Pan Recommends for the week of September 5 to September 11

Robert Boyd

This is the busiest weekend of the year as far  as gallery and museum openings go. Below is a list of most of what's opening this weekend--33 exhibits by my count. Can one possibly see them all? I think so--and to make it a little easier for you, I've grouped them by geographic proximity, which should help the dedicated art trekker minimize her travel time.

THURSDAY

Thursday's relatively easy--three openings within a three-block radius.


photo by Galina Kurlat

A Likeness by Main Street Projects. A group exhibition displaying recent contemporary works by Main Street Projects founders Brandon Dimit, Theresa Escobedo, Galina Kurlat, and Rahul Mitra.
 
Eduardo Portillo: New Work at The Gallery at HCC Central- Houston Community College , 5–7:30 pm. Somehow these HCC exhibits are related to the Texas Biennial, which sprawls over 80 participating institutions and is so diffuse in my mind that it doesn't really have an identity. I would expect some large rag dolls if this is a typical Eduardo Portillo show.
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Melanie Miller, Silk Road 5, 2013, acrylic on paper, 44"x30"

Melanie Millar: New Work  at The Gallery at HCC Central- Houston Community College, 5–7 pm. Decoration informs Melanie Miller's work.
 
FRIDAY

For your Friday perambulations, there are two clusters and three singletons. First is the Isabella Court Galleries on Main (with Diverse Works one block south). 


Barry Stone, Bouquet 3487_1, 2013, archival digital print, 24 x 16 inches

Barry Stone: Look Near Into the Distance at Art Palace, 6 to 8 pm. Check out this beautiful on-line catalog. I like Barry Stone's photos so much that I bought one. I look forward to seeing the digitally distressed flowers like the one above.


Wayne White, DUNNO, 2013, acrylic on offset lithograph, 25 1/2 x 45 1/2 inches

Wayne White: Dunno at David Shelton Gallery, 6–8 pm. From his early comics to his Peewee Herman Show puppetry to his word paintings, I have loved Wayne White's work literally for decades. I think this is his first show in Houston since the amazing Big Lectric Fan installation.


Todd Hebert, Goose With Glacier, 2013

Todd Hebert: Ebb and Flow at Devin Borden Gallery, 6–8 pm.



Somehow, this appropriated press photo is part of Katrina Moorhead's exhibit

Katrina Moorhead: The Bird that Never Lands(cape) at Inman Gallery, 6–8 pm.


Rachel Hecker, Eleventh Hour, 1992 acrylic on wood, 120 x 80 inches, (destroyed)

The Eleventh Hour featuring Elia Arce, Eric Avery, Johannes Birringer, Mel Chin, Ben DeSoto, Karen Finley, Michael Galbreath, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, the Gorilla Girls/Houston, Deborah Hay, Sharon Hayes, Rachel Hecker, Zhang Huan, Infernal Bridegroom Productions, Rhodessa Jones, William Pope.L, Annie Sprinkle, Mary Ellen Strom, and many others at DiverseWorks, 7–9 pm. I'm not sure what to expect, but this exhibit seems to be about the history of Diverse Works itself. Presumably the above painting will not be included, alas.

Then there are the galleries at 4411 Montrose...

Katja Loher: Who Collects Clouds in the Sky? at Anya Tish Gallery, 6 to 8:30 pm. Katja Loher's kaleidoscopic videos are always fun to look at.

Michael Crowder, Mariposa

Retro-spectacle: Michael Crowder at Wade Wilson Art, 6–8 pm. Michael Crowder produces delicate, surprisingly conceptual glass artwork.

Lauren Kelley, Stills from “Brown Objects (Pink Head)” 2013

Lauren Kelley: Puce Parade at Zoya Tommy Contemporary, 6–8 pm.

Gavin Perry, Untitled, 2013, Pigmented resin, vinyl on board, 72 x 96 inches

Gavin Perry: End of the Line at Barbara Davis Gallery, 6:30–8:30 pm.

Finally, you'll have to drive hither and yon to see the three shows below.


