9 x 7 x 31 inches
The labels indicate that these are lab experiments of some kind. The main thing seemed to be whether or not the "muscle mass" was "desirable" or "undesireable." It's impossible to look at these without feeling queasy. At the same time, you ask yourself what the hell? Is this art? Is Hagood creating a pastiche of a science experiment?
Quinn Hagood, untitled (detail), 2013, mixed media and found objects, 9 x 7 x 31 inches
The words "ARBF Initiative" provide a clue. The ARBF Initiative has a website which describes its scientific mission. It is seeking to create a chicken-like organism that solves the many problems associated with the factory farming of chickens (the cruelty or it, especially). It seeks to create the following organism:
is built around the premise of such bizarre genetically modified organisms (she even includes a chicken-derived GMO designed to create chicken McNuggets). That's what I think is going on here--the ARBF Initiative is a fiction like Oryx and Crake, but one designed to be convincingly real. Of course, putting these things in an art show reminds you of their fictional nature. But that knowledge doesn't make me feel any less queasy for looking at them. Given the rise of so-called "ag gag" laws, convincing fictions may be the only way to have public discussions of these issues.

Kathy Kelley, i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts, remnant rubber, plaster, wax, clips
The third piece in the "freaky animal trilogy" is Kathy Kelley's i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts, which may remind you of a piebald elephant head. Or an alien space suit. It has a palpable presence that makes you think it is a thing, not an abstract three-dimensional form. It uses her favorite material--reclaimed rubber from old innertubes--but adds what is to me a new element--the white top. It was made with plaster and polished with wax, giving it a bone or ivory-like quality. I won't say i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts is beautiful, but it is compelling. I have to look at it--it really dominates the room. (An amazing achievement considering that the room is full of very interesting artworks.) And at the risk of sounding like Charles Kinbote, the title of this piece describes something I personally experience on a regular basis.

Dennis Harper, The Great Pan Head Is Dead, 2013, paper, foam board, mylar, pedestal, 36 x 24 x 36 inches
A work seemingly designed to excite my Kinbote-like impulses is Dennis Harper's The Great Pan Head Is Dead. This is actually a part of a larger artwork, Motorcycle, that Harper disassembled. (I showed Motorcycle in a show I curated called Pan Y Circos in 2011.) Weirdly enough, it is the second motorcycle engine artwork I've seen--James Drake did one, too. Harper's is bigger and shinier, and more important, it references my blog. What critic could ask for more?
These are just a few of the impressive works in the exhibit. It's a cornucopia of interesting artwork. I could have picked seven other pieces to write about from this show that are just as interesting and visually compelling as the pieces I chose to write about here. The overall level of quality is that high. The Trojan Box is on display through September 20 at the Art League.
Someone, often an artist, owns or has access to a space that can be subdivided into studios. Maybe it was a warehouse once upon a time. The space is rented out to other artists. These artists need space to do their work. You end up with buildings devoted to the production of art. These buildings come into being for awhile, are inhabited by artists, then go away. If you own one of these buildings, artists renting it is just a way to keep cash flowing in after the building has outlived its original industrial/warehouse use but before the neighborhood gets gentrified. The building's occupation by artists is just a part of its journey. But for the artists who work there (and sometimes surreptitiously live there), this building can become the site of a community where ideas evolve and are traded, where work is critiqued by one's peers, where collaborative works can be initiated.
Commerce Street Artist Warehouse was a legendary space founded by Rick Lowe, Wes Hicks, Kevin Cunningham, Deborah Moore and Robert Campbell in 1985. If a certain era of Houston's art history can be said to have culminated with the Fresh Paint show in 1985, then another era can be said to have begun with the establishment of CSAW that same year. Many of Houston's best artists worked there at one time or another, and the energy seems to have been tremendous. But that ended in 2008 when artists were forced to move out. (The story is told here, here and here.) Some of the artists who left were Michael Henderson, Kathy Kelley, Whitney Riley, Teresa O’Connor, Elaine Bradford and Young Min Kang. They quickly found a new space, where they hoped to avoid the latter-day mistakes of CSAW. In February 2008, they moved into an old storefront on Harrisburg at Cesar Chavez. This new space was Box 13.

