Dallas on a Friday in March

Robert Boyd

There is something about Dallas that makes me want to make grand pronouncements about it, to sum it up in one pithy catch-phrase. Hence the vast three-part post I did in 2012, and a subsequent post that is sort of the antithesis to the first three posts' thesis. I wish I had a similar overarching thing to say about Dallas for this post. I'll outsource that to Paul Middendorf, who recently wrote an excellent two-part overview of the Dallas scene for Glasstire recently. He looked at what was happening in many of the small experimental/grass roots art spaces and tried to draw conclusions from what he saw. I know many of us in Houston look enviously on this scene. Middendorf seems to think that the artists residency CentralTrak and its director, Heyd Fontenot, were really the underlying engine behind a lot of this activity. Without being able to trace CentralTrak's specific influences, this nonetheless rings true to me. So, Middendorf has Dallas pegged, right?

Not so fast. Also in Glasstire recently was a scathing article about the Dallas art scene, "Whites Only: Diversity and the Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas" by Darryl Ratcliff. It uses data about galleries that are members of CADD, the Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas, to show just how lily-white their exhibits are. Looking only at solo shows in 13 CADD galleries over the past 15 months, Ratliff determined that only 16 percent of them featured non-white artists, and only two percent of them were black. He also determined that only 38% of the shows were by women. (The total number of shows was 189.) The general gist here is, Dallas, what the fuck?! (This kind of analysis would be useful to run for Houston as well. My gut feeling is that we'd do better, but how much better?)

So two very diverging views of the Dallas art scene were fresh in my mind as I swept into town.

My first stop Friday was Ware: Wolf: Haus, an alternative space in the shadow of the big Santiago Calatrava bridge over the Trinity River. I guess it's things like Ware: Wolf: Haus that are supposed to help convince Dallasites that this isn't actually a bridge to nowhere. They had a show featuring Matt Koons, Allison Ginsberg and Randy Guthmiller up. But apparently no one from Ware: Wolf: Haus was around, and the other people in the building didn't want to let me go in. "Now is not a good time," I was told. I would subsequently learn that Friday is in general not a good day to try to check out alternative spaces in Dallas.


Apophenia Underground (Jeff Gibbons and Justin Ginsberg), Lock All the Doors, television, video

I crossed the Calatrava and headed into the Design District. At Red Arrow Contemporary, there was a show of work by Apophenia Underground, a collective consisting of Jeff Gibbons and Justin Ginsberg. I was told it would be better to see at night--one of the pieces was a projection onto semitransparent material covering the front windows. It would be visible from outside and inside. That sounded cool and I made a mental note to return later that evening (the galleries in the neighborhood were apparently open late that night). But that night I decided to go see The Grand Budapest Hotel instead.

Apophenia Underground's work at Red Arrow wasn't brilliant. All conceptual work is dependent on the quality of the idea, and this seemed like the kind of conceptual work that Donald Barthelme complained about--too easy. But some of it was visually striking, which for me can turn a weak conceptual artwork into something exciting. There was something mysterious and cool about seeing the video in Lock All the Doors only as a blue shimmery reflection on the floor, for example.


Apophenia Underground (Jeff Gibbons and Justin Ginsberg), Post Cards and Leaf, mailed postcards, leaf, television

Post Cards and Leaf consisted of a sheaf of postcards (not pictured) and a big leaf on top of an old portable television.


Apophenia Underground (Jeff Gibbons and Justin Ginsberg), Post Cards and Leaf, mailed postcards, leaf, television

The TV glowing through the leaf is intriguing, and I liked how the TV image was obscured as it had been in Lock All the Doors. When you crouch down to read the type on the leaf, you will laugh. It's not exactly a work that can be collected (the leaf will curl up and disintegrate eventually, right?). That Red Arrow is showing work like this makes me ask, is Red Arrow in fact a commercial gallery? I think so, but this is unusually adventurous work for a commercial gallery. And that's exciting. I like seeing a gallery that isn't 100% about selling very expensive merchandise.


Geoff Hippenstiel, no title (Mount Saint Victoire), 2014, oil on canvas, 76 x 117 inches

Not that there is anything wrong with selling art. Especially art as pretty as the Geoff Hipenstiel paintings at Holly Johnson Gallery. This was the first of several gallery shows I saw in Dallas featuring the work of Houston artists. I think that it's great that the two cities should share its artists. What I wonder is that for artists selling their work through commercial galleries, does showing in Dallas help--does more work get sold? Does their base of collectors expand? The answer has to be yes, or else Houston artists wouldn't have shows up at Holly Johnson Gallery, Talley Dunn, and Barry Whistler.