Dan Havel, Wall Burster

Dan Havel: Homewrecker – Disrupted Architecture at  Avis Frank Gallery, 6-8 pm. -I'm very interested in seeing what Dan Havel does outside his Havel+Ruck partnership. The pair have forged such a distinct artistic identity that I can't quite imagine what one of them alone will be like!


Tom Marioni: The Act of Drinking Beer from Smart Museum of Art on Vimeo.

Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art including art, documentary materials, and new public projects by Marina Abramović and Ulay, Sonja Alhäuser, Miguel Amat, Mary Ellen Carroll, Mary Evans, Fallen Fruit, Theaster Gates, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, InCUBATE, The Italian Futurists, Mella Jaarsma, Alison Knowles, Suzanne Lacy, Gabriel Martinez, Lynne McCabe, Lee Mingwei, Laura Letinsky, Tom Marioni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Mildred’s Lane, Julio César Morales and Max La Rivière-Hedrick, motiroti, National Bitter Melon Council, Ana Prvacki, Sudsiri Pui-Ock, Michael Rakowitz, Ayman Ramadan, Red76, David Robbins, Allen Ruppersberg, Bonnie Sherk, Barbara T. Smith, Daniel Spoerri, and Rirkrit Tiravanija at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, 7:00 pm. This is the kind of show where even if the work in it is not so good, at least there will be something to eat, right? The Art Guys will apparently be among the bartenders at The Act of Drinking Beer With Friend is the Highest Form of Art by Tom Marioni.


It's not performance art without naked guys--Josh Urban Davis

Submission featuring performances by Joshua Yates, Unna Bettie, Ryan Hawk, Daniel Bertalot, Patrick Doyle, Karen Mazzu, Renee Cosette Pedersen, Josh Urban Davis, Hilary Scullane, Raindawg, Jana Whatley, Neil Ellis Orts, Y. E. Torres, Koomah, Tina McPherson & Sandy Ewen, Evan McCarley, Julia Wallace, Jonatan Lopez, Chris Meadows and Emmanuel Nuno Arambula at Summer Street Studios, 9 pm – 12 am.If you aren't completely exhausted from looking at art, you can go check out some performance in the vast spaces of Summer Street.

SATURDAY

The big cluster here is Colquitt St., home to many galleries having openings this week.


Anna Ferrer, Rain Flower Trench Coat

Red Hot by Anna Ferrer at Nicole Longnecker Gallery, 5–7 pm.

Michael Bise, Life on the List comics pages

Love in the Kingdom of the Sick: Michael Bise at Moody Gallery, 5–7 pm. Graphite drawings and pages from his comic, Life on the List, will be on display. The comic deals with Bise's heart transplant and has been fitfully serialized on Glasstire.


Rusty Scruby, Crown Point, 2013

If You Cut It, They Will Come featuring Sandi Seltzer Bryant, Jane Eifler, Michael Guidry, Ted Larsen, Lance Letscher and Rusty Scruby at McMurtrey Gallery, 6–8 pm.

Ward Sanders, A Short History of Dust, 2013 , assemblage , 7 x 9 x 2"

Jacqueline Dee Parker: The Gameboard and Ward Sanders: Birds of Time at Hooks-Epstein Galleries, 6–8 pm. I don't know much about Jacqueline Dee Parker, but Ward Sanders is an artist I have followed eagerly for several years (and own a piece by). His work is perfect for bookish lovers of Borges and Calvino.


Randall Reid, Crime Fighters, found printed metal object w/ printed and painted metal parts, on wood and steel box construction, 6.75" x 7"x 2" y. 2013

Randall Reid: A New World at d. m. allison, 6–8 pm.

Rachel Phillips, Blue Smoke Rising, Wet transfer pigment print on vintage envelope

Rachel Phillips: Field Notes at Catherine Couturier Gallery, 6-8 p.m. I'm unfamiliar with Rachel Phillips, but the work looks intriguing--and looks like it will go well with the Ward Sanders art shown next door at Hooks-Epstein.

Then up in the Heights there is the two-gallery cluster on 11th Street...


art by Jon Read

Jon Read: The Shrine to the Myth of Man and Yuliya Lanina: Not a Sad Tale at G Gallery, 6–9 pm.

b. moody, o this crushing burden - these sins of my fathers what fetid weight this melancholy we call the deep south surely the day of reckoning is upon this land of cotton for behold: the conversion of St. Stonewall on the road to Damascus, Georgia

An American Family: b. Moody at Redbud Gallery, 6–9 pm.

