Robert Boyd's 2011 Honorable Mention

All of the shows listed below were excellent, and on a different day, I might have placed any one of them in the top 10.

Lisa Gralnick: The Gold Standard at Center for Contemporary Craft. This was a very interesting show that included sculptures made of plaster and gold--where the percent of gold was determined by how much gold it would take to buy the thing depicted.




Stephanie Toppin's couch in Jim Peterson, Jr.'s garage

Stephanie Toppin's couch. Of all the things associated with the Art Car Parade this year, this is my favorite. After the parade, Toppin's couch was lost for several months until I happened to find it at Jim Peterson, Jr.'s house. Mystery solved!


The Time Travel Research Institute Presents by Patrick Turk at Art League. Instead of his usual dense psychedelic collages, Turk made these pieces have a sense of physical space and even added motion to some. Mindblowing.

Jim Nolan, Today is Tomorrow at Art Palace. Jim Nolan's art is what happens when minimalism goes downscale. Made often from items purchased at 99¢ Only stores, it is the perfect art for our belt-tightening times.


Jim Woodring, Lazy Robinson, charcoal on paper

Jim Woodring and Marc Bell, Walpurgis Afternoon at Lawndale. I'm picking a show I curated, which is a bit unfair. What can I say? I thought it was great--two cartooonists/painters whose work I've admired for decades, and between whom I felt there was a connection. It seemed natural.



Raul Gonzalez, More Work Ahead, ink and spray paint on floor laminate, 2010

Raul Gonzalez at the Caroline Collective. Raul Gonzalez is a real street artist--and by that, he paints Houston's streets and uses as motifs street signs. Indeed, the colors of street signs pervade his work. He has created the vision of Houston that seems most true.


Myke Venable, MV 25 Silver/Scarlet Red/Black, acrylic on canvas, 2011

Myke Venable at Sonia Roesch. The only way these paintings could be more minimal would be to turn them from two or three color paintings to one-color paintings. As a consequence of their minimal content, they lack autonomy--they collaborate, in a sense, with the room they're in. And that's what I like about them.

Southern/Pacific at Lawndale. Really lovely show filled with interesting pieces curated by recent transplant to Houston, Paul Middendorf. This was road-trip art--he picked up art in Portland, Oregon (where he used to live) and Marfa and finally Houston. It was a fine way to introduce Houston art viewers to some interesting out-of-towners.

 
Hagit Barkai, Aisen and Tyson, Oil on canvas, 2010

Hagit Barkai, Resistance at Nau-Haus. Hagit Barkai's paintings linger in my mind. It's not the extreme one, the ones showing highly distressed people--although those are good. It's piece like Aisen and Tyson and Home More or Less that stick with me.


Dennis Harper and Friends, iPageant at the Joanna. This show was a giant performance extravaganza. Dennis Harper constructed some of his patented oversized paper sculptures--this time of a 60s era television soundstage. It was within this construct, aided by multiple closed-circuit televisions, that Harper staged his variety show. I only hope it wasn't a one-time event.

Ward Sanders at Hooks Epstein. San Antonio artist Ward Sanders has had four shows at Hooks-Epstein, but for this one, he added a new element. In addition to his mysterious, lovingly-created boxes, he has a piece of text. It turns out his writing, at least in these short fragments, is excellent. The world of visual art could lose Sanders to the literary world.

Ibsen Espada, Reformulaciones at New Gallery. One of the original Fresh Paint artists, Espada has apparently laid low for a while. This show was a powerful (and hopefully triumphal) return. Muscular abstractions.


Sharon Engelstein's Green Golly got its own room at Pan Y Circos

Pan y Circos at PG Contemporary. Curated by yours truly. We had a huge space for this group show, and it turned out great. I am especially proud to have brought El Dinersito by Jorge Galvan to the attention of Houston's art crowd.

Robert Pruitt, You Are Your Own Twin at Hooks Epstein. Every time I've seen Pruitt's portraits, I've loved them. There seems to be a rising generation of artists and intellectuals who are heavily invested in African American identity and history and simultaneously into science fiction and gaming and other nerdy pursuits. For example, the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. And Robert Pruitt.

Kim Dingle at Front Gallery. The Front Gallery is Houston's newest gallery, and its smallest. The inaugural show, full of oil-sketches of hyper-active girls, was a fantastic beginning.