Box 13 in 2010
I first encountered the Box in 2009, right when I was starting this blog. As a studio space, it has its problems. The A/C apparently is never very cool in some studio spaces. The studios didn't have doors initially. It's a bit off the beaten path. And there are lots of other studio spaces in town--artists are not starved for choice. There's Winter Street, Spring Street, Summer Street, Hardy & Nance, the Houston Foundry, Independence Studios, Mother Dog Studios, El Rincón Social, and probably others I'm blanking on. A friend of mine was looking around for studio space and checked out Spring Street Studios. He was tempted by its spacious hallways--ideal for exhibiting work--and efficient air-conditioning. It was clean and nice. But he chose Box 13. Because in the end, a studio is not a building. It's a group of artists. And Box 13 was where the artists he wanted to share space with were.
Therefore, it makes sense that Art League would be interested in hosting a Box 13 show. It's not like the Box 13 artists are a collective, nor could it be said that they have much in common with each other, except perhaps for a certain conceptual approach. And their membership is continually in flux. But perhaps more than any other studio in town, except for maybe El Rincón Social, Box 13 has an adventurous, exciting program of exhibits, including exhibits of its own members' work.
The Trojan Box, the show of Box 13 artists at The Art League, is uncurated. Essentially artists were told to bring in work and that's what got shown. While there is work in the show that I would never have thought about exhibiting together (David McClain's painting and Quinn Hagood's objects, for example), overall my impression is that it works. There is an overall high level of quality that strikes one and helps paper over the occasionally conflicting aesthetic values of the individual pieces.