But after that, you are going to have to drive all over the inner Loop to see the art opening tonight. 

work by Perla Krauze

Perla Krauze: Suspended Blues at Gallery Sonja Roesch, 5–7 pm.

Stephanie Reid

Stephanie Reid: Hidden Places at the Jung Center, 5–7 pm.


Miguel Angel Ríos, Untitled (from the series The Ghost of Modernity, 2012. Single-channel video, 3:11 min.

Miguel Angel Ríos: Folding Borders at Sicardi Gallery, 6–8 pm.

Collective Identity featuring Robert Barry , Jessica Crute , Jenny Holzer , Christian Tomaszewski , Philippe Tougard-Maucotel and Christian Xatrec at Deborah Colton Gallery, 6–9 pm.

James Ciosek, Unknown Soldier, found corrugated tin patterned by buckshot, found corrugated fiberglass, red plexiglass, fluorescent lights with red lenses, cement, 29 by 54 by 14 inches

in-DEPTH: Texas Sculpture Group Member Exhibition at the Art Car Museum, 7–10 pm.This is another TX Biennial-related show. I'm not sure of the included artists, although apparently James Ciosek is one of them, which is a good sign!

...mistress: Regina Agu at BOX 13 ArtSpace, 7–9:30 pm.



The New Black – Angela Malchionno at Box 13, 7-9:30 pm.

WORDPLAY: curated by Sapphire Williams featuring work by Logan Sebastian Beck, Harry Dearing III, David Feil,Sebastian Forray, Jorge Galvan, Matthew Gorgol, Jordan Johnson, Lillie Monstrum, Darcy Rosenberger, and Sapphire Williams at  BOX 13 ArtSpace, 7–9:30 pm. When a show is described as aiming "to examine a current generations’ interest in text and semiotics," I reach for my revolver. But this has some artists I really like, including the excellent Jorge Galvan, who doesn't show his work very often.

a God's Eye outpost by Kate Kendall, Box 13 Artspace, 7-9:30 pm.


The Brandon: Group Show from Cody Ledvina on Vimeo.

Group Show (50 Humans) featuring Mark Flood, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Robyn O'Neil, Rachel Hecker, Michael Bise, Aaron Parazette, John Sparagana, Tisch Abelow, Otis Ike, Georganne Deen, Lane Hagood, Jeremy Deprez, Seth Alverson, Jim Nolan, Cheyanne Ramos Forray, Gabriel Martinez, Hillerbrand+Magsamen, Tony Day, Shane Tolbert, Keith Varadi, Raymond Uhlir, Kent Dorn, Dylan Roberts, Ana Villagomez, Michelle Rawlings, Brandon Araujo, Jack Erikkson, Sebastian Forray, Ryan Storm, Ludwig Schwarz, Marjorie Schwarz, Brian Moss (B.Moss), Lauren Moya Ford, Miguel Martinez, Wayne Gilbert, Debra Berrera, Anne J. Regan, Patrick Turk, Chris Cascio, Jessica Ninci, Angel Oloshove, Russell Etchen, Geoff Winningham, Mike Osborne, Dennis Harper, Guillaume Gelot, Avril Falgout, Bill Daniel, Donal Mosher, Keith M. Wilson, Bill Willis, Dennis Nance & James Hays and Kayla Escobedo at The Brandon, 7–10 pm. The Brandon (the gallery in the space that used to be Domy) is starting off with a bang. It includes Houston's two hottest artists, Mark Flood and Trenton Doyle Hancock, many interesting "out-of-towners" (Robyn O'Neil, Georganne Deen, Tisch Abelow and maybe more), and many of Houston's best artists, young and old. Two surprises for me were Geoff Winningham, my old photography professor and longtime chronicler of the Gulf Coast) and Avril Falgout, the 15-year-old sculptor who made a huge splash at The Big Show this summer.