Lisa Qualls, absence at Koelsch. Here is a highly conceptual show (portraits of an ancestor who left behind no visual image) that is simultaneously highly personal. I found it quite moving.

Thinkin' About Performance Art

by Robert Boyd



Last weekend, I saw several pieces of performance art. It got me thinking about how to think about performance art. How is a particular kind of performance art different from another? This is a framework I created over the weekend to help me think about it.

The first thing that got me thinking was Jorge Galvan's sculpture/performance El Dinersito at Pan y Circos, the show I curated with Zoya Tommy. The performance part was that Galvan made tacos for the opening night attendees. This seems typical of that subcategory of performance art called relational art, of whom Rirkrit Tiravanijia is the most prominent practitioner. But I also recalled sitting at the bar at Notsuoh and being told by Jim Pirtle that he considered his bar/live music venue to be a piece of "social sculpture." The term was created by Joseph Beuys and it was broader than just performance, but included a lot of performance. Gordon Matta-Clark's restaurant Food seems to fall into this broad category. Likewise, the artistic practices lumped into the category of social practice seem closely related. So these all became one of the circles in my Venn diagram.

Also this weekend, I saw a solo performance by Nancy Douthey (about which more in a subsequent post). Her performance was completely different--categorically different--from Jorge Galvan's. It was more of a theater piece--she wore a costume and took on a persona (or personas, really), and spoke lines. I don't know if the lines were written in advance or if they were improvised, but what I saw was fundamentally acting. And this seems to be a big part of performance. And to put it more broadly, there seems to be a big and important strain of performance art that has evolved from traditional stage arts--theater, dance, stand-up, etc.

But all performance doesn't fit into those two categories. When Marina Abramovič and Ulay slapped each other in the face over and over (Light/Dark, 1977), when Chris Burden had himself nailed to a VW Bug, when Tehching Hsieh punched a time clock every hour on the hour for an entire year (Time Clock Piece, 1980-81), they were neither "acting" nor were they particularly "relating". These pieces involved endurance. The prehistory of these pieces could be found in shamanic practices, in the extremities that yogis undergo, in the various deprivations and self-scourging of medieval holy men. In many of these pieces, there is a spiritual aspect--extreme repetition is like reciting a mantra, for example. But not all endurance pieces are spiritual--the Art Guys sitting in a Denny's drinking coffee for 24 hours, for example. And not all ritualistic pieces are about endurance--Judy Chicago's atmospheres, for example. But broadly speaking, I think we can group endurance pieces and ritualistic pieces together.

But, you ask, aren't these categories kind of fuzzy? Can't a piece fall into any two of the above categories, or even all three of them? Sure--that's why I depict it as a Venn diagram. The Art Guys sitting in Denny's was an endurance piece, but it was also a relational piece. Endurance pieces can also be theatrical--there is a whole tradition of this in the circus and in acrobatic performances.

I'm sure for those of you who have really studied performance theory and practice, this will seem a bit simplistic. But it's just a framework--a way to think about what I'm seeing.

Pan y Circos

by Robert Boyd

No more teasing--here's the story. I am co-curating a group exhibit later on this month called Pan y Circos. The show will open Friday evening on October 21, with a reception from 6 pm to 9 pm. It runs through November 5. The location is the PG Contemporary Temporary Annex, 3225 Milam Street. You can respond to my official Facebook invite here. Or you can just show up. It's all good.


Brian Piana, design for Overlord, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, Zoya Tommy, owner of PG Contemporary, called me up and asked if I wanted to curate a show for her. My immediate thought was that she was thinking of a show in her gallery (which is very compact) and was thinking some time off in the future, like, I dunno, January or February.

But no--she wanted to do the show in late October, in a 2500 square foot space a few doors down from her gallery. It had been the site of a yoga studio, but now it was available. Tommy had asked her landlord if she could have it for a one-off exhibit. So the time frame was short. I told Tommy I wasn't sure if I could get an exhibit together so quickly and suggested we collaborate. I said she should make a list of artists she would like, and I'll do the same.