Daniel Bertalot, Maps for Ghost Limb Project (detail), 18 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches
Daniel Bertalot hand drew maps and hand lettered little statements in pencil on newsprint, which were given away at the opening. The work involved in creating these giveaways must have been tremendous. I thought the statement was a little over-determining. It explained too much. But it was beautifully lettered. The map was drawn do small I had to use a magnifying glass to read it. (This probably says more about my old eyes than anything else.) But aside from that, it was a perfectly useful if eccentric map. The day after the opening, I followed it to where it lead, over in the Second Ward.
Daniel Bertalot, one of the Ghost Limbs
This is what I found. He had taken a tree branch, stripped it of leaves and painted it white, and attached it to a telephone pole. The title Ghost Limbs was literal. A ghostly white limb was reattached to a thing that had once been a tree. Clever and beautiful. In addition to what Bertalot wrote in his explanation, I was also reminded of "ghost bikes," the white painted bicycles left in spots where a cyclist was killed by a car. The idea that a place or object is "haunted" by its history is given a kind of literal representation in this piece. Also, I liked that the piece wasn't "complete" until the viewer went on a little exploration. How many recipients of the map (which were all given away on opening night) followed through? If you got one of these maps, did you follow it to the end? Let me know in the comments.
Michele Chen Dubose, Labyrinth, 2013, oil on canvas
I don't understand the title of Michelle Chen Dubose's Labyrinth, but the subject matter is clear enough--a blurred landscape, as if from a photo taken from of swiftly moving car. The image of the landscape takes the top two thirds of the canvas. The bottom third is left white. The white area is an area of absence, including an absence of motion, which placed under the landscape portion makes it seem as if it is speeding by all the faster. When you see a "blurred" painting, you are likely to think of Gerhard Richter. But in Michelle Chen's case, I think more of Italian futurist painters like Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni, who tried so hard to depict motion early in the 20th century. For them, the blur had not yet become a universal shorthand for motion. Now, anyone looking at Labyrinth will see a depiction of speed.
Jonathan Leach. "W.F.", 2013, acrylic on plexiglass, 43 x 37 x 5 inches
Describing the materials in Jonathan Leach's "W.F." as "acrylic on plexiglass" isn't the whole story. A lot of the lines on the surface of "W.F." are inscribed or etched into the surface of the plexiglass. They make a visible line on the surface and cast a shadow on the wall behind. And the shadow itself is a big part of what you see. Looking at it, I wonder if Leach had control over the lighting. Did he place the track light in just the right spot to cast just the right shadows? "W.F." is kind of a barely-there painting. The thin painted lines and thin inscribed lines cover a minimal part of the surface of the plexiglass. Leach is heading into Larry Bell territory here. "W.F." is an ethereal art machine.
David McClain, Untitled, 2013, acrylic, saliva, semen, graphite, 36 x 48 inches
The extreme opposite of "W.F." is David McClain's painting. I was impressed when I saw it--the raw Baselitz-like painting felt like the real thing and not a pastiche of earlier expressionist work. I make this distinction because I think it's hard to make convincing work that has the ability to shock. But I was startled by this, even before I noticed the giant angry red cock. (In fact, I don't think the cock was necessary, really.) This muscular animal strides out of the sky into your nightmare. It is a very strong image. But then reading the materials made me go "ew." There are no circumstances where it is OK for David McClain's jiz to enter my conscious awareness, even in passing. Thanks a lot, McClain.
Quinn Hagood, untitled, 2013, mixed media and found objects, 9 x 7 x 31 inches
Perhaps the horror of McClain's painting make it the right piece to hang next to Quinn Hagood's ultra-disturbing installation. It consists of our labeled jars filled with liquid and some chicken-like flesh.
Quinn Hagood, untitled (detail), 2013, mixed media and found objects, 9 x 7 x 31 inches
The labels indicate that these are lab experiments of some kind. The main thing seemed to be whether or not the "muscle mass" was "desirable" or "undesireable." It's impossible to look at these without feeling queasy. At the same time, you ask yourself what the hell? Is this art? Is Hagood creating a pastiche of a science experiment?
Quinn Hagood, untitled (detail), 2013, mixed media and found objects, 9 x 7 x 31 inches
The words "ARBF Initiative" provide a clue. The ARBF Initiative has a website which describes its scientific mission. It is seeking to create a chicken-like organism that solves the many problems associated with the factory farming of chickens (the cruelty or it, especially). It seeks to create the following organism:
Organism able to procreate within viable budget standardsThis sounds pretty sick, but when you consider that cow muscle has been grown in a laboratory, it's not out of the realm of possibility. Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake
Organism able to rely on nutrient rich sustainable glucose-fructose based feed
Organism able to self induce tissue building anaerobic exercise and maintenance
Organism able to regulate immune system without the assistance of antibiotics
Organism able to produce and fertilize ovum
Organism’s tissues less undesirable for consumers to prepare and serve
Organism’s tissues devoid major arteries to detract from undesirable qualities
Organism devoid of undesirable adipose tissue
Rudimentary brain capable of only basic respiratory and cardiac functions
Elimination of all appendages, complex organs, and tissues not required for egg production
Increased abundance of nutrients present in organism’s tissues
Kathy Kelley, i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts, remnant rubber, plaster, wax, clips
The third piece in the "freaky animal trilogy" is Kathy Kelley's i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts, which may remind you of a piebald elephant head. Or an alien space suit. It has a palpable presence that makes you think it is a thing, not an abstract three-dimensional form. It uses her favorite material--reclaimed rubber from old innertubes--but adds what is to me a new element--the white top. It was made with plaster and polished with wax, giving it a bone or ivory-like quality. I won't say i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts is beautiful, but it is compelling. I have to look at it--it really dominates the room. (An amazing achievement considering that the room is full of very interesting artworks.) And at the risk of sounding like Charles Kinbote, the title of this piece describes something I personally experience on a regular basis.
Dennis Harper, The Great Pan Head Is Dead, 2013, paper, foam board, mylar, pedestal, 36 x 24 x 36 inches
A work seemingly designed to excite my Kinbote-like impulses is Dennis Harper's The Great Pan Head Is Dead. This is actually a part of a larger artwork, Motorcycle, that Harper disassembled. (I showed Motorcycle in a show I curated called Pan Y Circos in 2011.) Weirdly enough, it is the second motorcycle engine artwork I've seen--James Drake did one, too. Harper's is bigger and shinier, and more important, it references my blog. What critic could ask for more?
These are just a few of the impressive works in the exhibit. It's a cornucopia of interesting artwork. I could have picked seven other pieces to write about from this show that are just as interesting and visually compelling as the pieces I chose to write about here. The overall level of quality is that high. The Trojan Box is on display through September 20 at the Art League.

Saturday, July 20, 2013
More from the Big Show
Betsy Huete, Dean Liscum and Robert Boyd
I couldn't settle on just five pieces to write about from the Big Show, so I arbitrarily decided that I'd create an "honorable mention" post and forced my co-writers to contribute. Betsy, Dean and I chose five, and then chose a bunch more that we liked. And here they are.