Hogan Kimbrell, Athelete

Texas Bi 2013 featuring Vonetta Berry, Linda Cornflake, Ryan Hawk, Hogan Kimbrell, Koomah, Traci Matlock, Madsen Minax, Tish Stringer, Y.E. Torres, Stalina Villarreal and Julia Wallace at Gallery 1724, 8–10 pm. No associated with the Texas Biennial, all the work in this show somehow deals with bisexuality.

Houston Artists on the TV

Robert Boyd

Here are a couple of videos that came our way in the past few days. In the first, Michael Bise talks about his art and his heart--and how the latter's problems influenced what he does with the former. If you are heading up to Dallas anytime before May 12, he has a solo show up at the MAC.



The second is a Kickstarter video by Monica Vidal, who is trying to finance a third "hive." We wrote about the first hive, the Tumor Hive, back in 2009 when this blog was still a baby. And her watercolors were exhibited at the Pan Art Fair, courtesy of Front Gallery.

Links from the Heart

by Robert Boyd



Michael Bise and Adrian Page


Gave him a transplant for a brand new start. This certainly is good news! Houston artist and writer Michael Bise, who has been waiting for a heart transplant for a while now, got a new heart on January 12. (And while the operation is done, I'm sure he'd still like a donation to help pay for it.) I suspect the recovery time from such an operation is not brief, but I hope he can soon restart the comic strip he was drawing about his experience as a transplant patient, Life on the List. What I fear is that he may have gotten the heart of a saintly, empathic person, and that it will prevent him from writing the brutally honest art reviews that Houston sorely needs. [Glasstire]


Electroboutique (Alexei Shulgin and Aristarkh Chernyshev), 3G International

All Power to the  Texters! I liked 3G International by the Russian team Electroboutique for two reasons. First, I found it a witty appropriation of Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International (it seems to be a popular icon to recreate these days--see Ai Weiwei's version). Second, this is part of an art exhibit in a science museum! This seems like a natural combination--the Houston Museum of Natural Science sometimes shows art; maybe they can bring this exhibit here. [Rhizome]



The Simpsons encounter Picasso--over and over


The Simpsons do art history. Someone with way way too much time on her hands compiled a list of 100 art historical references from The Simpsons. [Complex]


Mimi O Chun, Mark Rothko tribute cookies


They should serve these at the Rothko Chapel. They might make the whole experience a little less gloomy. [Aesthetics of Joy]

Michael Bise is my Favorite Local Critic

by Robert Boyd

The difficulty of being a local critic (with an emphasis on the local) is that it is hard to be negative. You tend to know most of the people about whom you're writing. People have long memories, too. Artists will talk with disgust about bad reviews they got ten years ago, and how the critic didn't understand their work, wrote in bad faith, had a bias against the artist that has nothing to do with the quality of the art, etc. Some gallery owners are likewise pretty thin-skinned (I once got a note from a gallerist asking me why I was "so mean.")

Given this, it is easier (but still not totally easy) for a critic to follow a Boris Groys strategy, so to speak. Groys said that criticism doesn't matter except in a binary way: what was important was whether or not you were written about. If an artist is found worthy of critical attention, even negative attention, that counts as a plus. All those vitriolic reviews of Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons simply add to their value. So if you are a local critic, you can get around writing negative reviews by writing only about what you like. You can even justify it by saying to yourself, "By not writing about this art I don't like, I am denying it currency in the public sphere." This isn't going to keep lesser artists from bugging you to review their stuff, but you only have so much time, and it's just plain easier to be a booster--a writer of solely positive reviews.

All this is a lead in to Michael Bise. He writes for Glasstire and ...might be good and used to write for Art Lies. (He's also an artist represented by Moody Gallery.) And Bise is fearlessly negative when the occasion calls for it. For example, when he wrote about Quantum Dada, a group exhibit at Gallery Sonja Roesch from 2010.