But beyond those purely mercantile concerns (probably more interesting to me than to the readers of this blog), the Hippenstiel show is gorgeous. Up to now, I've been dealing with his work in terms of technique and formal matters, but what I realized when I saw this group of paintings was that Hippenstiel is devoted to making paintings that are beautiful, whatever other qualities they may contain. He has long painted images of rounded hills, but with no title (Mount Saint Victoire), he makes for the first time a reference to the greatest hill painter of all, Cezanne. Cezanne was another painter concerned with formal qualities of paint who nonetheless ravished the viewer with the beauty of his paintings. No title (Mount Saint Victoire) is an apt homage.


Geof, Hippenstiel, (left to right) no title (Kobe Zip), no title (Murder Ballad Zip), no title (Teal Zip), 2014, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches (each)

While most of the show is work that feels in line with work Hippenstiel has done before (hills, a large skull), these homages feel like he is staking a claim to the tradition of paintings that are so beautiful that they border on the sublime. Hence his tributes to Barnett Newman. But while Newman was deliberately going for the overwhelming experience of the sublime, Hippenstiel dials it down. His painterly versions of Newman's zips are a bit more polite and domesticated. They're pretty in a way that you would never say of Newman's paintings. That may have been Hippenstiel's intent.


Joshua Goode, Adolescent Unicorn T-Rex Skull with 'No Fear' Bedazzlement, 2013, plaster, steel, paint and beaded bracelet, 40 x 48 x 24 inches

At Ro2 Gallery downtown, there was an exhibit of fake fossils and artifacts putatively from an archeological dig in Europe, including the Adolescent Unicorn T-Rex Skull with 'No Fear' Bedazzlement. Ever since the Museum of Jurassic Technology, "fake natural history" has become its own genre of conceptual art. I can appreciate the elements of institutional critique that originally informed this genre, but this kind of work feels tired and old-hat now. This show, that posited a discovery by artist Joshua Goode of an ancient "Texas" culture in Europe was especially feeble. The show is one big joke which is not redeemed by being particularly funny.


Joseph Havel, installation view of Stacks at Talley Dunn Gallery

I traveled north to Talley Dunn Gallery to see the Joseph Havel show, Stacks. Some of the work on display I had seen at Hiram Butler Gallery back in 2012, but the main work, the sculptures of stacks of books, was new to me. Talley Dunn Gallery reminds me a lot of Hiram Butler Gallery; both feature very tasteful art, some of it blue chip, and both are geographically isolated--they aren't near any other galleries. Someone told me while I was up there that they found it hard to attend openings at Talley Dunn because of this.

I loved Havel's books. Made mostly of poured resin, they were really aimed at people like me--people drowning in books, always reading, never catching up. I had a nightmare last night that someone had stolen my books. But book culture is becoming extinct. I rarely encounter people for whom reading books is an important activity. Not anymore, at least. (Let me shout out to Kaboom Books here in Houston--I walk in that place and I can expect to spend the next thirty minutes discussing books with the owner, who has read everything.)


Joseph Havel, installation view of Stacks at Talley Dunn Gallery

To me, Havel is memorializing that culture here. Except for their vertiginous height, the piles of books he portrays could be taken from my bedroom. By casting them in translucent resin, he effectively turns them into ghosts--ghosts of a period when owlish intellectuals had their own vast personal libraries, hoarded higgledy piggledy in cramped apartments. A silly article in Vice recently brought the demise of this culture home with one line, "He owns more hoodies than books."


Joseph Havel, installation view of Stacks at Talley Dunn Gallery

They looked especially handsome in the cavernous gallery in the back of Talley Dunn. They would look less beautiful in my house. In fact, they'd probably have real books stacked on them. (If Houston readers want to see a Havel book stack in person, there is one in the fountain at CAMH.)