Carrie Green Markello, King , 2013, Acrylic on board, 24 x 18 inches
Why does this boy, held captive in "glamour shot" pose, look so mischievous? What is he up to, and why is he enveloped in a black void? No one knows except Markello, but there is something memorably radioactive about the entire painting.--BH

Chadwick + Spector, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (after Lucas Cranach), 2011, cibachrome print, 45 x 29.5 inches
Getting freaky with it. Hieronymus Bosch-inspired but instead of using fruit, these artists use humans. Look closely.--DL

David McClain, Verlaine & Rimbaud, 2013, Acrylic and pencil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches
I'm not sure which is Verlaine and which is Rimbaud but their love child lives in Austin. Kidding aside, the comics interfere with the brilliant execution.--DL
All those museumgoers that scoff at a Pollock or a Kline, mumbling, “My three year old could do that,” are completely unaware of just how talented three-year-olds can be. In Verlaine & Rimbaud, David McClain convincingly melds an innocent primitivism and severe aggression in a way that exemplifies the poets’ passionate and tumultuous relationship.--BH

Camille Warmington, Unsee, 2013, pencil and polycolor pencil on board, 12 x 12 inches
Camille Warmington's Unsee seems the more conventional of her two paintings (ironically, since Unsee is abstract and her other painting, Setting Yourself Adrift, is a painting of a house). But I love her acidic colors, her handling of paint, and the modest size. It reminds me a little of Howard Hodgkin, but without the comfy feeling of domesticity one finds in Hodgkin.--RB

Jorge Imperio, Elegant #2, 2013, C-print, 13.5 x 13.5 inches
I’m assuming Imperio’s title was tongue-in-cheek, but there is something elegant about this image after all. Situated under an empty, large gaudy frame, it’s the most lavish sick bed I’ve ever seen. Everything in the shot feels completely out of place yet legitimately believable--BH

Galina Kurlat, Deborah, 2012, archival pigment print, 18 x 24 inches
Galina Kurlat recently had a powerful show at the Emergency Room, so I was pleased to see her work here. Deborah is from her portrait series Safe Distance. These photos involve some manipulation of the negative process and deliberate degradation, which can clearly be see here. Knowing nothing about the actual "Deborah," this image, combining the subject's calm demeanor and the intentionally damaged print, suggest some past trauma. The meaning is not in the image, but in the process.

Galina Kurlat, Sanctuary (untitled) 1, 2011, C-print, 16 x 20 inches
Galina didn't create this surrealistic monument, but she had the good sense to photograph it.--DL
Sanctuary comes from a series of the same name showing isolated trees in seemingly harsh and unforgiving landscapes. It's hard to imaging a more unforgiving environment than a beached barge, and yet this one has a tree growing out of it. The image is a large-scale black and white Polaroid, made with a kind of film that is no longer manufactured. One of the appealing aspects of Kurlat's photography is this sense of antiquity. Her photographs look like they were made long ago and survived many vicissitudes before being discovered by viewers in the present. Of course, this is a carefully wrought illusion, but a beautiful one.--RB

Happy Valentine, Code Blue, 2013, Diagnostic images and original music, 1 minute 9 second video
I have no idea what's actually occurring in this video. It's a brain scan of some sort...an electromagnetic lobotomy? Your brain on drugs? Your brain under the influence of a political ad, a Reality TV show, an orgasm? The ambiguity makes it more haunting, more beautiful, and only a little scary.--DL

Kay Sarver, Pollinate Me, 2013, oil on wood, 48 x 32 x 3 inches
Kay Sarver created a painting that is half Alphonse Mucha and half organic honey product label. The nude woman has a circle of bees flying around her head and is pregnant with a beehive full of honey. She kneels in a field of sunflowers, surrounded by a turtle, squirrel and rabbit. Green and pink predominate. And the title, Pollinate Me, adds a jocose element of sexuality. The image is so over-the-top that my love for it crosses to the other side of my defensive mountain of cynicism and irony. I don't "love" this crazy painting--I just plain love it.
Luna Bella Gajdos, Carnivore, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
There’s something anxious about this painting, as if the irreverent gestures stand on a precipice of falling into complete chaos, held together by a few contour lines. While I normally think signatures on work should be relegated to Etsy and old women painting kittens and lamps, it really works here; it’s situated like a thought bubble coming out of the dinosaur’s mouth, as if it is speaking directly to the artist. Or maybe it’s a self-portrait and Gajdos is introducing herself.--BH
When I saw Luna Gajdos's Carnivore, I really dug the deliberately crude, childlike drawing. When I read that Gajdos is only seven years old, I dug it even more.--RB