John Sturtevant, untitled, paint on canvas, 2011

I chose artists who either weren't represented by local galleries or whose work I hadn't seen in a local solo show recently. Tommy had her own criteria. Once we each had a list, we met and started winnowing it down, first by vetoing artists on each other's list, then by removing artists whose work didn't quite fit in. Some themes appeared--artists whose work toyed with our ideas of realism (or redefined them), artists who dealt with notions of "the border" and collision of Hispanic and Anglo cultures. But these thematic links were serrendipitous--we didn't try to design the show around them. They emerged as the we thought about which artists to include.


Santiago Forero, Sorority Bid Day, C-Print, 2008

Some artists we really wanted just couldn't participate, but in the end we have 10 outstanding artists. The work is sculptural, photographic, and painted. All the artists live in Houston except Santiago Forero, who lives on Colombia but recently lived in Austin. They collectively represent several generations of Houston art--some are established, some are emerging.

The artists in the show are Brett Hollis, Brian Piana, Britt Ragsdale, Delilah Montoya, Dennis Harper, John Sturtevant, Jorge Galvan, Paul Kittelson, Santiago Forero and Sharon Engelstein.

I hope Pan readers will come out to see it. I consider curating exhibits to be a part of the whole Great God Pan Is Dead project. This blog has largely been a discussion of art in Houston, and Pan y Circos continues that discussion in another format.

Pan y Circos

More information coming soon! Keep checking this blog and P.G. Contemporary Gallery.

UH at Rice

Robert Boyd

The new show at the Matchbox Gallery at Rice was too big for the tiny space which had housed previous Matchbox exhibits. This show, Joy and Affect, featured 13 artists and ended up sprawled out into the Sewell Hall sunken courtyard. Perhaps to celebrate this new bigness, they projected the words "Matchbox" and "art" on the interior walls.







I was there early. The party hadn't really started. DJs were playing tunes, but the kegs had not been tapped.

Three separate videos were being projected on sheets hung in three big windows.

I accidentally recorded a couple of seconds of video of the courtyard, but I'm glad I did. You can really see how effective the videos were as part if the total environment.



The exhibit was somewhat problematic in one key respect. There was no exhibit list or labels so you could see who was behind the art. I think all the art exhibited was by UH students (!), but there is apparently a Rice student show happening simultaneously. In any case, except in on instance, I don't know who did the work/ If you know the artists (or are one of the artists), please let me know--I want to give credit.




This is obviously a piece by Jorge Galvan. In fact, I think I saw this same piece at Artcrawl last year.I like the elements of it, but compared to his installation at Project Row Houses last year, this piece seems a bit chaotic. It's like he found himself with a good collection of materials but couldn't quite figure out what to make of them.




This little room is the actual Matchbox Gallery. Last night is was inhabited by this giant wrinkly balloon which slowly changed shape as a fan inside it was turned on and off.




Sometimes it hang low to the ground.




Sometimes it was pulled close to the ceiling. Hmmm. In shape and behavior, it reminds me of a certain part of the male anatomy. Whether or not the artist had testicles in mind, the piece has an eerie looming quality.




I wonder if this one is called "Seat of Learning" (or if that is just too corny). It's a well-crafted piece. It allows for multiple and contradictory interpretations. One could say that knowledge and learning, represented by the books, is one of the pillars on which human civilization rests--without it, civilization would collapse. Or you could read it as saying that mere book learning is not practical--a more more practical use for these books is propping up a chair rather than filling someone's brain with "facts." Etc.




This one is both clever and beautiful. In a nice, museum-quality vitrine is a pile of gold and silver doubloons--which, on closer inspection, turn out to be gold and silver Oreos. It's a perfectly lovely bit of surrealist absurdity, made all the more delicious by the museum-like display. (Of course, no museum would simply display a pile of gold coins--it would have each coin separate.)

So, although I was confused about the show, I liked it. The created a neat exhibition environment and put some pretty nice pieces of art in it.

A Half Year in Art in Houston

This was a pretty weird year, because for the first half of the year, I hardly saw any exhibits. This reflects inertia on my part, and this inertia was what induced me to start this blog. The blog itself would be the inducement I needed to get the hell out the front door. Consequently, even though there were some worthwhile shows in the first half of the year, I'm concentrating mostly on the year since June. So here is my list of my favorite artists and/or events of the year.

a "pushme-pullyou" in Elaine Bradford's studio, 2009

1) Elaine Bradford. One of the few shows I saw early in the year was "The Museum of Unnatural History" by Elaine Bradford at the Art League. I loved the combination of taxidermy forms and knitting. Her work was later shown at Lawndale, and I got the opportunity to see her studio one night at Box 13.