Vernon Fisher, Jocko at Dover

Talley Dunn had an odd selection of other work hung as well, including this great Vernon Fisher painting of World War II military movements in Belgium, but not excluding Nancy, Sluggo, a clown and pixelated battle scenes. I asked the gallery attendant about it, and she launched into an explanation and asked if I had ever read the comics strip Nancy. Boy had I! I used the opportunity to paraphrase Wally Wood--"Sure! After all, it takes more energy not to read Nancy than to read it!"

Next stop was the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University. The campus was beautiful, and the museum stately. The main show up was work by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, and it was nice enough. The beach scenes he painted were fun. But when you see an artist like Sorolla, you understand why Modernism so desperately needed to be invented when it was. I wasn't allowed to take photos of the Sorolla show, but if you click through above, you can see some examples of his art.


Antonio Saura, Portrait of Mari, 2958, oil on canvas

But there was Spanish art there that I really liked, like this energetic Antonio Saura.


Jaume Plensa, Sho, 2007, painted stainless steel

But then here's some Spanish art I hate. Jaume Plensa is one of those artists when you first see their work, you might think it looks pretty cool. But over time, the novelty has worn off and all that's left is its banality. That might be acceptable except for the fact that it has pretends to be intellectual and full of meaning. This transparent, empty head is ironically a good symbol for Plensa's work as a whole. Nobody home.


Santiago Calatrava, Wave, 2001

That the novelty of a piece of art might evolve into banality is a risk with Santiago Calatrava's fountain in front of the Meadows, but for now I like it. Much of Calatrava's work seems to be based on some complex application of physics to engineering (he certainly doesn't seem to very concerned with the human element of architecture), so this is an apt sculpture for him.


Santiago Calatrava, Wave, 2001

The metal parts move, creating a continually propagating wave-form. One reason I like this is that we had a desk-top version of this in my High School physics class back in the 70s. It's a work that fills me with nostalgia.

It was mid-afternoon by now, and I still wanted to see some more stuff. I left the Republican wealth of University Park and headed down to the still somewhat grungy (but gentrifying) neighborhood of Exposition Park, right next to the Texas State Fairgrounds.  My intent was to check out some of the tiny alternative spaces in the neighborhood. First I went to the Power Station (which actually isn't tiny at all).


The Power Station

This once was a facility for Dallas Power & Light, this beautiful building somehow managed to avoid being razed or turned into condos. The day I went, I went through the front door and found a darkened empty space. It was a little freaky. No one was present. The darkness was an intentional feature of the installation. One fluorescent light flickered on and off at regular intervals. Only after a while did I realize that there was some stuff on the floor.


Michael E. Smith, [foreground] Jawbreaker, basketball, bird parts, plastic, rubber, epoxy putty, [background] untitled, bucket hats, plastic, 2014

This was an exhibit by Michael E. Smith. Jawbreaker looked kind of cool. I thought about stealing it, since there was no one around. But fortunately I have some sense of morality left. The pile of hats near Jawbreaker, on the other hand, just made me shrug my shoulders. They wouldn't even be worth the effort of stealing.


Michael E. Smith, untitled, milk jug, parrot feathers, plastic, actuator magnet, 2014

This upside down milk jug was hanging above the side door. There was a little garden on the side of the building, as well as stairs leading up. I climbed them to a mezzanine level, where there was another similar milk jug hanging over the door. Inside were several more objects in the dark, including this disturbing piece.


Michael E. Smith, untitled, wood, child's pajamas, plates, 2014

Weirdly enough, I totally missed two pieces that afternoon. The reason was that even though it was pretty dark in the Power Station (the windows had all been blacked out), there was plenty of sunshine pouring in from the side doors. It was, in fact, a beautiful day in Dallas. It wasn't until I came back the following night that I saw two of the most visually striking pieces.


Michael E. Smith, untitled, altered video, 2014

This video was set in the ceiling two floors up. It's footage of a rescue at sea taken from a helicopter. So the camera is pointing down, and there is something kind of vertiginous about looking up at it. (The chains are leftover bits of hardware from when this was part of DL&P.)


Michael E. Smith, untitled, glass globe, light, plastic coral, 2014

And if you will recall, there were two lights flanking the entrance of the Power Plant. With the simple act of adding plastic coral inside them, Smith turned them into a totally creepy installation. These glowing fleshy protuberances, like perfectly spherical testicles or some alien life form, were the best part of the show.