Jennifer Ellison, Antique Figurine & the Machine That Made It, 2013, mixed media assemblage, 115 x 23 x 18 inches
Antique Figurine & the Machine That Made It by Jennifer Ellison has the folklore-science-fiction feel that makes it a little crafty, a little quirky, a little cute. I'm willing to bet she's Joseph Cornell and Dominique De Menil's long lost love child.--DL
Kia Neill, Fossilization, Erosion, and Evolution No. 2, 2013, graphite, acrylic, ink and gouache on Yupo, 29 x 40 inches
The amoeba from which I descended (and pretty much controls my brain) just lights up when it sees Neill's work.--DL

Ellen Phillips, Tidal Ice, 2013, acrylic and graphite on paper, 24 x 18 inches
In a show like the Big Show, it's hard to even notice quiet works like Ellen Phillips' Tidal Ice. Phillips is another artist about whom I know nothing (and Google is not helping me out). Which is to say that I know just as much about her as juror Duncan MacKenzie did. What's left are a few pencil scrawls and white brush strokes on a yellowish piece of paper. So what did I like about it? I guess the cool grey against the warm paper appealed to me and the quality of "not drawing" in the pencil marks. It's a work I can just look at and feel pleasure in looking.--RB

John Slaby, The Commander, 2012, oil on paper, 7 x 14 inches
John Slaby's The Commander is the artistic representation of my management and parenting philosophy. It's also really well-balanced, with a lovely color palette...for a psychopath.--DL

Leo Medrano, Strange Friends (left), 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 5 x 3 x 3 inches, and End of the Road (right), 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 11 x 3 x 3 inches
Leo Medrano, Strange Friends, 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 5 x 3 x 3 inches

Leo Medrano, Strange Friends, 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 5 x 3 x 3 inches
Medrano brings kitsch and fear together in a way that my grandmother would snicker at and then use as an object lesson. "Listen here. If a large hairy beast tries to befriend you in the woods..."--DL

Leo Medrano, End of the Road (detail), 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 11 x 3 x 3 inches

Leo Medrano, End of the Road (detail), 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 11 x 3 x 3 inches
I know Leo Medrano as a magazine publisher (Role A|F|M) first and an artist second. What I had seen of his art was painted under the name "Leosapien" and seemed like a mixture of street art and pop surrealism/low brow art. I can't say it ever made much of an impression on me. End of the Road and Strange Friends, however, really impressed me. They seem utterly different from his earlier artistic output.
End of the Road is a tiny sculptural tableau depicting a Hollywood movie-style standoff. A man standing beside a VW Bug is holding a gun to a woman's head and is being confronted by another man holding a rifle. The sculpture is tiny--the figures are less than an inch high. The whole thing is encased in glass. It reminds me of the ship in a bottle sculptures people make. The description says that it is made of architectural scale model pieces, but Medrano must have altered them. I assume you can't get a 1/32 scale model of a guy with a gun to a woman's head off the shelf.
By placing it under glass, Medrano is suggesting a frozen moment in time to be studied, something to be preserved, something fragile. Obviously the image of a ship in a bottle comes to mind, as does the shrunken Kryptonian city of Kandor (and Mike Kelley's many Kandor sculptures). There is something mad-scientist-like about examining these scenes in a glass container, a giant test-tube. The dispassionate presentation of the scene, as if they are specimens under glass, is disquieting.--RB

Susannah Mira, Minature Black Cloud, 2012neoprene foam and wire, dimensions variable
Susannah Mira's "cloud" is simple, repetitive, unobtrusive, but lasting. It hung in my mind through out the duration of my visit and long after.--DL

John Adelman, 32,173 Stitch, 2012, gel, ink on paper mounted on panel, 35 x 48 inches
John Adelman's obsessive-compulsive aesthetic style always connects with that OCD portion of my personality. His work will probably never really change and my enjoyment of it also will probably never wane.--DL
John Adelman's work is the result of an obsessive process. 32,173 Stitch looks like a blue and black shape from a distance, forming a ragged angle at the top and dissolving along the bottom. But when you get close, you see a series of irregular black marks of various sizes with the word "stitch" in blue next to each one. Based on what I know of his previous work, I'm going to guess that those black marks represent some actual thing--perhaps little bits of thread?--that he has carefully drawn. Whatever this thing is, he has drawn 32,173 of them and written the word stitch that many times. And I assume that the process was figured out before he put a single mark on the paper. I've written about Adelman in the past, and what I said then applies to this piece as well. His work is fascinating, rigorous and yet strangely beautiful--RB