Kathy Kelley, (not sure what the title is), rubber, 2009

2) Kathryn Kelley. Kathryn Kelley is an artist who combines a rigorous post-minimalist approach with really personal work. I am not revealing any confidences in saying that this past year has been an emotionally tough one for her--it's all over her art and her blog. I saw her solo show at Ggallery and then saw more work recently at Box 13, where she also has her studio.

Oneself by Oneself, Stephanie Toppin, 2009

3) Stephanie Toppin. I first saw Stephanie Toppin's long, super-colorful "autobiographical" abstract painting at the $timulus show Diverse Works. Then a larger version of the same piece was put up at Box 13 (above). Then she had drawings up at the Frenetic Fringe Festival, and I bought a few (they were a bargain!). Then finally, she had a show at  Rudolph Projects, where I took the plunge and bought a painting of hers.

Carlos Runcie-Tanaka, Huayco/Kawa/Rio, ceramic

4) Carlos Runcie-Tanaka. This Peruvian artist had a haunting, moving show of ceramic installations at the Station Museum, which I couldn't stop thinking about for a long time after I saw it.


Havel and Ruck, Give and Take, hollowed-out house, 2009

5) No Zoning. I said some unkind things about this show at CAMH, but loved the catalog. But for me, it was an introduction to a certain art history of Houston and group of artists who were worth knowing. I subsequently met Bill Davenport (and played ping pong with him) and Jim Pirtle, who managed to change my mind about No Zoning. (Plus there were funny comments on Facebook.)

Wayne White, Big Lectric Fan to Keep Me Cool, installation details, 2009

6) Wayne White. This painter/sculptor/cartoonist/puppeteer had a huge genius installation at the Rice Gallery--a huge cartoon head of George Jones. He also had a great art book out this year (signed copies still available at Brazos Bookstore--get it!) and even a couple of paintings at Inman Gallery.

Jorge Galvan, This Land Was Made (detail), mixed media, 2009

7) Jorge Galvan. Jorge Galvan is a student at the University of Houston. He had an installation at Project Row Houses this summer that blew me away with its use of text and construction materials to form a tribute to laborers. Then later, during the Art Crawl, I saw a functional sculpture of his called "American Bred." I liked it so much that I bought it!

Dario Robleto, An Instinct Towards Life Only a Phantom Can Know,  mixed media, 2007-2008

8) Dario Robleto. Dario Robleto's work up at Inman Gallery just blew my mind. It was so well crafted and so visually interesting, then had additional layers of meaning added when you learned what it was made of. I'm really still trying to absorb it. It was breathtaking.

One final observation--there seem to be more excellent artists in Houston who are women than who are men. In addition to the ones I listed above, I have seen and loved work by Emily Sloan, Kia O'Neill, Beth Secor, Carmen Flores, Jasmyne Graybill, and Karin Broker. (That said, there was excellent art by dudes as well--the Art Guys, Matthew Guest, Seth Alverson, and Mark Greenwalt, for example.)

New Acquisitions--Stephanie Toppin and Jorge Galvan

I mentioned in my previous post how much I liked "American Bred" by Jorge Galvan. I liked it so much that I bought it. Galvan is an senior at U.H. He's thinking about MFA programs--which one would be right for him, what he can afford. He feels he still has a lot to learn. I think, however, he is astonishingly accomplished, and expect nothing but great stuff for the next 50 years from him. Here's another view of "American Bred."



And here it is open.



This is a very finely crafted Anglo-American version of the humble tortilla press, like this one:



According to Galvan, "American Bred" is fully functional.

I have been a fan of Stephanie Toppin's painting since I saw her work at Diverse Works last summer, and subsequently at Box 13. I bought a few of her drawings around that time and then took the plunge to buy a painting when she exhibited at Rudolph Projects.

Like Galvan, Toppin is a really young painter. I don't really know what her background is, but I like her colorful abstractions. The paint appears to be housepaint and she paints on large masonite boards. This photo makes the colors look brighter than they actually are (as if the paint has some flourescent pigment mixed in that was lightened by the flash).