On entering the gallery, the first work to catch my eye was the numerical notation 10^–34 affixed to the wall in adhesive vinyl. Below the numbers was a framed receipt from Texas Art Supply for the purchase of the vinyl. 10^–34 is Planck’s constant, which describes the size of the minimum unit of energy involved in an interaction between two physical entities. I have as firm a grasp on this concept as a non-physicist with access to Wikipedia can, but I don’t understand the many intricacies involved. What I was able to piece together was the notion that taking a numerical value out of its scientific context and playing a tired Duchampian trick with the receipt for the purchase of the materials is meant to represent a meaningful synthesis of quantum mechanics and Dada. The artist in this case is as careless in his conflation of science and culture as Eisele is in his curation. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the artist was none other than Eisele himself. Not content to harness other artists’ work to his questionable theme, Eisele creates what might be described as the signature piece in his own exhibition. 

Brutal.

According to didactic materials provided by the gallery, Susanne Ackermann’s colored-pencil drawings of curving, looping lines apparently “emulate the rhythm of subatomic strings.” Sure. They might also evoke the paths of racecars, wind patterns or the various trajectories of postwar abstraction. Suggesting that Ackermann’s rather anemic drawings illustrate string theory—one of theoretical physics’ attempts to reconcile inconsistencies between quantum mechanics and traditional physics—simply because her lines look kind of stringlike seems lazy, if not dishonest. ["Quantum Dada," Michael Bise, Art Lies 66, 2010]

Double brutal. And substantial. He's not tapping the work with a twig of snark, he's beating it soundly with a hammer.

His takedown of Josephine Meckseper was truly classic.

I thought Meckseper’s exhibition at the Blaffer Gallery was one of the worst shows I’ve seen there. A hipster pastiche of Hans Haacke and Haim Steinbach, Meckseper situates various images and objects that have to do with politics, advertising and the capitalist economy’s strategic conflation of the two, on shelves and in display cases that reference museum vitrines and department store windows. In addition to her exhibition at the Blaffer, Meckseper also created a razor-sharp critique of capitalism by designing a window display for the Houston Galleria’s Neiman Marcus. ["Good Theory Can't Save Bad Art," Michael Bise, Glasstire]

(Of course, maybe I approve of this because I agree so strongly with it.) I guess the bottom line is that I like critics who are sourpusses, dyspeptic, vitriolic, and mean--and Michael Bise is the closest to that ideal we have. But he is thoughtful--his reviews aren't critical tourette's, spewed out regardless of subject. He can praise when praise is called for. Nonetheless, he doesn't worry about hurting feelings or burning bridges. A healthy art ecology needs critics willing to call a spade a spade. I try to be that kind of art writer, but the lure of boosterism is always tugging at me. Bise is my role-model.

And now he is waiting for a heart transplant, while racking up medical bills. He has a webpage for donations to help him through this. If you like his criticism like I do, think about giving him a little money so he can keep swinging that hammer.

Quantity not Quality Links

by Robert Boyd


Jacob Kassay, Xanax (detail), 2011. Photo: Mark Blower (ICA)

What is the correct metric for judging art? Greg.org expresses disgust (but not too much surprise) about an ArtForum review of a Jacob Kassay exhibit which asked whether or not his work justified his high auction results. This seems similar to a stock analyst issuing a buy, sell or hold opinion. But the problem is that if we judge art on the basis of "quality," well, we know that's subjective at the very least, and filled with unconscious biases. Price is at least an objective, empirical method. And it's the all-American way to judge things. However, if price seems too crass, may I suggest another objective measure? We should judge art by weight.

The world's best artists. Here are the top artists in the world from July 2010 to July 2011, based on the only aesthetic criterion that counts, auction results:

1 BASQUIAT, Jean-Michel (1960-1988), USA, €54,709,532
2 ZENG, Fanzhi (1964), CN, €39,246,785
3 KOONS, Jeff (1955), USA, €30,189,587
4 ZHANG, Xiaogang (1958), CN, €30,062,860
5 CHEN, Yifei (1946-2005), CN, €28,353,024
6 PRINCE, Richard (1949), USA, €18,324,243
7 WANG, Yidong (1955), CN, €16,231,154
8 MURAKAMI, Takashi (1962), JAP, €15,784,849
9 HIRST, Damien (1965), GB, €14,807,602
10 ZHOU, Chunya (1955), CN, €14,552,336

That big number after each artist is their auction turnover, as calculated by ArtPrice. As far as I could tell, no Houston-based artist made the top 500 of the list (the cut-off auction turnover was €141,998). (Art Market Monitor)