John Adelman, 32,173 Stitch (detail), 2012, gel, ink on paper mounted on panel, 35 x 48 inches

Felipe Contreras, Nice Cliff, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
Felipe Contreras also goes by the name Furm. You can see some more of his work under the name Furm at Peveto in its Funkmotor exhibit. Nice Cliff and the pieces in Funkmotor all share a common feature--the white and orange diagonal stripes, the type one sees on roadblocks used by police or road construction crews. It's a simple yet powerful symbol, and Contreras' use of it is playful. In Nice Cliff, he has taken an image of a majestic mountain and rendered it in a faded-back duotone, layering the orange and white caution stripes over it. The Ruscha-like type, written as a hole in the image, adds a flippant irony to the proceedings.--RB
Terry Crump, Lucky Day, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
In Crump, I think I've found one of Paul Gauguin's direct descendants. I want to vacation in Crump's aesthetic.--DL
Terry Crump's Lucky Day includes images associated with luck (good and bad)--cards and dice--but central to it is a large pacing tiger in profile, turning its head to look at us. It (and the other figures in the painting--a rabbit, a frog, a bird) are drawn with a black outline and appear somewhat tarnsparent against a background of splashy, riotous color. It's the color that attracted me to this curious painting. Intense and painterly, I suspect Matisse is an influence. The way the color is laid down behind a line drawing, for example, reminds me of The Red Studio. The large size of the canvas is an important factor in what makes Lucky Day work--it forces the viewer to step back to take in the totality of the image. Crump is one of those people that I love to find at The Big Show--a very interesting Houston-area artist who I have never heard of before. After four years of writing this blog, you wouldn't think there'd be any left, but I'm constantly surprised.--RB
I couldn't settle on just five pieces to write about from the Big Show, so I arbitrarily decided that I'd create an "honorable mention" post and forced my co-writers to contribute. Betsy, Dean and I chose five, and then chose a bunch more that we liked. And here they are.
Carrie Green Markello, King , 2013, Acrylic on board, 24 x 18 inches
Why does this boy, held captive in "glamour shot" pose, look so mischievous? What is he up to, and why is he enveloped in a black void? No one knows except Markello, but there is something memorably radioactive about the entire painting.--BH
Chadwick + Spector, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (after Lucas Cranach), 2011, cibachrome print, 45 x 29.5 inches
Getting freaky with it. Hieronymus Bosch-inspired but instead of using fruit, these artists use humans. Look closely.--DL
David McClain, Verlaine & Rimbaud, 2013, Acrylic and pencil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches
I'm not sure which is Verlaine and which is Rimbaud but their love child lives in Austin. Kidding aside, the comics interfere with the brilliant execution.--DL
All those museumgoers that scoff at a Pollock or a Kline, mumbling, “My three year old could do that,” are completely unaware of just how talented three-year-olds can be. In Verlaine & Rimbaud, David McClain convincingly melds an innocent primitivism and severe aggression in a way that exemplifies the poets’ passionate and tumultuous relationship.--BH
Camille Warmington, Unsee, 2013, pencil and polycolor pencil on board, 12 x 12 inches
Camille Warmington's Unsee seems the more conventional of her two paintings (ironically, since Unsee is abstract and her other painting, Setting Yourself Adrift, is a painting of a house). But I love her acidic colors, her handling of paint, and the modest size. It reminds me a little of Howard Hodgkin, but without the comfy feeling of domesticity one finds in Hodgkin.--RB