But over all, the exhibit felt like a waste of that great space. There just wasn't enough there there. The plastic encrusted basket ball, the veiny lights--by themselves, these were intriguing objects. But all together, it didn't add up in any meaningful way. However, I was interested in and impressed by the amount of work Smith put into using the Power Plant itself as a key element of the exhibit--the blacked out windows (obviously a huge amount of work), the single blinking fluorescent tube. And strangely enough, even though I was there for a while, I never saw another living soul. That was perhaps the most memorable thing about the show.

Next I wanted to see 500X, the Reading Room and the Oliver Francis Gallery. 500X was closed and I couldn't find the Reading Room (my phone couldn't map the address, and when I tried to call them, no one answered). Not to worry--I saw both of the spaces Saturday. Francis Oliver Gallery was about a half mile away, and it was such a beautiful day that I decided to walk over.


seen on Main St.

It was worth the walk--this transitional neighborhood had a lot of interesting things to see. If the galleries were going to be closed, I would take in what visual stimulation I could find.


seen on Main St.


seen on East Side Ave.


seen on East Side Ave.


seen on East Side Ave.

I loved that there was a narrow pointed building on this skinny little block.


seen on Commerce St.



Oliver Francis Gallery

But alas, Oliver Francis Gallery was also closed. It would end up being the only alternative space that I wanted to see this weekend that I didn't. At this point, I was all arted out. The quest for art would continue Saturday.

Any big conclusions about Dallas? Not really, but I notice that almost none of the art I saw that Friday was by women. There was a nice piece by Robin O'Neill at Talley Dunn and a not-very-memorable show by Anna Bogatin at Holly Johnson. But that was it. So that kind of validated some of Darryl Ratcliff's findings.

(To be continued.)

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 

Big Frame Up in Austin

Robert Boyd


This giant blue genie had nothing to do with Frame besides being across the parking lot from Big Medium

East Austin has become a locus for Austin's art scene.  Of course there is EAST, the East Austin studio tour, but studios are the loam out of which other things grow--galleries, artists spaces, etc. Frame to me seemed to be about promoting the next stage of the evolution of an art district. Some institutions have sprung up, and to help people realize this, they join their voices like the citizens of Whoville, shouting "We are here!" The four participants were Tiny Park, MASS, Big Medium and Co-Lab. What's interesting is that this grouping includes a commercial gallery, a non-profit and a couple of artist-run spaces.

Big Medium is a nonprofit that organizes EAST and the Texas Biennial. Soon they will have their own storefront space in a new development called Canopy. Right now, Canopy is empty. I think they'd like to full of galleries and complimentary businesses. Big Medium arranged for two of the spaces to be used on a temporary basis. So on the day of Frame, Fahamu Pecou: All Dat Glitters Ain’t Goals (curated by Salvador Castillo) was having its closing night and The F.R. Etchen Collection; Selected Works and More was opening.


Fahamu Pecou at Big Medium

Fahamu Pecou is an Atlanta-based artist who uses self-portraiture, video and performance to reflect on images and stereotypes of black manhood in the era of hiphop. The big canvases were impressive and projected an ironic sense of overblown masculinity, but the videos were the star of the show. They came across as modest and homespun (although they included some clever effects), with forceful but ironic raps.



The other Big Medium show was a show of Russell Etchen's personal art collection. Obviously this is a curatorial idea I have no real objection to. In Etchen's case, a lot of his collection comes from his colleagues in Sketch Klubb, various folks on the Houston art scene who are about his age, bits of comics-related artwork, and other odds and ends. Etchen is a cash-poor collector, which makes his collection all the more interesting--each piece has a story and is not simply the result of a cash exchange.


Mark Flood, Blue Skies for Russell Etchen

For example, Etchen has an astonishing collection of Mark Flood paintings because he designs Flood's publications and is more-or-less a member of the Flood entourage.


Mark Flood, Kitchen Mirror


Clockwise from the top: Jonny Negron drawing; 2 Geoff Hippensteil paintings; Travis Kent, Fan



Johnny Ryan

I loved Johnny Ryan's tribute to D.J. Screw.


Tim Kerr, Coltrane

John Porcellino, Skunk Cabbage

My next stop was MASS Gallery, a co-op operation that includes studios and a giant exhibition space. They were opening with a group show called Wally, which was apparently about the relationship of art to the wall. Unless you are radically examining this concept as William Anastasi did with Six Sites, it seems like a trivial theme for a show. The ways that the work addressed "walls" were not particularly profound. But it was a group show, and the thing about group shows is that one can usually find a few things to like.