Locked out Sotheby's art handlers (Hyperallergic)

On the other end of the scale: Hyperallergic comes out with its annual "20 Most Powerless" people in the art world. Included are tha locked out Sotheby's art handlers (perhaps the perfect symbol of the 1% waging class war on the 99%), art writers (I'll go along with that--maybe I will instruct my unpaid colleague Dean Liscum to write a scathing editorial on the subject), and New York City public school art teachers (probably could be expanded to any public school art teachers). (Hyperallergic)

 
Michael Bise, Life on the List (excerpt), comic, 2011

Add sick artists to the above list: Like when Sasha Dela has to have a garage sale to pay for her medical bills. And can you imagine if an artist needs a heart transplant? Well, you don't have to--Michael Bise, excellent artist and awesome critic, has started a serialized graphic novel on the subject in Glasstire. For some reason they don't call it a graphic novel--they call it a "drawing project." And it turns out Bise is a great cartoonist as well! (Life on the List, Glasstire)


Statue of Popeye in Chester, Illinois

Let's end this on a happy note: Cartoonist John Porcellino has been ambling around the country forever (it seems).  His most recent road-trip took him to Chester, Illinois, birthplace of E.C. Segar. You don't know E.C. Segar? He was one of America's great 20th century artists. He created Popeye, but even more important (in my opinion) is that he drew it for 10 years--and those years were magic. (All the Popeye comics drawn after Segar's death were pale reflections.) He was a genius of working-class absurdism. Porcellino (whose own minimalist poetic comics don't owe anything obvious to Segar) takes us through this small town which is extremely proud of its native son. The statue above is one of four Popeye-related statues in town. Way to go Chester! Why can't Houston honor its cultural heroes this way? Where are the statues of Lightnin' Hopkins and Donald Barthelme? (Maybe Blogging Will Help)

Report from Austin part 3: 83 Austin Artists to Watch

by Robert Boyd

The Hybrid Arts Summit was held in part at the Austin Museum of Art, which was at that moment was exhibiting New Art In Austin: 15 to Watch, a group show which the museum hosts every three years. I was in town for the Summit, so I took the opportunity to check out the show. Afterward, I decided to pick up the catalog. I noticed they had the previous three catalogs (2002, 2005 and 2008). Curious, I picked up all four catalogs. I packed them away and carried on with the activities of the day.

Later in the day, I was talking about the Austin scene with Salvador Castillo, and he offered the theory that Austin is not a very congenial place for artists because there is not a very big collector base there. I countered that Austin certainly had its share of rich folk and well-off professionals--the prerequisite for a good collectors community. His theory was that there wasn't a long tradition of collecting in Austin the way there was in Houston. He wasn't the first person who had put forth a version of this theory. Art Palace moved from Austin to Houston basically because it was too hard to run a successful commercial gallery in Austin.

I don't know enough about the Austin scene to know if this lack of collector support is due to an inadequate appreciation for art locally or if it's a simple game of numbers (Houston is four times larger than Austin, after all). There seem to be several commercial galleries there (I count something like nine), and while no one starts a gallery with much hope of getting rich, they are businesses and the idea is to sell enough to cover your expenses with a little left over at the end. So either the gallerists in Austin are delusional and headed for bankruptcy or else they are successful-- or at least scraping by.

So you're an artist in Austin, and you're not too bad at what you do. Will Austin support you? I'm not talking about making a living exclusively off your art, nice though that would be. I'm talking about providing you with the means to live which should include being able to sell at least some of your art, hopefully to Austin based collectors. (As an aside, in a panel discussion on Regionalism that was recorded for Glasstire, Christina Rees said that Houston collectors collected the work of Houston artists to an unusual degree. I can't really compare Houston's collecting habits to other cities, but I do know that most Houston galleries--even the blue chip ones that show lots of out-of-town art--show at least some Houston artists. Maybe that's a problem for Austin artists. Perhaps Austin collectors are looking to New York or London or elsewhere for their art.)

With the four New Art In Austin catalogs, I had the raw material to make an educated guess at how well Austin supports its artists. If you were an artist who was selected for the 2002 show, were you able to sustain a career in Austin? Or did you have to move away? On one hand, Austin is a relatively inexpensive and highly congenial place to live. On the other hand, art by Austin artists is so lacking in buyers that Art Palace moved to Houston.