Jorge Imperio, Elegant #2, 2013, C-print, 13.5 x 13.5 inches
I’m assuming Imperio’s title was tongue-in-cheek, but there is something elegant about this image after all. Situated under an empty, large gaudy frame, it’s the most lavish sick bed I’ve ever seen. Everything in the shot feels completely out of place yet legitimately believable--BH
Galina Kurlat, Deborah, 2012, archival pigment print, 18 x 24 inches
Galina Kurlat recently had a powerful show at the Emergency Room, so I was pleased to see her work here. Deborah is from her portrait series Safe Distance. These photos involve some manipulation of the negative process and deliberate degradation, which can clearly be see here. Knowing nothing about the actual "Deborah," this image, combining the subject's calm demeanor and the intentionally damaged print, suggest some past trauma. The meaning is not in the image, but in the process.
Galina Kurlat, Sanctuary (untitled) 1, 2011, C-print, 16 x 20 inches
Galina didn't create this surrealistic monument, but she had the good sense to photograph it.--DL
Sanctuary comes from a series of the same name showing isolated trees in seemingly harsh and unforgiving landscapes. It's hard to imaging a more unforgiving environment than a beached barge, and yet this one has a tree growing out of it. The image is a large-scale black and white Polaroid, made with a kind of film that is no longer manufactured. One of the appealing aspects of Kurlat's photography is this sense of antiquity. Her photographs look like they were made long ago and survived many vicissitudes before being discovered by viewers in the present. Of course, this is a carefully wrought illusion, but a beautiful one.--RB
Happy Valentine, Code Blue, 2013, Diagnostic images and original music, 1 minute 9 second video
I have no idea what's actually occurring in this video. It's a brain scan of some sort...an electromagnetic lobotomy? Your brain on drugs? Your brain under the influence of a political ad, a Reality TV show, an orgasm? The ambiguity makes it more haunting, more beautiful, and only a little scary.--DL
Kay Sarver, Pollinate Me, 2013, oil on wood, 48 x 32 x 3 inches
Kay Sarver created a painting that is half Alphonse Mucha and half organic honey product label. The nude woman has a circle of bees flying around her head and is pregnant with a beehive full of honey. She kneels in a field of sunflowers, surrounded by a turtle, squirrel and rabbit. Green and pink predominate. And the title, Pollinate Me, adds a jocose element of sexuality. The image is so over-the-top that my love for it crosses to the other side of my defensive mountain of cynicism and irony. I don't "love" this crazy painting--I just plain love it.
Luna Bella Gajdos, Carnivore, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
There’s something anxious about this painting, as if the irreverent gestures stand on a precipice of falling into complete chaos, held together by a few contour lines. While I normally think signatures on work should be relegated to Etsy and old women painting kittens and lamps, it really works here; it’s situated like a thought bubble coming out of the dinosaur’s mouth, as if it is speaking directly to the artist. Or maybe it’s a self-portrait and Gajdos is introducing herself.--BH
When I saw Luna Gajdos's Carnivore, I really dug the deliberately crude, childlike drawing. When I read that Gajdos is only seven years old, I dug it even more.--RB
Jennifer Ellison, Antique Figurine & the Machine That Made It, 2013, mixed media assemblage, 115 x 23 x 18 inches
Antique Figurine & the Machine That Made It by Jennifer Ellison has the folklore-science-fiction feel that makes it a little crafty, a little quirky, a little cute. I'm willing to bet she's Joseph Cornell and Dominique De Menil's long lost love child.--DL