Leah Bailis, Cinderblocks, 2013, cardboard and paint

Something like Cinderblocks by Leah Bailis strikes me as painfully obvious in terms of "walls," but quite appealing in terms of being a piece of sculpture. Because of their cardboard structure, they have the feeling of cartoon cinderblocks--the kind that Popeye could bust through easily.


Lee Piechocki, I Have a Lot of Faith in This Model, 2013, plexiglass, wood, sculpy, paint, paper, vinyl, found objects on shelf

As someone whose job revolves around making computer models of real things, I liked I Have a Lot of Faith in This Model by Lee Piechocki. The models I make are generally opaque to the people I make them for, and a lot of what I do is convince them that I believe in the model and that they should as well. This mysterious grouping of objects is also asking us to take it on faith that it works. And I do.


Yashua Klos, Totem, 2011, woodblock prints collaged onto archival paper

And I thought Yashua Klos's Totem was simply beautiful.


Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KC PAC) Open Session 

After checking out the show, I went out into the vast concrete "courtyard" where several people were set up painting. This was an activity open to all but led by the Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KC PAC) with artist Lee Piechocki.

Then off to Co-Lab, which was having an exhibit and performance by Brooke Gassiot called The Stories Our Neurons Tell. It consisted of several sculptural objects, some incorporating video elements.

 
piece by Brooke Gassiot.

This one, whose title I didn't catch, was quite powerful. At first, you saw a large circular structure supporting a curtain that was about 7 or 8 feet high. You had to walk into the corner of the gallery space behind the structure to find a gap in the curtain. When you did, you saw the bathtub with a video projection in it above. I couldn't tell if the woman in the tub was crying or exhausted, but it's a strong image. And the way it provides a glow within the otherwise dimply-lit scene made it stronger. A projected image like this is a ghostly image--I didn't feel like it was meant to portray something existing now but rather the memory of something, possibly something very bad. Something that makes a woman cry in her bathtub.


scar piece by Brooke Gassiot

And memory is continued in this piece. You can't really see them in this photo, but the lightbox there is covered with little drawings. Gassiot was drawing these in the next room. People would sit down and show Gassiot a scar, which she would draw. As she drew, her subject told the story of that scar to her. Mine was a scar on my right palm, acquired in the late 80s on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, stitched up in an emergency room in Houma, Louisiana. Then using needle and thread, she sewed up the drawing of your scar with the same number of stitches you actually got. Then you took the drawing and added it to the pile. It was a very personal experience between you and the artist. (And the artist got to hear a bunch of great stories, so she got something out of it as well.)

My favorite show was at Tiny Park, my last stop on my Frame Tour.  It was a show by Joel Ross and Jason Creps. Their work consists mainly of signs that they have made and left someplace. This is Ross's part of the process. The residue of the work are photos of the signs in situ (taken by Creps, who is also a commercial photographer. He did the cover photo for Neko Case's album Middle Cyclone.)


Joel Ross and Jacob Creps, IN THE FUTURE (Installed and abandoned, Bradley, IL), 2012, archival pigment print, 42 x 55 inches

In addition to the photographs, the show consists of signs and word pieces. Their power is somewhat diminished being in a gallery setting (instead of just being out in public), but Ross makes up for that by being so amusing and clever.


Joel Ross, #UC!&+%, 2012, vinyl and acrylic paint on pine, dimensions variable


Joel Ross, #UC!&+%, 2012, vinyl and acrylic paint on pine, dimensions variable


 Joel Ross, It Was a Bad Idea, 2010, flashe and graphite on paper, 60 x 30 inches

Still, the problem with these in the gallery setting is that they seem like clever one-liners of a sort. It's only out in the world that these things gain power. So Ross did an installation. He did it at the studio of OK Mountain over on Cesar Chavez, so he wasn't strictly removing it from an institutional setting. Nonetheless, it must have given people whiplash as they drove by it at night.


Joel Ross, TORTURE SOUNDS INCREDIBLE, 2006, electronic LED sign, 57 x 84 x 7 inches

All in all, I thought Frame was a success. But it would be even better if there were a bunch of galleries at Canopy. Frame is trying to force a beneficial clustering effect, and that may work, but it needs to get bigger and more dense in the long run.