Matthew Gutierrez, After-During I-V (detail), acrylic on four canvases, 2001 (from New Art in Austin 2002)

So I decided to try to find out where the artists in the 2002, 2005, and 2008 exhibits were now. Were they still making art? Were they still in Austin? Out of the 65 artists in those shows, about 39 seemed to still be in most recently in Austin. The phrase "most recently" is important--of that 39, not all of them had been mentioned in Google-accessible sites recently. For many, the most recent mention was in 2009, and Matthew Gutierez, who was in the 2002 show, hasn't been heard from since 2002 as far as I could tell. If we look at each individual show, we get this result:

	Still in Austin	Not in Austin	% moved
2002 Artists	11	11	50%
2005 Artists	15	9	38%
2008 Artists	13	6	32%

So over time, artists move away from Austin more and more. But this could possibly be said of artists anywhere, particularly young artists. And that is one feature of the New Art in Austin exhibits--they feature emerging artists for the most part. Many of the artists are recent college graduates, and some are even still in school when they are selected for the shows. So they live in Austin because they studied there, but life--in the form of career, marriage, family, etc.--may pull them away over time.



Mark Schatz, Pastel Crash, crashed car, polystyrene foam, and interior house paint, 2002 (from New Art in Austin 2002)

Many move because they have gotten teaching jobs elsewhere. Mark Schatz, (2002) for example, first moved to Houston and recently moved to Ohio to work at Kent State University. Of the artists that have moved away, at least five are teachers/professors. (Please keep in mind that all these stats are somewhat fuzzy. They represent the best information I could get through Google.)



Hana Hillerova, Swarm, installation with cardboard, plastic, paint, digital prints, 2004 (from New Art in Austin 2005)

So of the 26 that moved, where did they go? No particular surprises here. Seven went to New York. Five are in the Houston area. The rest are scattered to the wind--but often to college towns like Bellingham, WA, Cambridge, MA and Ann Arbor, MI. (None to Dallas or Fort Worth, as far as I could tell.) Two of Houston's best known artists were in New Art In Austin shows--Hana Hillerova and Robert Pruitt.



 Robert Pruitt, Great Scott, Iz She a Theef?!, conte crayon on butcher paper, 2001 (from New Art in Austin 2002)

All that said, a majority of these people are still in Austin, and as far as I can tell, a majority of the Austinites are still active artists. Austin is a great place to live, so even if it's hard for an artist to make a living there, these 39 stalwarts are making it work for themselves somehow.

One question I'm left with is this--is this rate of artist-exodus typical? If you took a random sample of youngish artists who exhibited in any other city in 2002, 2005 and 2008, would the results be much different? Do more artists leave Austin than other places? I don't know, so I am loathe to suggest that it is harder for an artist in Austin than in any other city.

However, I think it's true that if the collector base in Austin was larger and more willing to "buy local," that would give artists more of an incentive to stay. I don't think there is any special virtue in "buying local" in art--collectors should buy what they like, wherever the origin. But there are good reasons for a collector to buy work from local artists--you get the opportunity to meet them and get to know them, which is nice, and their work is often quite reasonable compared to out-of-town artists. In any case, if I were an Austin artist, I'd want to cultivate the local collector community, and would have a vested interest in seeing it expand.

As for the current exhibit, Michael Bise savaged it in ...might be good.  He wrote, "What it does offer is a great deal of justification for artworks that, while not egregiously awful, seem a long way from meriting serious consideration in a museum exhibition." I can see his point, but that didn't keep me from enjoying some of the pieces. In other words, why should I care if something is museum-worthy if I like it? But his next sentence was this--"More than a few artists in the show take on projects of artists before them and find themselves outmatched." This does speak to the provincial quality of the work. It's just very hard to be original.