The amoeba from which I descended (and pretty much controls my brain) just lights up when it sees Neill's work.--DL
Ellen Phillips, Tidal Ice, 2013, acrylic and graphite on paper, 24 x 18 inches
In a show like the Big Show, it's hard to even notice quiet works like Ellen Phillips' Tidal Ice. Phillips is another artist about whom I know nothing (and Google is not helping me out). Which is to say that I know just as much about her as juror Duncan MacKenzie did. What's left are a few pencil scrawls and white brush strokes on a yellowish piece of paper. So what did I like about it? I guess the cool grey against the warm paper appealed to me and the quality of "not drawing" in the pencil marks. It's a work I can just look at and feel pleasure in looking.--RB
John Slaby, The Commander, 2012, oil on paper, 7 x 14 inches
John Slaby's The Commander is the artistic representation of my management and parenting philosophy. It's also really well-balanced, with a lovely color palette...for a psychopath.--DL
Leo Medrano, Strange Friends (left), 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 5 x 3 x 3 inches, and End of the Road (right), 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 11 x 3 x 3 inches
Leo Medrano, Strange Friends, 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 5 x 3 x 3 inches
Leo Medrano, Strange Friends, 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 5 x 3 x 3 inches
Medrano brings kitsch and fear together in a way that my grandmother would snicker at and then use as an object lesson. "Listen here. If a large hairy beast tries to befriend you in the woods..."--DL
Leo Medrano, End of the Road (detail), 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 11 x 3 x 3 inches
Leo Medrano, End of the Road (detail), 2013, architectural scale model pieces, ballast, acrylic, glass, 11 x 3 x 3 inches
I know Leo Medrano as a magazine publisher (Role A|F|M) first and an artist second. What I had seen of his art was painted under the name "Leosapien" and seemed like a mixture of street art and pop surrealism/low brow art. I can't say it ever made much of an impression on me. End of the Road and Strange Friends, however, really impressed me. They seem utterly different from his earlier artistic output.
End of the Road is a tiny sculptural tableau depicting a Hollywood movie-style standoff. A man standing beside a VW Bug is holding a gun to a woman's head and is being confronted by another man holding a rifle. The sculpture is tiny--the figures are less than an inch high. The whole thing is encased in glass. It reminds me of the ship in a bottle sculptures people make. The description says that it is made of architectural scale model pieces, but Medrano must have altered them. I assume you can't get a 1/32 scale model of a guy with a gun to a woman's head off the shelf.
By placing it under glass, Medrano is suggesting a frozen moment in time to be studied, something to be preserved, something fragile. Obviously the image of a ship in a bottle comes to mind, as does the shrunken Kryptonian city of Kandor (and Mike Kelley's many Kandor sculptures). There is something mad-scientist-like about examining these scenes in a glass container, a giant test-tube. The dispassionate presentation of the scene, as if they are specimens under glass, is disquieting.--RB
Susannah Mira, Minature Black Cloud, 2012neoprene foam and wire, dimensions variable
Susannah Mira's "cloud" is simple, repetitive, unobtrusive, but lasting. It hung in my mind through out the duration of my visit and long after.--DL
John Adelman, 32,173 Stitch, 2012, gel, ink on paper mounted on panel, 35 x 48 inches
John Adelman's obsessive-compulsive aesthetic style always connects with that OCD portion of my personality. His work will probably never really change and my enjoyment of it also will probably never wane.--DL
John Adelman's work is the result of an obsessive process. 32,173 Stitch looks like a blue and black shape from a distance, forming a ragged angle at the top and dissolving along the bottom. But when you get close, you see a series of irregular black marks of various sizes with the word "stitch" in blue next to each one. Based on what I know of his previous work, I'm going to guess that those black marks represent some actual thing--perhaps little bits of thread?--that he has carefully drawn. Whatever this thing is, he has drawn 32,173 of them and written the word stitch that many times. And I assume that the process was figured out before he put a single mark on the paper. I've written about Adelman in the past, and what I said then applies to this piece as well. His work is fascinating, rigorous and yet strangely beautiful--RB
John Adelman, 32,173 Stitch (detail), 2012, gel, ink on paper mounted on panel, 35 x 48 inches
Felipe Contreras, Nice Cliff, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
Felipe Contreras also goes by the name Furm. You can see some more of his work under the name Furm at Peveto in its Funkmotor exhibit. Nice Cliff and the pieces in Funkmotor all share a common feature--the white and orange diagonal stripes, the type one sees on roadblocks used by police or road construction crews. It's a simple yet powerful symbol, and Contreras' use of it is playful. In Nice Cliff, he has taken an image of a majestic mountain and rendered it in a faded-back duotone, layering the orange and white caution stripes over it. The Ruscha-like type, written as a hole in the image, adds a flippant irony to the proceedings.--RB
Terry Crump, Lucky Day, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
In Crump, I think I've found one of Paul Gauguin's direct descendants. I want to vacation in Crump's aesthetic.--DL
Terry Crump's Lucky Day includes images associated with luck (good and bad)--cards and dice--but central to it is a large pacing tiger in profile, turning its head to look at us. It (and the other figures in the painting--a rabbit, a frog, a bird) are drawn with a black outline and appear somewhat tarnsparent against a background of splashy, riotous color. It's the color that attracted me to this curious painting. Intense and painterly, I suspect Matisse is an influence. The way the color is laid down behind a line drawing, for example, reminds me of The Red Studio. The large size of the canvas is an important factor in what makes Lucky Day work--it forces the viewer to step back to take in the totality of the image. Crump is one of those people that I love to find at The Big Show--a very interesting Houston-area artist who I have never heard of before. After four years of writing this blog, you wouldn't think there'd be any left, but I'm constantly surprised.--RB

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