Artcrawl 2009

by Robert Boyd

Saturday was Artcrawl 2009--my first Artcrawl. It was drizzly and a little cold, pretty bad weather for walking from studio to studio. But that didn't keep crowds of people from showing up. I was impressed by the crowds I saw. I was a little nervous about going--would the art be any good? Just because an artist has a studio doesn't make the art worth seeing. I was a little worried it would be lots of mediocre craft-show art, bad Sunday painters, etc. And to be sure, there was a lot of art that was amatuerish, a lot that was half-baked, a lot that was derivative, a lot that was just plain inept. But who cares about that stuff? There was a lot that worked for me.

The first place I went to was the Houston Foundry. This was a place that in my most recent Houston Streets post I mistaken identified as Blumenthal Sheet Metal. Blumenthal is across the street. But they clearly have a relationship--there are metal sculptors in the Houston Foundry, including Michelle O'Michael. This impressive space is her studio:

Wouldn't that be a cool place to work. Right next door to it was another impressive studio for some artist who works in metal (anyone know who? I don't):

It's not all large scale metal art there (as the studio's name implies). Christina Roos is a ceramicist, but the work of hers I liked best were her paintings and printed works.

I am often put off by deliberately child-like artwork, so I can't exactly say why these paintings charmed me so. But they did.

Manning the door at Houston Foundry was Jorge Galvan. He did a great piece that I wrote about a while back called "This Land Was Made" at Project Row Houses. The piece that caught my attention here was "American Bred."

The punning title is a bit corny and too obvious, but the craftsmanship of the object combined with the bi-cultural irony of it cannot be denied. Also, like "This Land Was Made," it has a working-class humility that I like. It feels like an honest piece of work. And Jorge Galvan is an undergrad at U.H. Astonishing work from such a young artist, I think.

The next stop was the Hardy and Nance Street Studios. Alex "Primo" Luster and Mike Luster are guys involved in the grafitti/street art scene in Houston. I liked Primo's studio quite a bit.

Mike Luster was showing clips from his documentary film Stick Em Up! about the wheat-pasting poster scene in Houston (think Give Up, for example). The art produced by people like Gonzo247, Skeez, Give Up, and Primo seems to be more-or-less completely outside of the commercial gallery world, but they have in thier own way staked claim to a part of Houston's art community (as well they should). So it was cool to see this during Artcrawl.

When I walked into Ray Phillips' space, I was imediately knocked out by his densely layered paintings. Looking at this one, one might think about, say, Sigmar Polke. And the one below might remind one of Jasper Johns.

But to be honest, these paintings feel like slick versions of earlier work. Phillips is obviously a very skilled painter with a lot of visual imagination. I hate to ever suggest an artist's facilities are a handicap, but this work feels like empty mastery.

I then visited a few other studios, including the Dakota Street Lofts, but didn't see anything there that caught my eye. The next place with good art was Mother Dog Studios. Among the many artists there was Jo Ann Fleischhauer. The first thing that caught my eye was this collection of bird nests.

In each of those glass-walled boxes is a real bird nest. (I hope she didn't evict any birds to collect the nests). I don't want to hazard a guess about the meaning of this piece. But I like natural history museums and the conventions of display in those museums (vitrines, dioramas, etc.). (Needless to say, I love the Museum of Jurassic Technology.) This piece seemed like a playful rearranging of conventional natural history museum concepts. (I believe this was part of an installation called "Butterfly Effect.")

Then there were these wax houses.

These were left over from a Project Row Houses installation called Pocketful of Stars. I asked her if the houses were for sale, and she mentioned that a lot of people had asked the same thing, and that she thought it was weird that people would want the left-over bits of an installation. We discussed the idea of selling off bits of installations, and I couldn't think of an example of anyone who had done so (even though I would be shocked if no one did so). But I think her puzzlement over this is naive. People like souvenirs. Additionally, the houses are quite attractive by themselves as objects. Most folks are never going to have an artist's installation in their home. But having a left-over bit of one might be nice.

She had an installation up in an adjacent room.

Peony Prayer, Jo Ann Fleischhauer, 2004

If you have a spare room in your house, you can fill it with this installation for a mere $32,500. She had several of the wax-covered books in her studio space, and again I thought--these are by themselves compelling objects. The installation may be their intended home, but I think they can exist outside the installation and still be art.

Mother Dog Studios was co-founded by an artist named John Runnells, and his studio was full of amusing profane art. This piece of undressed art history amused me a lot.