Santiago Forero, Hammer--Self Portrait, The Olympic Games Series, archival inkjet print, 2010 (from New Art in Austin 2011)

That said, I enjoyed some of the pieces. I had seen Santiago Forero's work at the Station Museum, where one of his photo self-portraits showed himself as a soldier. The three here depicted him participating in classic Olympic sports. The catalog text claims a lot for these photos, more than they can really sustain. But they have an uncomfortable power. Forero is a dwarf. To create these photos, he trained to be in top physical condition and had clothing appropriate for each sport custom made. But Forero can't be an Olympic athlete, any more than he can join the U.S. Army (minimum height requirement, 58 inches). So these photos are fantasies, and could be seen as bitter reflections on the worlds that are closed off to dwarfs. But at the same time, they look really cool. Forero really pulls it off--everything looks perfect, better than a real photo of an Olympic athlete would look.The expression of total seriousness on his face is completely convincing. And this just adds an additional layer to the viewer's discomfort. Here is a dwarf, dressed up to amuse us.



Ian Ingram, Our Koruna Muse, charcoal, pastel, encaustic, silver leaf and butterflies, 2009 (from New Art in Austin 2011)

In terms of sheer bravura skill, Ian Ingram's hyper-detailed portraits are completely amazing. But he's not attempting photo-realism. At least, that is only a side-effect of his ambition. On the contrary, he wants his work to be expressive. He attaches three dimensional objects to his paintings--butterflies, cloth, beads. These objects are real and layered on top of a realistic-but-constructed image. If this distinction is not important to Ingram, then why bother painting at all? Why not just take large-scale photographs? I think for Ingram, the end result is not the critically important thing--the process is. Now this is kind of a weird thing to say of a hyper-realist painter. For most of painting's history, what mattered was the image one ended up with. No one looking at, say, The Oath of the Horatii, would think that the main thing about this painting was the process--the work, mental and physical, that David did. (No one with the possible exception of David himself.) Thomas McEvilley would explain this as a separation of art and life--specifically, he would look to the way Kant divided aesthetics, ethics and cognition into distinct categories. McEvilley has written that this distinction began to break down with the action painters--where the process was right on the surface--and then with performance artists, who fused art and life. I think for many artists throughout history, the intense concentration of making a painting or sculpture was therapeutic (long before that word gained currency) and meditative. For artists, at least, art and life are not separated. I think this is the case for Ingram--despite the fact he is toying with hyper-realism, what is important in these paintings is the intense process behind them.


Debra Broz, Feeding, found ceramic objects, epoxy compounds, paint and sealer on a painted wooden stand, 2010 (from New Art in Austin 2011)

[Parallel] by Jesus Benavente and Jennifer Reminchik strikes me as a prime example of work that "take[s] on projects of artists before them and find[s itself] outmatched," as Michael Bise complained. This performance, in which each artist takes turns being a servant for the other artist, seems unsubtle, rehashed, and altogether lacking in fun. Another artist whose work is likely to remind one of earlier, bolder work by other artists is Debra Broz. This is also work where you might think--does it really belong in a museum? But in another context, it would have been fine. I think these chimeras are amusing and well-made. As works of art, they are slight but pleasing. And the craftsmanship is top-notch.

Nathan Green's work has been growing on me. I don't love it, but I'm starting to like it. I reviewed works of his in a show last year at Art Palace, and what I wrote then still applies. Green has a solo show opening at Art Palace this week, and I may use it to try to make a more involved evaluation of his brightly colored, highly-patterned painting/installations.

There is something inherently problematic about an exhibit like this. A Nathan Green solo exhibit, for example, has a strong unifying factor--all the work is by one artist. And if a curator is building a show from scratch, she may have a concept of a visual conceit or a subject that unifies the show. The excellent show at the Blanton, Recovering Beauty, is a good example. The artists in it were all veterans of a particular art space in Buenos Aires in the 90s, but even more important, they formed their own school. The linking concept behind their work (yes to beauty, no to conceptual sterility and expressionist angst) was really strongly reflected in the work itself. But you can't have a unifying concept like that in New Art from Austin. It has to be what the curators think is the best work being done in Austin by emerging artists, whether or not their work has any relationship with one another's work or not. Such shows are necessarily hodge-podges. There are several artists here whose work would be much better as a solo show in a gallery or an art space. Maybe this was what Bise meant when he wrote "seem[s] a long way from meriting serious consideration in a museum exhibition."