Obviously this a riff on Madame X by John Singer Sargent. And I love it, the way it is presented as a almost 19th century medical photograph (I don't know how else to describe it). But I also love that he casually left it on the floor and let a power cord hang in front of it. Not a very precious artist, is he?

One final piece from Mother Dog Studios by an artist called Naftali. I'm not sure she has a studio there (she isn't listed on the Mother Dog Studio web page). But whatever. I loved this untitled work.

I guess you would describe it as a relief. The medium is cut up bicycle inner-tubes. As Kathy Kelley explained to me later, part of the pleasure of working with inner tubes is that they are very fleshy. And indeed, this piece looks like a field of those alien-appearing primitive worms that anchor themselves to the ocean floor.

After that, I drove down to Commerce Street, where there was another little group of artist warehouses, including the now infamous CSAW. Nothing in these spaces struck me as interesting. I did like the sculptures where Navigation goes into a tunnel under Commerce and the railroad tracks. I was held up walking from one studio to another by a passing train, so I took this photo.

Does anyone know the artist? If so, please comment!

And as I walked down Commerce Street, I saw Skeezer Stinkfist painting in an open warehouse space (not officially part of the Artcrawl). 

We had a beer and chatted a bit. If this space is where he paints, I have to say he isn't suffering for not being in CSAW. (Indeed, it seems that many of the evicted artists have gone on to bigger and better things. Living well is the best revenge.)

Then I made my way to El Rincon Social. I'm not sure what the story is with this place--it doesn't appear to house studios. When I walked up (around 6:30 pm), the cops were there shutting down their music (a dude playing acoustic guitar--amplified, but still...). There were a bunch of paintings and objects on the walls, but it was hard to know who the artists were. Here's one that knocked me out.

This struck me as a very modern version of the old pulp painting tradition. That kind of painting was often very lush and rich. I particularly like covers of Argosy from World War II. Obviously this painting tradition has a strong relationship with hardboiled crime fiction, and this is obviously an image from a neo-noir story. Is there a story? Is this a work of illustration, or is this a purely stand-alone work? Either way, it works. (Again, if you know the artist, please let me know if the comments. I want to give credit where credit is due.)

While I was there, I met two of the folks who run the Station Museum, Keijiro Suzuki and Alan Schnigter (I think). This piece is by Schnigter.

The ladder really makes it, don't you think? We had a discussion about how hard it is for local institutions to collect contemporary art. They take so long to make decisions, and are paralyzed by the fear of making a wrong decision (because no one can be sure what art being made today will be worth remembering 10-20-50 years from now). So I think they depend on local collectors to buy contemporary art with the understanding that it might end up at the MFAH later (after history has time to render at least a preliminary verdict). Of course, this was just three guys idly speculating in a warehouse, so who knows?

Finally I went out to Box 13, the last stop on my personal crawl. (I missed a few venues, which I regret. But it was hard to see everything.) They have a show up that they originally did in Nuevo Laredo. It's called Hasta La Basura Se Separa. Here's a piece by Kathy Kelley from the show.

She told me how she liked rubber's skin-like quality, and she liked to sew her pieces. I joked that she sounded like Buffalo Bill. But really her work reminds me of Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Robert Morris. The softness and fleshiness of it, the way gravity acts on her work, are all appealing. It looks great, but it also pretty much begs you to touch it.

There were no crowds here, unfortunately. Box 13 is a little off the beaten path for this event, and there are apparently no nearby studios, so you don't get critical mass like you do off Nance or Commerce Street. Too bad, because this show has lots of great stuff.

This piece is by Hunter Cross (his name sounds like the protagonist from a Lee Child book.) A piece like this reminds you that Christmas is approaching. When I was a kid, the parents hid the presents in a closet that we always found. Barbed wire may have been more effective.

This piece is by Michelle Mayer, and when you see it, you see see just a glow coming from inside the suitcase (just like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction). As you approach it, you realize that the glow is a projected image.

But it's not a still image--someone keeps adding "things" to the suitcase.

I am not sure who the artist is here (help?), but I like it. I like the way it combines a real object with a cartoon-like depiction of puddled water.

Artist Jonathan Clark uses Box 13's most awkward exhibition space very cleverly in this installation called "The Golden Spiral."

And there are many other intriguing pieces in this show, which I highly recommend.